Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/220

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

152

him, not to fatigue himself by too great exertion. He replied, "I like to talk to him, Mama, because I think the continuation of my voice makes him continue to look at me;—and I find this to be one of the times, when Frederic has his best looks."

On the evening before he died, both his brothers were brought to him. After talking a little while very cheerfully, he expressed a wish that Benjamin might be kept to drink tea in the room with him. At the same time he added, "You had better, Benjamin, go and amuse yourself till teatime with the box of letters, and spell sentences as we used to do together." While his mother was standing at the foot of the bed, with Frederic in her arms, he looked at him with the utmost complacency, without taking off his eye from him for a considerable time. Not a word was uttered. It seemed, however, as if he thought by his mother's manner, that she expected him to address his brother in his customary tone of affection. After two or three efforts to gra-