At one time Jenny Lind intended to write an autobiography, but when the public did not receive Carlyle’s _Reminiscences_ with the applause she thought it deserved, she abandoned her idea with the comment, “No! let the waves of oblivion pass over my poor little life!” There must have been moments in those later years of uninterrupted existence along common family lines when Jenny Lind was restless--for what, she did not know; but, unfortunately for the development of her talents, in such moments she could always take quick refuge in God. Some pagan influences might have made her a great woman, for the God she adored had done all he could in the way of native gifts. If she had listened to the dictates of her emotions with half the unresisting attention she paid to the Bishop of Norwich and Josephine Åhmansson, the world to-day would know of Jenny Lind as something more than the spiritual toy of its grandfathers. The development of her talents and personality into genius was thwarted by suppression of the ordinary aims and aspirations of men. She smothered her desire for money by an inordinate indulgence in charity; a more natural appetite for worldly possessions might have led to artistic tastes, of which there is absolutely no indication beyond the technical development of her voice. Even in music there is no important discrimination and no predilection for the great, and of literature and art she knew nothing, because she did not allow herself even the little mental freedom necessary for their wide acquaintance. The desire for fame was lost in a constant consideration of God, making man’s aspirations unimportant in her mind. She could write to a young boy who was just entering the University of Heidelberg, when she herself was still under thirty: “You are just going to begin life, dear Rudolph; and life has quite as much joy as it has sorrow: but I, for my part, prefer the sorrow: for there is something exalted about it, whenever one’s heart is full of pain: for then it is that we first feel how poor we are on earth, how rich in heaven.” Any tendency towards intellectual supremacy through the agency of her great natural voice was thwarted by her weak dependence upon the advice of others, leading eventually to the retirement of marriage. It was rumored that Jenny Lind’s last years were unhappy, that she was treated with indifference by her husband, and that her grave in 1890 had fallen into neglect. This story, printed in a London newspaper and reprinted by the _New York Tribune_, was denied vigorously by Barnum. He said that he had visited Otto Goldschmidt in London, and that he happened to know that Jenny Lind’s husband sent fresh flowers to her grave every day. The London newspaper had printed that she died broken-hearted, but Barnum declared confidently, “Her whole life was a song, and her last days were spent in singing for indigent clergymen.”