of her literary merits. In 1839 she published a book entitled
_Woman and her Master_, as solid and solemn and dull as if our vivacious
friend had put herself into a strait-jacket and swallowed a dose of starch
and valerian.

The closing chapter of any life must of necessity be sad, friends falling
to the grave like autumn leaves. First her beloved husband died, then her
darling sister Olivia; and her journal she now calls her "Doomsday Book."
Yet in 1850 she thoroughly enjoyed a sharp pen-encounter with Cardinal
Wiseman on a statement about St. Peter's chair made in her work on Italy.
She writes: "Lots of notes and notices of my letter to Cardinal Wiseman.
It has had the run of all the newspapers. The little old woman lives
still." December 25, 1858, was her last birthday. She assembled a few old
friends at dinner, and did the honors with all the brilliancy of her
brightest days. She told a variety of anecdotes with infinite drollery,
and after dinner sang a broadly comic song of Father Prout's--

The night before Larry was stretched,
The boys they all paid him a visit.

It was a custom in Ireland to "wake" a man who was to be hung, the night
before the execution, so that the poor fellow might enjoy the whiskey
drunk in his honor. There was one book more, "positively the last," but
she never gave up her pen, "her worn-out stump of a goosequill," until her
physician literally took it from her feeble fingers. She had grown old
gracefully, showing great kindness to young authors, enduring partial
blindness and comparative neglect with true dignity and cheerfulness, her
heart always young. She met death patiently and with unfailing courage on
the evening of the 16th of April, 1859.

KATE A. SANBORN.

A COMPARISON.

I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be
Likened to wandering winds that come and go,
Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow
O'er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.
Some lives are buoyant zephyrs sporting free
In tropic sunshine; some long winds of woe
That shun the day, wailing with murmurs low,
Through haunted twilights, by the unresting sea;
Others are ruthless, stormful, drunk with might,
Born of deep passion or malign desire:
They rave 'mid thunder-peals and clouds of fire.
Wild, reckless all, save that some power unknown
Guides each blind force till life be overblown,
Lost in vague hollows of