It is now twenty years since Mrs. Carnegie entered and changed my life, a few months after the passing of my mother and only brother left me alone in the world.  My life has been made so happy by her that I cannot imagine myself living without her guardianship.  I thought I knew her when she stood Ferdinand’s test,[41] but it was only the surface of her qualities I had seen and felt.  Of their purity, holiness, wisdom, I had not sounded the depth.  In every emergency of our active, changing, and in later years somewhat public life, in all her relations with others, including my family and her own, she has proved the diplomat and peace-maker.  Peace and good-will attend her footsteps wherever her blessed influence extends.  In the rare instances demanding heroic action it is she who first realizes this and plays the part.

[Footnote 41:  The reference is to the quotation from The Tempest on page 214.]

The Peace-Maker has never had a quarrel in all her life, not even with a schoolmate, and there does not live a soul upon the earth who has met her who has the slightest cause to complain of neglect.  Not that she does not welcome the best and gently avoid the undesirable—­none is more fastidious than she—­but neither rank, wealth, nor social position affects her one iota.  She is incapable of acting or speaking rudely; all is in perfect good taste.  Still, she never lowers the standard.  Her intimates are only of the best.  She is always thinking how she can do good to those around her—­planning for this one and that in case of need and making such judicious arrangements or presents as surprise those cooeperating with her.

I cannot imagine myself going through these twenty years without her.  Nor can I endure the thought of living after her.  In the course of nature I have not that to meet; but then the thought of what will be cast upon her, a woman left alone with so much requiring attention and needing a man to decide, gives me intense pain and I sometimes wish I had this to endure for her.  But then she will have our blessed daughter in her life and perhaps that will keep her patient.  Besides, Margaret needs her more than she does her father.

[Illustration:  MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE]

[Illustration:  MARGARET CARNEGIE AT FIFTEEN]

Why, oh, why, are we compelled to leave the heaven we have found on earth and go we know not where!  For I can say with Jessica: 

            “It is very meet
    The Lord Bassanio live an upright life;
    For, having such a blessing in his lady,
    He finds the joys of heaven here on earth.”

CHAPTER XVI

MILLS AND THE MEN