side of my
character. He always insisted upon thinking that whatever I said was the
wisest and the wittiest, and that whatever I did was the best. The
simplest little jeu d'esprit of mine seemed to him wonderfully witty.
Once, when he said, 'I wish for your sake, dear, I were as rich as
Croesus,' I answered, 'You are Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' How
often he used to quote that!

"His mind was unclouded to the last. He had a passion for philology, and
only eight hours before he passed away he was searching out the
derivation of a word."

Her well-stored mind and fine conversational gifts made her company
always desirable. No one who listened to her can forget the earnest
eloquence with which she used to dwell upon the evidences, from history,
tradition, and experience, of the superhuman and supernatural; or with
what eager interest she detected in the mysteries of the old religions of
the world the germs of a purer faith and a holier hope. She loved to
listen, as in St. Pierre's symposium of _The Coffee-House of Surat_,
to the confessions of faith of all sects and schools of philosophy,
Christian and pagan, and gather from them the consoling truth that our
Father has nowhere left his children without some witness of Himself.
She loved the old mystics, and lingered with curious interest and
sympathy over the writings of Bohme, Swedenborg, Molinos, and Woolman.
Yet this marked speculative tendency seemed not in the slightest degree
to affect her practical activities. Her mysticism and realism ran in
close parallel lines without interfering with each other.

With strong rationalistic tendencies from education and conviction, she
found herself in spiritual accord with the pious introversion of Thomas
a Kempis and Madame Guion. She was fond of Christmas Eve stories, of
warnings, signs, and spiritual intimations, her half belief in which
sometimes seemed like credulity to her auditors. James Russell Lowell,
in his tender tribute to her, playfully alludes to this characteristic:--

"She has such a musical taste that she 'll go
Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow.
She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main."

In 1859 the descent of John Brown upon Harper's Ferry, and his capture,
trial, and death, startled the nation. When the news reached her that
the misguided but noble old man lay desperately wounded in prison, alone
and unfriended, she wrote him a letter, u