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of the early morning, gazing out for the ship that had
long ago gone down.

That poor child. She was human and was pleased with
a compliment—and now that she is gone beyond the hear-
ing of them, how richly they came flooding in! Here are
these piles of letters from competent and discriminating
friends in America, Germany, Italy, France, England,
Scotland, filled with her praises—and the ears they would
have so gratified are deaf, the pulses they would have
quickened are still.

It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead, and I
find myself wondering if the praises in this multitude of
letters have that defect. I do not know, in certain of the
details, such as voice, literary gift, and some others—
other witnesses are more competent perhaps than I; but
in the matter of the talking gift I know myself that she
was not merely remarkable, she was extraordinary.

When she was out of her head in those last days she
found a dress of her mother's hanging in a closet and
thought it was her mother's effigy or specter, and so
thought she was dead, and kissed it and broke down and
cried.

We wanted her to go around the world, but she dreaded
the sea and elected not to go.

In the first week of August I proposed to myself a
magazine article in which I intended to "prove" a certain
thing by quotations—these to be the most familiar sen-
tences in our language, sentences familiar to everybody.
But I did not intend to put myself to the trouble of gath-
ering these together myself. No, I would have the children
do that and pay a small fee for each accepted one. I ex-
pected a harvest of them from Susy.

In this family she held the place of intellectual chief,
as by natural right; none of us thought of disputing it
with her. In depth of mind, in swiftness of comprehen-
sion, clearness of intellectual vision, in ability to reveal the

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