My mother was orphaned in infancy, and brought up by her grand-parents --Mr. and Mrs. Etheldred Taylor. She was proud of her ancestry. I can see and hear her now, when, under circumstances where her pride was touched, she would say, "Daughter, remember that pure and rich blood flows in your veins--the best in the land. If your mother had to live in a hollowed stump, she would be what she is; no outward circumstances could lower or elevate her one iota;" and she would raise her proud head with the air of an unrighteously dethroned queen. This, I may say, was mother's great, if not her only fault. She was a pure, lovely, estimable woman; quick and sensitive, but, as a friend, a wife, and mother, she was unexceptionable. Like the Grecian matron, her children were her jewels. Her education would have been considered limited for these days, yet she was a woman of fine sense and quick intellect. She possessed great delicacy of feeling, an inflexible will, an unusual energy (for a woman) in carrying out what she esteemed right, and an uncontrollable aversion to whatever was mean or cowardly. The training of their children devolved mostly up her, my father finding enough out of doors, in business or pleasure, to occupy him. And faithful she was in teaching them the practical lessons of industry and economy; faithful in dealing with their faults. The only one never checked was pride. This she appealed to as a stimulant to every other virtue; for virtue she esteemed it--and virtue it is, in its proper place, and under proper control. My parents were brought up in the Episcopal church--with a form of godliness, without the substance. But the sufferings and death of my eldest sister, who had become a true convert to the religion of Jesus Christ, in the Methodist church, and who died rejoicing in the hope of everlasting life, so impressed my mother that she, too, sought and found the "one thing needful"--which happy change, although it took place late in life, was long enough to evince to her children the genuineness of her faith, and the power of the Gospel in making the "proud in spirit" meek and lowly at the feet of Jesus. She united with the Presbyterian church a few years before her death; and now, as I look back at the days of my childhood and youth, and call to mind all the pleasant and sweet things which memory cherishes, there is nothing so refreshing as the piety of my mother, and that of the dear sister, who, like a pioneer, went before to show us the "straight and narrow path" through the rugged scenes of this sinful world. Like an oasis in the desert of life, it lives, fresh and green, and ever and anon directs my vision above the storm and tempest to the pure and bright realms of the redeemed.