er stepdaughter, Mrs. Allan, who lived near
the old home. Then she went to the home of Dr. George J. Preston, of
Baltimore, where she was the centre of the home and took great delight
in his children with their pretty "curly red heads." She never walked
again except to take a few steps with a crutch.

From 819 North Charles Street she wrote: "Here my large airy room
faces brick walls and housetops and when I sit at the library windows
I only see throngs of passers-by, all of whom are strangers to me."
Her life was beautiful and content, but she must often have longed for
the old friends and the "laureled avenues" and the "edges of the
glorious Goshen Pass lit with the wavering flames of the July
rhododendrons."

March 29, 1897, Margaret Preston died as she had wished when she
expressed her desire in her poem "Euthanasia," written in memory of a
friend who had passed away unconscious of illness or death:

With faces the dearest in sight,
With a kiss on the lips I love best,
To whisper a tender "Good-night"
And pass to my pillow of rest.

To kneel, all my service complete,
All duties accomplished--and then
To finish my orisons sweet
With a trustful and joyous "Amen."

And softly, when slumber was deep,
Unwarned by a shadow before,
On a halcyon billow of sleep
To float to the Thitherward shore.

Without a farewell or a tear,
A sob or a flutter of breath,
Unharmed by the phantom of Fear,
To glide through the darkness of death!

Just so would I choose to depart,
Just so let the summons be given;
A quiver--a pause of the heart--
A vision of angels--then Heaven!

"THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'"

AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON

Let me introduce to you Augusta Evans Wilson as I first met her when
she was a bride, when her soul, like mine, was allied to love, faith
and romance, when every day was made perfect with its own contentment
and to-morrow's hope, when we were happy because we loved and were
loved.

I do not know why, when she clasped my hand and said, "How young you
are," I thought of the poem of Lucas, "The land where we lay
dreaming," or why those lines should come back to me now when her feet
are treading the path where silence is. It may have been because of
her sweet voice, "Which did thrill until at eve the whip-poor-will and
at noon the mocking-birds were mute and still," or because of the
exchange