Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/206

 1 98 INTROD UCTION

" but in her a great conscience does all the best work of the intellect. She never left a duty undone."

That is much to say, but I have heard no saying that seems to me more absolutely true. It has been declared that no woman ever understands a man's nice sense of honor. Yet I would have taken Belinda Randall's deci- sion, on the nicest point of honor ever mooted, against the counter-decision of any man I have ever met. John's veneration for his sister's " moral sentiment " knew no limit, nor mine either. But there was nothing hard, cen- sorious, or uncharitable in her ; the quick flash of her conscience was accompanied by so sweet and gracious a glow of ever-present womanliness that every one who came to know her, gentle and shrinking and self-distrustful as she was, was charmed into an affection which had in it no particle of fear. All her life she lived for others. At the age of sixteen, she seriously impaired her health in nurs- ing her sister Maria, who died in 1 842, and still more in nursing her father, who died in the following year; a slight curvature of the spine was the result of her over- exertions. In devoted and unrelaxing attention to those who remained, she spent her whole energies, uncomplain- ing, untiring, loving, beautiful to behold, until she had seen her only brother and last survivor of her family, save herself alone, borne to Mt. Auburn. Then, with a fortune of nearly half a million of her own, and with another twice as large left to her by him, she devoted herself unweariedly to making arrangements for the final disposition of a vast wealth which to her was valueless. By a true instinct, she selected for her legal adviser the one man in Boston best fitted by nature and by education to help her without embarrassing her, the late Francis Vergnies Balch of Jamaica Plain. With glowing gratitude she expressed to

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