The home life of the sisters was most pleasant and simple. They had no "society manners;" the witty Phoebe was as willing to flash out her brightest puns for Alice's enjoyment as she was for a drawing-room full of appreciative listeners; while Alice's gentleness and sweetness were shown constantly to her sister and were not reserved for company only. Their great occasions were their Sunday evening receptions, and the people who gathered then under their roof were far from an ordinary company. Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, Justin McCarthy, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Ole Bull, P. T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton--these were but a part of the brilliant company which delighted to gather on Sunday evening and enjoy the sweetness and womanliness of Alice, and the wit of Phoebe. Interrupted by the death of the beloved younger sister Elmina, this life in the Twentieth Street house went on for over twelve years, until in 1868 Alice Cary became a confirmed invalid. After she was confined to her room, however, she wanted life and brightness about her, and had the door of her room always left open, that she might hear the cheerful sounds of the household. [Illustration: ALICE CARY 1820-1871] During their life in New York, Phoebe had had numerous offers of marriage, but it had never cost her anything to say, "I don't want to marry anybody." Soon after the beginning of Alice's invalid days, however, Phoebe received an offer of marriage from a man whom she felt that she could love, and with whom she was sure she could be happy. She had always felt that in the home she was second to Alice, and she confessed once to a friend, "Sometimes I feel a yearning to have a life of my very own; my own house and work and friends; and to feel myself the center of all." However, much as it cost her, she resolutely put away the thought of this possible happiness because she knew that her sister could not endure her absence in what were very clearly the last days of her life. In February, 1870, Alice Cary died, and Phoebe from that time on seemed but half a person. To one of her friends she said pathetically: "For thirty years I have gone straight to her bedside as soon as I arose in the morning, and wherever she is, I am sure she wants me now." She tried to take up her work--indeed she felt that in her sister's absence she had double work to do; but it was of no use, and in a little more than a year after her sister's death she too died.