"At the end of the period I have indicated, I found my means had become reduced to about three thousand dollars. This awoke in my bosom a new cause of anxiety. If my father should not recover his reason in two or three years, I would have nothing upon which to support him, and be compelled to see him taken to some public institution for the insane, there to be treated without that tenderness and regard which a daughter can exercise toward her parent. This fear haunted me terribly. "It was near the end of the period I have named, that I met with an account of the Massachusetts Insane Hospital, situated in Charlestown in this State. I was pleased with the manner in which patients were represented to be treated, and found that, by investing in Boston the balance of my little property, the income would be sufficient to pay for my father's maintenance there. As for myself, I had no fear but that with my needle, or in some other way, I could easily earn enough to supply my own limited wants. A long conference with one of the physicians who had attended my father raised my hopes greatly as to the benefits which might result from his being placed in an institution so well conducted. "As soon as this idea had become fully formed in my mind, I sold off all our little stock of furniture, and with the meagre supply of clothing to which I had limited myself, ventured once more to try the perils of the sea. After a quick passage, we arrived in Boston. My father I at once had placed in the asylum, after having invested nearly every dollar I had in bank stock, the dividends from which were guaranteed to the institution for his support, so long as he remained one of its inmates. This was early in the last fall. I had then but a few dollars left, and no income. I was in a strange city, dependent entirely upon my own resources. And what were they? 'What am I to do? Where am I to go for employment?' were questions I found hard indeed to answer. Twenty dollars were all I possessed in the world, and this sum, at a hotel, would not last me, I knew, over two or three weeks. I therefore sought out a private boarding-house, where, under an assumed name, I got a room and my board for two dollars a week. The woman who kept the boarding-house, and to whom I communicated my wish to get sewing, gave me half a dozen plain shirts to make for her husband, for which I received fifty cents each. This was all the work I obtained during the first two weeks I was in the house, and it yielded me only three dollars, when my boarding cost me four. I felt a good deal discouraged after that. I knew no one to whom I could go for work--and the woman with whom I boarded could not recommend me to any place, except to the clothing-stores: but they, she said, paid so badly that she would not advise me to go there, for I could not earn much over half what it would cost me for my board. Still, she added, 'half a loaf is better than no