I remember once when I was seriously ill, and my father was taken ill at the same time, how she would spend her whole time equally between the two sickrooms, yet never allow either to feel the slightest want. Most devoted and skilful of sick nurses, her gentle cheerfulness, her little touches of humour, especially when there is any noxious physic to be swallowed, and her undemonstrative sympathy, make her presence by the invalid couch a sweet restorative in itself. How many weary hours of illness has she solaced for me, from childhood to manhood! One says confidently to the woman one loves that life without her would be empty and unbearable; and it is a beautiful dispensation that the emotion of love can make one feel this. But let the man who has known a mother’s devotion through life, imagine what it would mean to be rett of that. _I_ dare not, and why should I? My mother is as young a woman for her seventy-five years as you would wish to meet, and as her grandchildren come, she seems to grow younger for her joy of them. For she loves children, and understands them, and she knows how to win their love and make them happy. I do not believe there was ever so scientifically sympathetic a tender of babies as my mother. She seems to divine their dumb eloquence, and know exactly what they feel and want to express. My mother is brimming over with humanity, and her indignation is easily aroused by anything approaching to injustice. She cannot sit quietly in a theatre during the performance of a play wherein children are ill-treated, but must loudly give vent to her indignation. If she sees two boys fighting in the street, she will promptly push her way through the encouraging crowd, and threaten to “call a policeman” if they do not desist; and if she comes across a woman who is chastising a naughty child, or a man who is correcting an obstreperous animal, she will not hesitate to stop and “give it to them well,” as she calls the delivering of a reprimand. She is actively compassionate towards all suffering, sympathetic with all sorrow, and pityingly tolerant of any error arising from that ignorance which is the heritage of poverty or the disadvantages of birth. But, on the other hand, she is aggressively intolerant of all cant and its consequences; she is a sworn foe to humbug in any shape or form, and candour is personified in her attitude towards all men and all women.