in my eyes, an object of tenderest
commiseration. From the first he clung to me with strange tenacity, for
our tastes were congenial. He brought with him from his Southern home
stores of books and shells and curious playthings and mechanical toys,
such as I had never seen before, and to spread these out and explain
them for my amusement was his chief delight.

My memory in turn was richly stored with poetry, some of it far above my
own comprehension, but clinging irresistibly to my mind through the
music of the metre. I had revelled in old ballads until I could recite
nearly all of these precious relics of heroic times, or rather chant
them forth monotonously enough in all probability, yet in a way that
riveted his attention forcibly, and roused his high-strung poetic
temperament to enthusiasm.

When ill or suffering, if asked what he needed for relief, he would say
"Miriam," as naturally as a thirsty man would call for a glass of clear
cold water. For his amusement I converted myself into a mime, a
mountebank. When I went to the theatre, the performance must be repeated
for his benefit, and many characters centred in one.

For him I danced the "Gavotte," the "shawl-dance," as taught to do by
Monsieur Mallet, at the great dancing-school on Chestnut Street, or
jumped Jim Crow to his infinite amusement and the unmitigated disgust of
Evelyn, to whom his physical infirmity made him any thing but
attractive. Such personal perfection as she possessed is, I am afraid,
apt to make us cold-hearted and exacting as to externals in others.
Evelyn could endure commonplace, but could not forgive a blemish. Once
Norman Stanbury came very near, losing her favor for having a wart on
his finger; another time, she banished him from her presence for weeks,
for having stained his hands, beyond the power of soap-and-water or
vinegar to efface, in gathering walnuts. Certainly no despot ever
governed more entirely through the medium of fear than did she through
the tyranny of a fastidious caprice united to a form and face of
surpassing beauty and high-bred grace.

Even my father fell under this requisitive influence of hers. Propriety,
the quality he worshipped, stood forth enshrined in her, and, from the
lifting of her fan to the laying down of her knife and fork, all was
faultless. The prestige, too, of birth, his special weakness, lingered
about her, and elevated her to a pedestal above any other inmate of his
household.

Her mother,