Such a wife and such a loving daughter could not pass from his side and find their places filled. But he did not"mope," as he wrote me one day,"I am too busy for that;" or, he might have said truthfully, too well sustained. His habit of carrying himself with an air of kindliness toward all, and of enjoyment in the opportunities still left him, was very beautiful and unusual."If the Lord thinks it best for me to stay until I tumble to pieces, I'm willing--I'm willing," he said. He was always capable of amusing his friends on the subject, as in the former days when Old Age came and offered him"a cane, an eyeglass, a tippet, and a pair of overshoes. 'No; much obliged to you,' said I.... So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way, and walked out alone; got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with lumbago, and had time to think over the whole matter."

Who that heard him can ever forget the exquisite reading of"The Last Leaf" at the Longfellow memorial meeting. The pathos of it was then understood for the first time. The poem had become an expression of his later self, and it was given with a personal significance which touched the hearts of all his hearers.

His wit has left the world sparkling with the shafts it has let fly on every side. They are taken up continually and sent out again both by those who heard him utter them and by those who repeat them, unmindful of their origin.

His attention was turned on some occasion to a young aspirant for artistic fame. He referred to the youthful person later as"one who performed a little on the lead pencil." He said to me one day,"I've sometimes made new words. In 'Elsie Venner' I made the word 'chrysocracy,' thinking it would take its place; but it didn't: 'plutocracy,' meaning the same thing, was adopted instead. Oddly enough, I had a letter from a man to-day, asking if I did not make the word 'anaesthesia,' which I certainly did."

In the sick-room he was always a welcome guest. A careful maid once asked if he minded climbing two flights of stairs to see his friend."I laughed when she asked me," he said;"for I shall have to climb a good many more than that before I see the angels."

"I gave two dinners to two parties of old gentlemen just before I left town," he said, the year before his death; and then added,"our baby was seventy-three!"

His letters in the later years were full of feeling. He says in one of them, written on a Christmas day, speaking of an old friend:"How many delightful hours the photographs bring back to me!... Under his roof I have met more visitors to be remembered than under any other. But for his hospitality I should never have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with famous writers and artists whom I can now recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard them, in that plea