But all these schemes and hopes were forgotten in the illness of my father. Contrary to my wishes, he had overworked himself in the French translation, while his life, for months of my enforced inactivity, had been one long service, impossible for me to avoid or refuse without giving him pain. This double exertion proved too great a strain. The day after he sent the manuscript to Paris, as he sat conning the sheets of the concluding chapter of my history, he laid them down without a word, and, leaning forward, quietly rested his head upon the table. I was by his side and had him on the sofa in an instant, where he lay unconscious till the doctor came. We were told that it was a slight stroke, and by the next day he seemed quite well. But slowly he lost the use of one side, and within a week was helpless. I like to remember that I was well enough to tend him as he had tended me. He lingered for a month, sweet and gentle as always; then, one evening, as I sat beside him, he opened his eyes and said, “Good-night, Don. Good-night, Maizie.” And with those words his loving soul went back to its Creator. I found about his neck a ribbon to which was attached a locket containing the long tress you cut off for him that day in the Bois, one of my mother’s curls, and a little tow-colored lock which I suppose was my own hair before it darkened,—a locket I have since worn unchanged, because, sadly discordant though such association has become, I cannot bring myself to separate what he tied together. It seems to symbolize his love for all of us. The kindness of my friends I can never forget. I was so broken down as really to be unfit for thought, and their generous foresight did everything possible to spare me trouble or pain. Especially to Professor and Frau Jastrow do I owe an unpayable debt, for they made me feel that there was still some one in whose love I stood first; and had I been the child who had never come to them, I question if they could have done more for me than they did. One thing that I had to do myself was to notify my mother of my father’s death. From the time she had quitted us my father and I had avoided mention of her; but during his illness he asked me to write in case of his death, and gave me her New York address, from which I inferred that in some way he had kept himself informed concerning her, though I feel very certain that she had never written him. That I had never tried to learn anything myself was due to the estrangement, but still more to my interest in my studies and work. Now I wrote her, as I had promised, telling her briefly the circumstances of my father’s illness and death, and offering to write fuller details if she wished to know them. I would not feign love for her, but I wrote tenderly of him and without coldness to her. She never replied.