Page:Poems Shore.djvu/36

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Memoir

clear good sense, and to her pleasant talk when quite at her ease, to her pithy observations and sudden quiet strokes of wit or quaint humour. When once conversing in Paris with an eminent traveller, who spoke of the advantage of knowing many races and their languages, she rejoined, "Yes, you cannot make life longer, but you can make it wider;" a remark which confirmed what was often expressed by her friends that "she always contrived in a quiet way to throw light on a subject." In spite of her self-effacing modesty she had yet an influence not perhaps fully realised at the time by others, and which certainly would have surprised no one more than herself. She was placidly incredulous when sisterly fondness tried, by reports of praise, to awaken a little innocent vanity.

She had of course her share in the rather numerous acquaintance gathered by the family in the course of years, and amongst them were friendships, the dearest of which formed the great charm and solicitude of her life. Besides these loving enthusiasms, she had sympathies always alive, and her feeling for others in little and great matters, was almost too sensitively vigi-

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