I wish I could show her life with all its constituent factors of ancestry, home, and surroundings; for they were so inherent in her thoughts and feelings that you could hardly separate her from them in your consideration.  But that is impossible.  Disinterested benevolence was the native air of the house into which she was born, and she was an embodiment of that idea.  To devote herself to some poor outcast, to reform a distorted soul, to give all she had to the most abject, to do all she could for the despised and rejected,—­this was her craving and absorbing desire.  I remember some comical instances of the pursuance of this self-abnegation, where the returns were, to say the least, disappointing; but she was never discouraged.  It would be easy to name many who received a lifelong stimulus and aid at her hands, either intellectual or moral.  She had much to do with the development of some remarkable careers, as well as with the regeneration of many poor and abandoned souls.

She was in the lives of her dear ones, and they in hers, to a very unusual degree; and her life-threads are twined inextricably in theirs forever.  She was a complete woman,—­brain, will, affections, all, to the greatest extent, active and unselfish; her character was a harmony of many strong and diverse elements; her conscience was a great rock upon which her whole nature rested; her hands were deft and cunning; her ingenious brain was like a master mechanic at expedients; and in executive and administrative power, as well as in device and comprehension, she was a marvel.  If she had faults, they are indistinguishable in the brightness and solidity of her whole character.  She was ready to move into her place in any sphere, and adjust herself to any work God should give her to do.  She must be happy, and shedding happiness, wherever she is; for that is an inseparable quality and function of her identity.

She passed calmly out of this life, and lay at rest in her own home, in that dear room so full of memories of her presence, with flowers to deck her bed, and many of her dearest friends around her; while the verses which her beloved sister Caroline had selected seemed easily to speak with Jane’s own voice, as they read:—­

  Prepare the house, kind friends; drape it and deck it
    With leaves and blossoms fair: 
  Throw open doors and windows, and call hither
    The sunshine and soft air.

  Let all the house, from floor to ceiling, look
    Its noblest and its best;
  For it may chance that soon may come to me
    A most imperial guest.

  A prouder visitor than ever yet
    Has crossed my threshold o’er,
  One wearing royal sceptre and a crown
    Shall enter at my door;

  Shall deign, perchance, sit at my board an hour,
    And break with me my bread;
  Suffer, perchance, this night my honored roof
   Shelter his kingly head.

  And if, ere comes the sun again, he bid me
    Arise without delay,
  And follow him a journey to his kingdom
    Unknown and far away;