“Well, no matter!  One day before I left it there was talk how Love had always Interest annexed to it.  ‘Nay, then,’ said I, ’what is my love for Salusbury?’ ‘Oh!’ replied Shephard, ’there is Interest there.  Mrs. Piozzi cannot, could not, I am sure, exist without some one upon whom to energize her affections; his Uncle is gone, and she is much obliged to young Salusbury for being ready at her hand to pet and spoil; her children will not suffer her to love them, and’—­with a coarse laugh—­’what will she do when this fellow throws her off, as he soon will?’ Shephard was right enough.  I sunk into a stupor, worse far than all the torments I had endured:  but when Canadian Indians take a prisoner, dear Mr. Conway knows what agonies they put them to; the man bears all without complaining,—­smokes, dances, triumphs in his anguish,—­

  ‘For the son of Alcnoomak shall never complain.’

“When a little remission comes, however, then comes the torpor too;—­he cannot then be waked by pain or moderate pleasure:  and such was my case, when your talents roused, your offered friendship opened my heart to enjoyment Oh! never say hereafter that the obligations are on your side.  Without you, dulness, darkness, stagnation of every faculty would have enveloped and extinguished all the powers of hapless

“H.L.P.”

The picture that Mrs. Piozzi paints of herself in these last words is a sad one.  She herself was unconscious, however, of its real sadness.  In its unintentional revelations it shows us the feebleness without the dignity of old age, vivacity without freshness of intellect, the pretence without the reality of sentiment.  “Hapless H.L.P.”—­to have lived to eighty years, and to close the record of so long a life with such words!

A little more than a year after this “Abridgment” was written, in May, 1821, Mrs. Piozzi died.  Her children, from whom she had lived separated, were around her death-bed.[C]

[Footnote C:  It is but four years ago that the Viscountess Keith, Mrs. Piozzi’s eldest daughter, died.  She was ninety-five years old.  Her long life connected our generation with that of Johnson and Burke.  She was the last survivor of the Streatham “set,”—­for, as “Queeney,” she had held a not unimportant place in it.  She was at Johnson’s death-bed.  At their last interview he said,—­“My dear child, we part forever in this world; let us part as Christian friends should; let us pray together.”

It was in 1808 that Miss Thrale married Lord Keith, a distinguished naval officer.

In The Gentleman’s Magazine, for May, 1657, is an interesting notice of Lady Keith.  “During many years,” it is there said, “Viscountess Keith held a distinguished position in the highest circles of the fashionable world in London; but during the latter portion of her life.... her time was almost entirely devoted to works of charity and to the performance of religious duties.  No one ever did more for the good of others, and few ever did so much in so unostentatious a manner.”]