Soon after his friend’s death, Mr. Harness commenced the task of looking through her letters, but he found the work much more arduous than he had anticipated. Although her habits were in every respect frugal, her favorite economy seemed to be in paper. Her letters were scribbled on innumerable small scraps--sometimes on printed circulars--sometimes across engravings--and half a dozen of these would form one epistle and in course of time become confused and interchanged in their envelopes. When we add to this that toward the end of her life Miss Mitford’s handwriting became almost microscopic, it can be easily understood that the arrangement of these sibylline leaves was no short or easy undertaking. REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Handwriting.] There are intelligent persons who make a living out of their fellow-creatures by pretending to read character in hand-writing. What would they make, I wonder, out of this delicate, microscopic writing, looking as if it were done with a stylus, and without blot or flaw? The paper is all odds and ends, and not a scrap of it but is covered and crossed; the very flaps of the envelopes, and even the outside of them, having their message. The reason of this is that the writer had lived in a time when postage was very dear; like Southey, she used to boast that she could send more for her money by post than any one else; and when the necessity no longer existed, the custom remained. How, at her age, her eyes could read what she herself had written used to puzzle me. JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1884. * * * * * [Sidenote: Her dog “Moss Trooper.”] He was the greatest darling that ever lived.... He was a large black dog, of the largest and strongest kind of greyhounds; very fast and honest and resolute past example; an excellent killer of hares, and a most magnificent and noble-looking creature. His coat was of the finest and most glossy black, with no white, except a very little under his feet (pretty white shoelings, I used to call them)--little beautiful white spot, quite small, in the very middle of his neck, between his chin and his breast--and a white mark on his bosom. His face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and yet sweet, and fond and tender--eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful, complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long, white teeth at the side; a jet-black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible ... and gave great sweetness of expression, and a look of thought to his dear face. There never was such a dog! His temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw him out of humor. And his sagacity was equal to his temper. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: Quoted in her ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange. * * * * * [Sidenote: Her dog “May Flower.”]