'Tenderness, that quality of the heart which gives such a charm to every female virtue, was hers in an eminent degree. It diffused itself over every action of her life. Sometimes blended with a delicate and happy humor, characteristic of her nature, it would delight the social circle; again, with the most assiduous offices of affection, it would show itself at the sick couch of a parent, a relative, or a friend. In this manner the writer of this brief memorial witnessed those soothing acts of kindness which, under peculiar circumstances, will ever be dear to his memory. Alas! little did she then dream that in one short year she herself would fall a sacrifice to the same disease under which the friend to whom she so kindly ministered, sunk to the grave.' This testimony to departed worth bears the impress of deep sincerity, and its freedom from the fulsome praise, which so often varnishes the dead, seems to add to its force. Peter Irving, also, pays a tribute to her character in the following utterance, in a letter to his bereaved brother: 'May her gentle spirit have found that heaven to which it ever seemed to appertain. She was too spotless for this contaminated world.' The biographer states that 'Mr. Irving never alluded to this event, nor did any of his relatives ever venture in his presence to introduce the name of Matilda,' 'I have heard,' he adds, 'of but one instance in which it was ever obtruded upon him, and that was by her father, nearly thirty years after her death, and at his own house. A granddaughter had been requested to play for him some favorite piece on the piano, and in extricating her music from the drawer, she accidentally brought forth a piece of embroidery with it. 'Washington,' said Mr. Hoffman, picking up the faded relic, 'this is a piece of poor Matilda's workmanship.' The effect was electric. He had been conversing in the sprightliest mood before, but he sunk at once into utter silence, and in a few moments got up and left the house. It is evidence with what romantic tenderness Irving cherished the memory of this early love, that he kept by him through life the Bible and Prayer-Book of Matilda. He lay with them under his pillow in the first days of keen and vivid anguish that followed her loss, and they were ever afterward, in all changes of climate and country, his inseparable companions.'