The closing chapter of any life must of necessity be sad, friends falling to the grave like autumn leaves. First her beloved husband died, then her darling sister Olivia; and her journal she now calls her "Doomsday Book." Yet in 1850 she thoroughly enjoyed a sharp pen-encounter with Cardinal Wiseman on a statement about St. Peter's chair made in her work on Italy. She writes: "Lots of notes and notices of my letter to Cardinal Wiseman. It has had the run of all the newspapers. The little old woman lives still." December 25, 1858, was her last birthday. She assembled a few old friends at dinner, and did the honors with all the brilliancy of her brightest days. She told a variety of anecdotes with infinite drollery, and after dinner sang a broadly comic song of Father Prout's-- The night before Larry was stretched, The boys they all paid him a visit. It was a custom in Ireland to "wake" a man who was to be hung, the night before the execution, so that the poor fellow might enjoy the whiskey drunk in his honor. There was one book more, "positively the last," but she never gave up her pen, "her worn-out stump of a goosequill," until her physician literally took it from her feeble fingers. She had grown old gracefully, showing great kindness to young authors, enduring partial blindness and comparative neglect with true dignity and cheerfulness, her heart always young. She met death patiently and with unfailing courage on the evening of the 16th of April, 1859. KATE A. SANBORN. A COMPARISON. I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be Likened to wandering winds that come and go, Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow O'er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee. Some lives are buoyant zephyrs sporting free In tropic sunshine; some long winds of woe That shun the day, wailing with murmurs low, Through haunted twilights, by the unresting sea; Others are ruthless, stormful, drunk with might, Born of deep passion or malign desire: They rave 'mid thunder-peals and clouds of fire. Wild, reckless all, save that some power unknown Guides each blind force till life be overblown, Lost in vague hollows of the fathomless Night. PAUL H. HAYNE. THROUGH WINDING WAYS. CHAPTER XI.