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I asked him if she knew she was going to die. He said he did not think she did; that he did not tell her, and she talked about nothing except her Christmas-tree and the people she wanted to see. He heard her praying in the night, “and, by the way,” he said, “she mentioned you. She shortly became rather delirious, and wandered a good deal, talking of things that must have happened when she was young; spoke of going to see her mother somewhere. The last thing she ever said was something about fashion, which,” he said, “showed how ingrained is vanity in the female mind.” The doctor knows something of human nature. He concluded what he had to say with, “She was in some respects a very remarkable woman–if she had not been an old maid. I do not suppose that she ever drew a well breath in her life. Not that I think old maids cannot be very acceptable women,” he apologized. “They are sometimes very useful.” The doctor was a rather enlightened man.

Some of her relatives got there in time for the funeral, and a good many of the poor people came; and she was carried in a little old spring wagon, drawn by Fashion, through the snow, to the old home place, where Scroggs very kindly let them dig the grave, and was buried there in the old graveyard in the garden, in a vacant space just beside her mother, with the children around her. I really miss her a great deal. The other boys say they do the same. I suppose it is the trouble she used to give us.

The old set are all doing well. Doug is a professor. He says the word “spinster” gave him a twist to philology. Old Blinky is in Paris. He had a picture in the salon last year, an autumn landscape, called “Le Cote du Bois”. I believe the translation of that is “The Woodside”. His coloring is said to be nature itself. To think of old Blinky being a great artist! Little Kitty is now a big girl, and is doing finely at school. I have told her she must not be an old maid. Joe is a preacher with a church in the purlieus of a large city. I was there not long ago. He had a choral service. The Gregorian music carried me back to old times. He preached on the text, “I was sick, and ye visited me.” It was such a fine sermon, and he had such a large congregation, that I asked why he did not go to a finer church. He said he was “carrying soup to Mrs. Ronquist.” By the way, his organist was a splendid musician. She introduced herself to me. It was Scroggs’s daughter. She is married, and can walk as well as I can. She had a little girl with her that I think she called “Fanny”. I do not think that was Mrs. Scroggs’s name. Frank is now a doctor, or rather a surgeon, in the same city with Joe, and becoming very distinguished. The other day he performed a great operation, saving a woman’s life, which was in all the papers. He said to an interviewer that he became a surgeon from dressing a sore on an old mare’s back. I wonder what he was talking about? He is about to start a woman’s hospital for poor women. Cousin Fanny would have been glad of that; she was always proud of Frank. She would as likely as not have quoted that verse from Tennyson’s song about the echoes. She sleeps now under the myrtle at Scroggs’s. I have often thought of what that doctor said about her: that she would have been a very remarkable woman, if she had not been an old maid–I mean, a spinster.