"My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad-house, from whence I fear she must be moved to a hospital. My poor father was slightly wounded. God has preserved to me my senses. Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with." And only a day after this, the weak old father, with his plastered head, is playing cribbage; and again, on another day, friends having come in--very many for those small rooms--and the last ceremonies not yet over, and they all sitting down at some special repast--Lamb bethinks himself of all that has happened, of what lies in the next room (he tells this in a letter to Coleridge), and rushes thither to kiss once more the cold face and to pray forgiveness that he has forgotten her so soon. Poor Mary recovers; she lives for years with her brother; the horror of the past staying like a {323} black dream in their thought--of which they dare not speak. And when new visitations of estrangement threaten, they two, brother and sister, walk away out from the streets--on to Edmonton, through green fields, by hedges, under trees which they much enjoy, to the doctor's strong guardianship and ward, until repose comes again and a return. Lamb at last goes to live at Enfield, which is close by Edmonton, north of London, that he may be near her prison-house at all times and seasons. Yet in all these days when the pains and fears of that distracting life are resting on him, he is putting those tender and playful touches into the pleasant essays we know so well; conjuring for himself and for thousands everywhere a world of sunshine that shall overlap the dreary one in which he lives, and spend its graces and cheeriness upon the mind of the poor forlorn one, who with sisterly affection cleaves there and journeys meekly and obediently and sadly beside him. I do not know how to trust myself to make a citation from those essays which shall carry to those not over-familiar some good hint of their {324} qualities; but I venture upon a bit from his _Dream-Children_:--