“We watched her breathing thro’ the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. Our very hopes belied our fears; Our fears our hopes belied: We thought her dying while she slept, And sleeping when she died.” At midnight there was a rally for a few minutes. I was wetting the dry lips, leaning over the pillow, so that she looked into my eyes in unclosing hers. A smile of heavenly sweetness played over her face—a ray that irradiated, without moving a feature or line. The poor mouth stirred ever so slightly. I bent closer to it to hear the whisper: “I’m almost there!” Two months later I wrote to my old friend: “Our great sorrow in July was my first affliction. Yet I was wonderfully supported under it, and the _terrible_ desolation that has grown upon us, instead of lessening. I say ‘supported,’ for not once have I wished her back; but I miss her—oh, so sadly! “‘I cannot make her dead!’ “Then mother went to the country for a month, and I was left as housekeeper, with the whole care of the family on my hands. Rising betimes to preside at father’s early breakfast, pickling, preserving, sewing, overseeing the servants, etcetera. “Enough of this! Although the little girls’ lessons begin again to-day, and I have my sister’s domestic and social duties to perform in addition to my own, I have more leisure than you might think, and you shall have the benefit of a spare half-hour on this bright Monday morning. (Alice practising, meanwhile, in the same room!) “Mea is still in Boston and the vicinity, and will not return for a month or more. Lizzie M. is to be married late in October or early in November, and wishes to have Mea with her. Another of the three Lizzies, and the prettiest—Lizzie N.—married last week a Mr. L.—a nice young man, Mea says. I have never seen him, although they have been engaged for some time. He has taken up his abode in Boston, to keep his lovely wife with her invalid mother. “And while upon marriage—E. G. is to wed on October 11th, Mr. R. H., one of _ten_ brothers. She is ‘doing very well,’ say the gossips. “Sarah and Mr. Budwell are at home again, he handsomer than ever, while she looks prettier and happier than she ever was before. “While retailing news, let me chronicle the arrival of Master Robert Wallace Courtney, an interesting youth, who—as father dryly remarked, when I said that he ‘came from a foreign shore’—‘speaks the language of the Cry-mea.’