Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/85

Rh it shows US both the humility and the sound judgment of this young lady, that she early came to the conclusion, that while she had poetic feeling and fine taste, she had not in a high degree the gift of poetic expression.

It is pleasant to think that the last two years of this sweet life were passed amid scenery that she loved, and that her healthy until a few months before her lamented deaths was perfect. She made many sketching excursions^ and returned exhilarated from the long walks to many beautiful scenes, which hep skilful and ready pencil had transferred to her sketch-book. The commencement of her illness is given by herself:—

"One very hot evening in July I took a book and walked about two miles from home, where I seated myself on a stone beside the lake. Being much engaged by a poem I was reading, I did not perceive that the sun was gone down, and was succeeded by a very heavy dew, till in a moment I felt struck on the chest as if with a sharp knife. I returned home, but said nothing of the pain. The next day being also very hot, and every one busy in the hayfield, I thought I would take a rake and work very hard to produce perspiration, in the hope that it might remove the pain, but it did not."

Prom that time a bad cough and frequent loss of voice alarmed her family. In the autumn, as she became worse, she was removed to a milder climate, and reached the house of a friend at Gloucester,