r-covered sofa, and bade me read to him, generally from the
novels of George Eliot, or from certain romances running through the New
York _Ledger_ by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. These were generally stories of the
times of the Irish Kings, in which gallowglasses and lovely and
aristocratic Celtic maidens disported themselves. My mother, after her
conversion, disapproved of the New York _Ledger_. In fact, there were
families in Philadelphia whose heads regarded it with real horror! In
our house, there was a large stack of this interesting periodical,
which, with many volumes of Godey's _Lady's Book_, were packed in the
attic.

It happened that a young man, in whom my father had a great interest,
was threatened with tuberculosis. An awful rumour was set abroad that he
was about to die. He sent over a messenger asking my father for the back
numbers of the New York _Ledger_ containing a long serial story by Mrs.
Anna Cora Mowatt. As I remember, it was a story of the French
Revolution, and the last number that I was allowed to read ended with a
description of a dance in an old ch[^a]teau, when the Marquise, who was
floating through the minuet, suddenly discovered blood on the white-kid
glove of her right hand! I was never permitted to discover where the
blood came from; I should like to find out now if I could find the
novel. I remember that my mother was terribly shocked when my father
sent the numbers of the New York _Ledger_ to the apparently dying man.
"It's a horrible thing," my mother said, "to think of any Christian
person reading the New York _Ledger_ at the point of death." The young
man, however, did not die; and I rather think my father attributed his
recovery to the exhilarating effect of one of his favourite stories.

There were certain other serial stories I was ordered to read; they were
stories of the Irish Brigade in France. My mother, I remember,
disapproved of them because Madame de Pompadour was frequently
mentioned, and she thought that my father regarded the lady in question
too tolerantly. These romances were, I think, written by a certain Myles
O'Reilly who was in some way connected with the army. This procedure of
reading aloud was not always agreeable, as my father frequently went to
sleep in the middle of a passage and forgot what I had already read. The
consequence was that I was obliged to begin the same old story over
again on the following evening.

It happened that my father was one of the directors