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1 then an infant in arms.
She loved to hold and watch the child, brooding over him with grave tenderness: it was a beautiful and gracious picture of Past and Future.
Maud had just written a book on Sicily, and, as always, our mother read and corrected the galley-proofs.
She did this with exquisite care and thoughtfulness, never making her suggestions on the proof itself, but on a separate sheet of paper, with the number of the galley, the phrase, and her suggested emendations.
This was her invariable custom: the writer must be perfectly free to retain her own phrase, if she preferred it.
Walking tired her that summer, but she was very faithful about it.
“Zacko,” she would command John Elliott, “take me for a walk.”
The day before she took to her bed, he remembers that she clung to him more than usual and said,--
“It tires me very much.”
(This after walking twice round the piazza.)
“Once more” he encouraged.
“No-I have walked all I can to-day.”
“Let me take you back to your room this way,” he said, leading her back by the piazza.
“That makes five times each way!”
She laughed and was pleased to have done this, but he thinks she had a great sense of weakness too.
Her favorite piece on the “Victor” that summer was “The Artillerist's oath.”
The music had a gallant ring to it, and there was something heroic about the
1 [408] of Caroline Minturn (Hall) and the Reverend Hugh Birckhead.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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