“It is a long time since I received your dearest, kindest of letters, and if I did not answer it sooner, it was not from want of gratitude, but attendance on my poor dear mother and assistance to our landlady occupies me at every minute that I can spare from giving music lessons to some private families, and an evening class. I am very thankful to be able to earn something, so as to take off something of the burthen on my dear brother’s shoulders. For, alas! the care and support of my mother and me weigh very heavily upon him. The proprietor of the Lacustrian has parted with his other clerk, and my brother has the entire business of not only writing, extracting for, and editing the paper, but of correcting the press, and he dares not remonstrate or demand better payment, as we live from week to week, and he could not afford to be dismissed. He is at the office all day, beginning at six in the morning to meet the central intelligence, he only rushes home for his meals, and goes back to work till twelve or one o’clock at night. Even then he cannot sleep. I hear him tossing about with the pain in his back that sitting at his desk brings on, and his hands are so tired by writing, and with the heat, which has been dreadful for the last few weeks, and has taken away all the appetite he ever had. You would be shocked to see him, he is so thin and altered; I cannot think how he is to continue this, but he will not hear of my writing to Lady Travis Underwood. He is never angry, except when I try to persuade him, and you never saw anything like his patience and gentleness to my poor mother. She never did either, she cannot understand it at all. At first she thought he wanted to coax the confession out of her, and when she found that it made no difference, she could not recover from her wonder--he, whom she had deserted in his babyhood, and so cruelly injured in his manhood, to devote himself to toiling for her sake, and never to speak harshly to her for one moment. She knew I loved her, and she had always been good to me, except when O’Leary forced her to be otherwise, but his behaviour has done more to touch her heart than anything, and I am sure she is, as Pere Duchamps says, a sincere penitent. She is revived by the summer heat, and can sit under the stoop and enjoy the sweet air of the lake; but she is very weak, and coughs dreadfully in the morning, just when it is cooler, and my brother might get some sleep. She tries to be good and patient with us both, and it really does soothe her when my brother can sit by her, and talk in his cheerful droll way; but he can stay but a very short time. He has to rush back to his horrid stuffy office, and then she frets after him and says, ‘But what right have I to such a son?’ and she begins to cry and cough.” “Ah!” said Clement, as Geraldine, unable to speak for tears, gave him the letter. “This is a furnace of real heroism.”