No, I cannot give you a description of this, especially as it was mingled with the fear that I might not have the means to go to greet her in New York before another ten months were over. Day and night, night and day, she was in my mind; and from the time that I had a right to expect her arrival, I counted the hours from morning until noon, and from noon until night, when the telegraph office would be closed. At length, on the eighteenth of September, the despatch came--not to me but to my friend Mr. Mayo--bearing the words, Tell Marie that she must calmly and quietly receive the news that our good mother sleeps at the bottom of the ocean, which serves as her monument and her grave. This is the most trying passage that I have to write in this sketch of my life, and you must not think me weak that tears blot the words as I write. My mother fell a victim to seasickness which brought on a violent hemorrhage that exhausted the sources of life. She died three weeks before the vessel reached the port, and my two sisters (the one seventeen, and the other nine years of age) chose rather to have her lowered on the Banks of Newfoundland than bring to us a corpse instead of the living. They were right, and the great ocean seems to me her fitting monument. This news almost paralyzed me. It was impossible for me to remain in Cleveland, I longed so to be with my sisters in New York. Availing myself of the cheapness of an excursion to the eastern cities, I hastened to them, they being nicely established all in one house headed by my brother-in-law, Mr. A. C. ----. After the first shock of our mother’s loss had passed, I called upon my friend, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who, though well established in her newly acquired house, in East Fifteenth Street, could not speak very encouragingly as to practice. For entirely social reasons, people were afraid to employ a woman physician openly, although desirous and ready to consult her privately. Yet even this unsatisfactory practice had prevented her from continuing the little dispensary regularly and it was still closed. But, during my absence, she had been trying to interest some wealthy friends in the collection of money to enable us after my return in the spring to commence again upon a little larger scale. To effect this, she proposed to hold a Fair during the winter after my return, and we concluded that the first meeting for this purpose should be held during my visit in New York. She succeeded in calling together a few friends at her house, who determined to form a nucleus for a Fair Association for the purpose of raising money for the New York Infirmary.