Her conversation that afternoon, full of anecdote, ran on in a perpetual flow of good-humor, and I was shocked, on looking at my watch, to find I had stayed so long, and had barely time to reach the railway-station in season to arrive at Oxford that night.  We parted with the mutual determination and understanding to keep our friendship warm by correspondence, and I promised never to come to England again without finding my way to Three-Mile Cross.

During the conversation that day, Miss Mitford had many inquiries to make concerning her American friends, Miss Catherine Sedgwick, Daniel Webster, and Dr. Chancing.  Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver bells; and when she told a comic story, hitting off some one of her acquaintances, she joined in with the laugh at the end with great heartiness and naivete.  When listening to anything that interested her, she had a way of coming into the narrative with “Dear me, dear me, dear me,” three times repeated, which it was very pleasant to hear.

From that summer day our friendship continued, and during other visits to England I saw her frequently, driving about the country with her in her pony-chaise, and spending many happy hours in the new cottage which she afterwards occupied at Swallowfield.  Her health had broken down years before, from too constant attendance on her invalid parents, and she was never certain of a well day.  When her father died, in 1842, shamefully in debt (for he had squandered two fortunes not exactly his own, and was always one of the most improvident of men, belonging to that class of impecunious individuals who seem to have been born insolvent), she said, “Everybody shall be paid, if I sell the gown off my back or pledge my little pension.”  And putting her shoulder to the domestic wheel, she never nagged for an instant, or gave way to despondency.

She was always cheerful, and her talk is delightful to remember.  From girlhood she had known and had been intimate with most of the prominent writers of her time, and her observations and reminiscences were so shrewd and pertinent that I have scarcely known her equal.

Carlyle tells us “nothing so lifts a man from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration”; and Miss Mitford admired to such an extent that she must have been lifted in this way nearly all her lifetime.  Indeed she erred, if she erred at all, on this side, and overpraised and over-admired everything and everybody whom she regarded.  When she spoke of Beranger or Dumas or Hazlitt or Holmes, she exhausted every term of worship and panegyric.  Louis Napoleon was one of her most potent crazes, and I fully believe, if she had been alive during the days of his downfall, she would have died of grief.  When she talked of Munden and Bannister and Fawcett and Emery, those delightful old actors for whom she had had such an exquisite relish, she said they had made comedy to