No one who did not hear him, can imagine the pathos with which he described his little girl’s illness, with all the fervor of his warm Spanish nature; his care of her; his walking the floor with her night after night, her little arm around his neck and her head upon his breast; “for you see, lady, it was worse than if she had had no mother.” His love for her seemed to amount to a passion; his boys, he said, were “nice little fellows,” Juan and Henriquez; but evidently his feeling for them was nothing in comparison with the idolatry lavished upon his little Rosita, as he called her, a child of four years old. “I lie here at night,” said he, the large tears rolling down his cheeks, “and think if I could just once have that little hand in mine, that little head upon my breast, it would cure me faster than all this doctor’s stuff, far away faster.” From what he told me, I gathered that he had enlisted in the war in despair; and during his absence his wife, for her outrageous conduct, had been considered insane, and taken to the insane department of the almshouse, where she then was, the children having been taken to board by a woman in the neighborhood of their house. He had been unable, as he had said, to hear anything about them, and feared they were ill, especially his darling Rosita. “Lady, dear lady, could you, would you see about them for me?” “Certainly,” said I; “if it is possible, I will go at once; but I must first know where they are.” “You will?” he said, “You really will?” with an expression of wondering delight; and then, as though the very thought brought peace, remained perfectly still, apparently musing upon the idea. “But,” said I, “you do not tell me where to find them.” “No --, ---- Street.” I started, and shook my head. “That is impossible; I could not go there.” “Impossible!” he said, his voice amounting almost to a shriek. “Don’t say it! Go, dearest lady, go! Nothing could hurt you; God will protect you; oh! go. I would kneel to you if I could rise.” “I do not want you to kneel to me; I would go at once, but it would not be right.” “Not right! not right!” he said, with utter despair in his tone. “Oh! then what on earth can be right?” and covering his head in the bed-clothes, he groaned as though from the depths of his soul. As this is no autobiography, it matters little by what train, either of reasoning or of cars, I reached the spot where I stood, an hour later; nor, for the same reason, shall I be more particular in my description of what followed, than is necessary for my narrative. Suffice it to say, a certain account of “St. Margaret’s court,” in the matchless poem of Aurora Leigh, was before me, stereoscoped into life, never again to be mere word-painting.