“Under present circumstances I do not think I could write a leader. I do not know of anything until it is a week or ten days’ old, and my only connection with the living world is the _Tribune_. I thank you with all my heart for your kind offer about going to New York, but it would be useless. Greeley’s introduction to Bonner would not do any good. If I could attract notice, kick up a small tempest, I should feel sure of an invitation from Mr. Bonner. But without some notoriety that _has_ created comment, the angel Gabriel could not get into the _Ledger_. Without intellectual contact, out of the world, I have grown rusty. A great care, an increasing anxiety, and most painful sympathy for the suffering, have narrowed my thoughts.... If I could get a little good luck--something to feel pleased about--I think I could wake up to anything.... I could not earn a dollar _here_ to save my life. Greeley would say, “Yes, you could: there is the needle; that is useful and wanted, though not half paid.” Mr. Greeley does not know that even the resource of the “poor shirtmaker” is denied me. I have lost the use of my thimble finger from one of those awful things, a felon; and it is misshapen, bent, and stiffened. I assure you, I have had a _womanly_ experience.... You see, I am ‘off the track.’” After 1860 she ceased trying to secure either fame or money by her literary talents; and thereafter, for almost thirty years, she continued to be the nurse and companion of the remaining invalids of the family, thinking, as she always had done, more of their comfort than she did of the loss of fortune and fame. If she had devoted all her energies to the development of her talent as a novelist, she might have earned a livelihood, and been a continued success,--enough so, at least, to find a place in some of the many volumes of American biography. But she had the conviction that one has no moral right to live for one’s self alone; and so she gave her all, and spent her life, in the service of those who needed her help. And though often despondent, and almost despairing, she never lost faith in God, nor in his fatherly care over the most afflicted of his children. I first knew Miss Curtis in about 1844, when she and Miss Farley lived in what was then Dracut, in a little house embowered in roses, which they had named “Shady Nook.” The house was a sort of literary centre to those who had become interested in _The Lowell Offering_ and its writers; and there were many who came from places both near and far to call on the editors, and meet the “girls” who by their pens had made themselves quite noted.