and I did not fully appreciate her nobler qualities for some months afterward.  Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse.  Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism,—­or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social habits.  She was naturally inclined to luxury and a good appearance before the world.  My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare.  She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both which I rejected and contemned, even in the most homoeopathic dilutions:  while, my general health being sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits the causes of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before.  She told me quite frankly that she ’declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take;’ which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits.  So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us.

“Her earlier contributions to the Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do.  She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue.  While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation.  She could write only when in the vein; and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance.  The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread.  That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day, or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd.  He would as soon think of waiting