l object and at the
best angle, so the picture she brings us is nobly ordered and richly
suggestive.

And so the days passed in study, writing, housework, and caring for old
ladies three. Dante Gabriel, talented, lovable, erratic, had gotten into
bad ways, as a man will who turns night into day and tries to get the
start of God Almighty, thinking he has found a substitute for exercise and
oxygen. Finally he was taken to Birchington, on the Isle of Thanet (where
Octave found her name). He was mentally ill, to a point where he had
through his delusions driven away all his old-time friends.

Christina, aged fifty-one, and the mother, aged eighty-two, went to take
care of him, and they did for him with all the loving tenderness what
they might have done for a sick baby; but with this difference--they had
to fight his strength. Yet still there were times when his mind was sweet
and gentle as in the days of old; and toward the last these periods of
restful peace increased, and there were hours when the brother, sister and
aged mother held sweet converse, almost as when children they were taught
at this mother's knee. Dante Gabriel Rossetti died April Ninth, Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-two. His grave is in the old country churchyard at
Birchington.

Two years afterward the mother passed out; in Eighteen Hundred Ninety,
Eliza Polidori died, aged eighty-seven; and in Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-three, her sister Charlotte joined her, aged eighty-four. In
Christ's Church, Woburn Square, you can see memorial tablets to these fine
souls, and if you get acquainted with the gentle old rector he will show
you a pendant star and crescent, set with diamonds, given by the Sultan
during the Crimean war, "To Miss Charlotte Lydia Polidori for
distinguished services as Nurse." And he will also show you a silver
communion set marked with the names of these three sisters, followed by
that of "Christina Georgiana Rossetti."

And so they all went to their soul's rest and left Christina alone in the
big house with its echoing halls--too big by half for its lonely,
simple-hearted mistress and her pets. She felt that her work was done, and
feeling so, the end soon came. She died December Twenty-ninth, Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-four--passing from a world that she had never much loved,
where she had lived a life of sacrifice, suffering many partings, enduring
many pains. Glad to go, rejoicing that the end was nigh, and soothed by
the thought that beyond la