My Father as I Recall Him

"I look back," he wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion, for whom my love and attachment will never diminish, and by whose side, if it please God to leave me in possession of sense to signify my wishes, my bones whenever or wherever I die, will one day be laid."

She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, and her grave bears the following inscription, written by my father:

"Young, beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at the early age of seventeen."

A year after her death, in writing to my mother from Yorkshire, he says: "Is it not extraordinary that