immediately to Washington, where his wife and family were still staying with us. He found my mother slowly recovering from a very severe illness, considered by our friend and physician, Dr. Hall, as a ‘breaking up of her constitution,’ and which was regarded by my brothers, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin (who repaired from their homes in Virginia to their mother’s bedside), as seriously alarming. She, however, recovered to a certain point, but never perfectly. Mr. Coolidge and my sister with their children returned to Boston, whilst my mother was to follow them as soon as she was able to travel. Accordingly, when her strength became sufficiently restored, she made the journey, going from Washington to Baltimore by steamer down the Potomac and up the Chesapeake Bay, she not having strength for the stagecoach ride of forty miles, then the only direct public conveyance between the two cities. My sister Mary accompanied her, and she reached Boston safely. Mr. Trist returned from Havana in August after my mother’s departure. He had then decided, most reluctantly yielding to the advice of his physician, to prolong his residence in Havana: his continuance in that climate for several years being judged essential to his recovery from an affection of the throat, of which there were at that period a number of fatal cases. That winter, instead of accompanying my husband on his return to Havana, as I should have wished, I had to take up my abode in Philadelphia to be near our little mute son, Thomas Jefferson, whom I entered—the youngest pupil there—as a boarder at the institution for deaf-mutes. This last winter of her life my mother passed in Boston with but two of her children near her: Mrs. Coolidge and Mary—the others scattered far away from her, fortunately for their peace of mind unconscious how soon the last parting was to come. My own departure for Havana the following autumn was decided on, but dreaded by all—still nearer was that other parting scene at which we were to meet no more on earth.