forward to a time when even she might recover tranquillity.  God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders may have construed into indifference,—­a tranquillity not of despair.  Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that most supported me?  I allow much to other favorable circumstances.  I felt that I had something else to do than to regret.  On that first evening my aunt was lying insensible, to all appearance like one dying; my father with his poor forehead plastered over, from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother a dead and murdered corpse in the next room,—­yet was I wonderfully supported, I dosed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair, I have lost no sleep since, I had been long used not to rest in things of sense,—­had endeavored after a comprehension of mind unsatisfied with the “ignorant present time;” and this kept me up.  I had the whole weight of the family thrown on me; for my brother, [1] little disposed (I speak not without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such duties; and I was now left alone.

One little incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind, Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue which we had had salted for some weeks in the house.  As I sat down, a feeling like remorse struck me:  this tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake of it now, when she is far away?  A thought occurred and relieved me; if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs; I must rise above such weaknesses.  I hope this was not want of true feeling.  I did not let this carry me, though, too far.  On the very second day (I date from the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in our room; they prevailed on me to eat with them (for to eat I never refused).  They were all making merry in the room!  Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and some from interest.  I was going to partake with them, when my recollection came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room,—­the very next room; a mother who through life wished nothing but her children’s welfare.  Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind.  In an agony of emotion I found my, way mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.  Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered me; and I think it did me good.