rely that is being,

"Self-poised and independent still
On this world's varying good or ill."

In 1842, Dr. Ware's health became so much impaired that Mrs. Ware
entertains an unfulfilled desire. It is to get away from Cambridge,
which had become so dear to them all. "I scruple not to say that a
ten-foot house, and bread and water diet, with a sense of rest to
_him_, would be a luxury." The family removed to Framingham, where Dr.
Ware died, a year later. Whatever tribulations might be in store for
Mrs. Ware, anxiety on his account was not to be one of them.

Death came on Friday; on Sunday, Mrs. Ware attended church with all
her family, and the occasion must have been more trying for the
minister who preached to her than for herself. A short service was
held that Sunday evening at six, and "Then," she says, "John and I
brought dear father's body to Cambridge in our own carriage; we could
not feel willing to let strangers do anything in connection with him
which we could do ourselves." Think of that dark, silent lonely ride
from Framingham to Cambridge! But here was a woman who did not spare
herself, and did not ask what somebody would think of her doings.

After this event, the Memoirs tell us that a gentleman in Milton gave
her a very earnest invitation to go there and take the instruction of
three little children in connection with her own. In this occupation
she spent six years of great outward comfort and usefulness. There is
much in these years, or in the letters of these years, of great
interest and moral beauty. Even with young children to leave, she
speaks of death as serenely as she would of going to Boston. "I do not
feel that I am essential to my children. I do not feel that I am
competent to train them."

Of her last illness, one of her children wrote, "Never did a sick room
have less of the odor of sickness than that. It was the brightest spot
on earth." "Come with a _smile_," she said to a friend whom she had
summoned for a last farewell, and so went this remarkable and
exceptionally noble woman.

III

LYDIA MARIA CHILD

[Illustration: LYDIA MARIA CHILD]

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American
literature were more conspicuous than that of Lydia Maria Child, and
among those few, if we except that of Miss Sedgwick, there was
certainly no woman's name. Speaking with that studied reserve which
became its dignity, the _North American Review_ said of her