To this code of social and ceremonial ethics, and to the ban put upon dancing and card-playing by church and parents, is undoubtedly due the fact that Southern women of that generation were almost invariably what we would call, “good talkers.” In the remembrance, and in contrasting that all-so-long-ago with the times in which we live, I could write a jeremiade upon “Conversation as a Lost Art.” From the list of names drawn into line by some Yule-tide rhymes of my own, bearing the date of “1852,” I single two that must have more than a passing notice if I would write the true story of my threescore-and-ten years. Mary Massie Ragland was, at that Christmas-tide, twenty-two years of age. I had liked and admired her from the first. In time she grew into a place in my heart no other friend had ever held, and which, left vacant by her death six years later, has never been taken. I think no man or woman has more than one complete, all-satisfying friendship in a lifetime. Her portrait hangs against the wall in my bedchamber now. I awake each morning to meet her gaze bent, as in life, on mine. In sorrow and in joy, I have gone secretly to my room, as to an oratory, to seek in the depths of the beautiful eyes the sympathy never denied while she was with me, and visible to my dull vision. To a mind stored richly with the best literature, eager to acquire and faithful to retain, she added exquisite fancies, poetic tastes, and love for the beautiful that was a passion. Her heart was warm, deep, tender, and true. It well-nigh breaks mine in remembering _how_ true! In all the ten years in which we lived and loved together in closest intimacy, not a cloud ever crossed the heaven of our friendship. One remark, uttered simply and with infinite gentleness by her, after a great loss had chastened her buoyant spirits, stands with me as the keynote to action and character. I was commenting somewhat sharply upon my disappointment in not meeting, from one whom I loved and trusted, the fulness of sympathy I thought I had a right to expect in what was a genuine trial to myself. “She was hard and critical!” I moaned. “You saw it, yourself! You cannot deny it! And she was absolutely rude to _you_!” “Dear!” The stroking fingers upon my bowed head were a benediction; the sweet voice was eloquent with compassion. “Don’t judge her harshly! She is _good_, and true to you and to the right. But she has never had sorrow to make her tender.” How boundless was the tenderness, my mentor, who comforted while she admonished, learned in the school of pain in which she studied until Death dismissed her spirit, was fully known to Him alone whose faithful disciple she was to the end. To the world she showed a smiling front; her merry laugh and ready repartee were the life of whatever company she entered, and over and through it all, it might be reverently said of the true, heroic soul, that, to high and humble, “her compassions failed not.”