could speak in the voices of different people; and, as her strong memory enabled her to repeat their language, I would sometimes seem to hear from the next room the conversation of friends or acquaintances on some amusing subject. If she elicited laughter from me, she was fully repaid. Her watchfulness over my health was incessant. By regarding my countenance, she sometimes discerned symptoms of indisposition before I suspected it myself, and was assiduous in applying some judicious domestic remedy. Thus was I favored with this heart-service for a period of twenty-five years—as long as age and disease permitted her to make any effort. The sharp and short ministry of a cancer dismissed her from earth. Her image is still vivid before me, and I cherish it with tenderness. Her color was no obstacle to my grateful attachment. She was to me as my own flesh and blood.
Her life helped to establish my favorite theory of cultivating the friendship of household assistants; her example illustrated how labor may be lightened by love, and how the heart enlarges through the exercise of its affections.
The services of these three remarkable personages covered half a century—a longer period than that after my marriage; the two last-named having been dwellers under my roof at the same time during seventeen years. I have sometimes thought that their agency might be compared to that of the hands, the intellect,
