No one ever felt a twinge of jealousy in Jane’s easy supremacy; she never made a fuss about it, although I think she had no mock modesty in the matter.  She accepted the situation which her uniform correctness of judgment assured to her, while she always accorded generous praise and deference to those who excelled her in departments where she made no pretence of superiority.

There were some occasions when her idea of duty differed from a conventional one, perhaps from that of some of her near friends; but no one ever doubted her strict dealing with herself, or her singleness of motive.  She did not feel the need of turning to any other conscience than her own for support or enlightenment, and was inflexible and unwavering in any course she deemed right.  She never apologized for herself in any way, or referred a matter of her own experience or sole responsibility to another for decision; neither did she seem to feel the need of expressed sympathy in any private loss or trial.  Her philosophy of life, her faith, or her temperament seemed equal to every exigency of disappointment or suffering.  She generally kept her personal trials hidden within her own heart, and recovered from every selfish pain by the elastic vigor of her power for unselfish devotion to the good of others.  She said that happiness was to have an unselfish work to do, and the power to do it.

It has been said that Jane’s only fault was that she was too good.  I think she carried her unselfishness too often to a short-sighted excess, breaking down her health, and thus abridging her opportunities for more permanent advantage to those whom she would have died to serve; but it was solely on her own responsibility, and in consequence of her accumulative energy of temperament, that made her unconscious of the strain until too late.

Her brain was constitutionally sensitive and almost abnormally active; and she more than once overtaxed it by too continuous study, or by a disregard of its laws of health, or by a stupendous multiplicity of cares, some of which it would have been wiser to leave to others.  She took everybody’s burdens to carry herself.  She was absorbed in the affairs of those she loved,—­of her home circle, of her sisters’ families, and of many a needy one whom she adopted into her solicitude.  She was thoroughly fond of children and of all that they say and do, and would work her fingers off for them, or nurse them day and night.  Her sisters’ children were as if they had been her own, and she revelled in all their wonderful manifestations and development.  Her friends’ children she always cared deeply for, and was hungry for their wise and funny remarks, or any hint of their individuality.  Many of these things she remembered longer than the mothers themselves, and took the most thorough satisfaction in recounting.

I have often visited her school, and it seemed like a home with a mother in it.  There we took sweet counsel together, as if we had come to the house of God in company; for our methods were identical, and a day in her school was a day in mine.  We invariably agreed as to the ends of the work, and how to reach them; for we understood each other perfectly in that field of art.