te until her death, the hand of God seems to have been
very heavy upon her, afflictions fell upon her like rain, and it
required a brave spirit to carry the burdens appointed for her to
bear. Happily, she had a brave spirit, did not know that her life was
hard, "gloried in tribulation," like St. Paul, and was never more
cheerful or thankful than when she was herself an invalid, with an
invalid husband to be cared for like a baby, seven children to be
clothed and fed, and not enough money at the year's end to square
accounts. Ruskin tells of a servant who had served his mother
faithfully fifty-seven years. "She had," he says, "a natural gift and
specialty for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of the
sick-room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us
were ill." It will be seen further on that these were only a part of
the accomplishments of Mrs. Ware. It is fortunate if a woman is so
made that her spirits rise as her troubles thicken, but the reader of
the story will be thankful that her life was not all a battle, that
her childhood was more than ordinarily serene and sunny, and that not
for a dozen years at least, did she have to be a heroine in order to
be happy.

Mary had been in Hingham about half a year, enjoying her school-girl
life, when her mother was taken ill, fatally ill as it proved, and the
child, then at the age of thirteen, was called home and installed in
the sick-room as nurse. This was the beginning of sorrow. The mother
lingered through the winter and died in the following May. There
remained of the family, the grandparents, one son of fine talents, but
of unfortunate habits, and her father, "broken in spirits and in
fortune, clinging to his only child with doting and dependent
affection." We can see that it could not have been a cheerful home for
a young girl of thirteen. Some thirty years later, she wrote to one of
her children, "I think I have felt the want all my life of a more
cheerful home in my early childhood, a fuller participation in the
pleasures and 'follies' of youth." I put this reflection here, because
it does not apply to the years preceding the loss of her mother while
it exactly fits the period that now follows.

The year following her mother's death, Mary attended a girls' school
in Boston. A passage from a letter written at this period will show
something of her quality. It is dated February 27, 1813, when she was
fourteen and a few months. Beside