was wisely ordered, and was the easiest solution of many problems.

Her gravestone recorded her humility and benevolence, and added, —

"Let candor throw a veil over her frailties, for great was her charity to others."

After her death, her family, which had been so beloved and so distinguished, seemed to melt away. The survivors lost all courage; and, after the death of her mother in 1795, her childless sisters were assisted by the parish, to which William Stanley had so unwisely left his whole property.

The young brother for whom Eliza had watched and prayed so anxiously was known in his later years as an antiquarian, the habitué of the Hartford Athenæum.

Her death sobered his gay spirits; and it was not until the year 1800 that he married. His wife, a woman of the first social standing, died in April, 1801, in giving birth to his only child.

And here we take our first step into the still unpublished "Romance of the Association."

The brother of Eliza Wharton seemed only the sadder for the brief sunshine which had streamed over his hearth.

At the time of his young wife's death, a dear friend of his dead sister, living not far away, had lost her first baby. She had been a Hinsdale, cousin to Emma Willard of Troy, to Aurora

Phelps, to Elihu and Elijah Burritt, and many more distinguished for intellect and power.

To her this only scion of the Wharton family was carried; and in this happy home, in the simplicity of her farm life, he grew up until it was necessary to send him to school. His foster-mother had nine children, and his favorite companion was Harriet, the little girl nearest his own age.

When he went back to Hartford, he was old enough to worship the beautiful picture over his father's mantel.

"It is your aunt Elizabeth, who died before you were born," was the answer to all his curious questions. As he grew older, he saw and felt the shadow hanging over his father. When he entered college, the strange old Stanley silver, carved into rare figures with a chisel, was pledged to a family connexion to carry him through.

During all these years, he had kept up a tender intimacy with his foster-sister, who on her side thought him "graceful and charming as Pericles," but kept, nevertheless, to her own anxious way in life. It will be seen that hers was no common career. Her father, prostrated by asthma, passed the last thirty years of his life propped into an armchair. He was wholly unable to support his family. It was Harriet's brave hands that lifted the mortgage from his farm, built the new house, and filled it with every comfort for the sick brothers, who, one

after another, dropped wearily out of life as they drew near to manhood. It was she who educated her younger sister, and finally gave her in marriage to the Hon. Pinckney Hill of Georgia, who emigrated to Texas, where his two sons are now distinguished lawyers.

It was Harriet who opened the well-known Academy at Selma, after a perilous journey through the country of the Creeks. Here she married, and her husband, associating himself with Mr. Hill in the practice of the law, removed with her to Texas.

Twice shipwrecked, with an infant only five months old in her arms, this heroic woman, rescued by a British brig, was thrown upon the island of Galveston. It was in keeping with her whole story that it should be just a week after a tornado had laid every roof in the town flat. Here she was tenderly nursed by some of La Fitte's pirates, who had been pardoned by our government for services rendered to General Jackson at New Orleans.

All the books, stationery, and provisions the emigrants had provided for a two years' stay, were thrown overboard at the time of the wreck. A little money in a belt about his waist Harriet's husband had saved; and so at last they made their way to Bastrop, where they lived six happy prosperous months before the Comanches broke in upon their peace.

Young friends came out from Connecticut to join them; and one night, when her husband was away at court, Harriet opened her gate to admit one dying man, while the dead body of his companion lay scalped and bleeding a little farther away in the grass.

A dozen romances are wrapt in this brave woman's life, but it is not mine to relate them.

I hurry through this night, when, having rushed in the darkness to summon the guard, she is brought back to watch by the dying and the dead, her wailing child within her arms. I hurry through the three years of starvation and terror-when, all escape to the coast cut off by prowling bands, they endured until endurance was no longer possible-to the morning when her husband said,

"Harriet, death is here, and it is yonder; but, if you will risk it, I will start for the coast."

And they started, the suffering child nestled in their wraps, lying on blankets under the wagon at night, creeping slowly through the tall grass by day, until at last the lights of Galveston shone through the gathering dusk. Then the overtaxed nerves gave way, and very soon the poor young mother must be sent back to Hartford to rest.

Disappointed in these more ambitious hopes, her husband went back to Alabama, and laid the foundation of a seminary for both sexes, which for twentyfive years had no equal in the South. Here, old

friends welcomed Harriet back. The years went on her husband died of yellow-fever; five little ones were laid away among the magnolias in the graveyard; and, at the close of the war, two of Sherman's raids turned the seminary into barracks, and destroyed the noble prosperity she had been half a century in accumulating.

One daughter who had survived these horrors, and was both beautiful and accomplished, had a pleasant home in New Orleans.

Here at the close of the war, and more than sixty years old, our brave Harriet went, just in time to receive a little granddaughter and accept its mother's last sigh. Here in poverty, isolation, and sorrow, she chanced upon an old copy of "Eliza Wharton." In the preface to this edition, printed in 1855, a so-called history of Eliza's family was given, and in it she saw recorded the death of her foster-brother in a far-off city. The family was said to be extinct.

The boy who had shared her nursery had never married. When Harriet left home, he was still studying law. Soon after, the old parsonage was burned down, his father barely escaping with his life. The magnificent collection of manuscripts for which his grandfather had been famous, perished; and, when the young man shook the dust from his feet and turned away from Hartford, he carried, for his sole inheritance, an exquisite miniature upon