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T

WIDOW.

HE fathers of families are very apt to hold

up, as models of good behavior, some one set of girls whom they wish their daughters to imitate; and when I was growing up, the Miss Allens were the examples always set before me. If I wished to do anything, of which my father. disapproved, he would say, "You never heard of one of the Miss Allens doing such a thing as that." When this was said, I knew there was no hope for me, so I resigned myself to be as wise and sober as those pattern girls. They were of an ancient Welch family, and when I knew them, their parents were dead, and they lived with their bachelor brother, a man of mark in the county which he represented in Parliament, and very agreeable in private life. His house was one of our most delightful visiting places. The sisters were better educated and more highly cultivated than was common, at that time, among young ladies in South Wales, and a yearly visit to London introduced them to many distinguished peo

ple. One of them married Sir James Mackintosh, two married Wedgwoods, and one was the wife of Sismondi, the historian of Italy.

My husband and I were spending a few weeks in Geneva, in the autumn of 1838, and there I renewed my acquaintance with Mrs. Sismondi, who retained a lively interest in the friend of her youth, and paid us every kind attention. She lived in a villa, a little way out of the town, and received her friends on one evening in every week. To those receptions we always went, and had the most delightful intercourse with her and her accomplished husband, who spoke English well, and had a great respect for republican institutions. He gave us one evening a very interesting account of his flight into Switzerland, with his invalid mother, when obliged, by his liberal opinions, to quit his native land. It so enchained my attention, at the time, that I hardly remarked, among the guests, Mr. Nightingale and his two young daughters. Little did any one then present anticipate the wide-world fame that Miss Florence Nightingale would one day acquire.

We met at Madame Sismondi's the celebrated botanist, M. de Candolle, and by way of making conversation, I told him that in London people were making plants grow under glass shades, shut up tight, without additional air or water.

He listened very incredulously, and made me de scribe minutely every example of it I had seen. The subject so interested him that in a few days he set off for London to examine into the matter for himself. His absence, at that time, was a disappointment to the Duke of Devonshire, who came to Geneva expressly to talk with him about air-plants, which were then all the rage.

When the loved and respected Miss Allen of Cresselly was first engaged to marry an Italian, her friends trembled for her happiness; but could they have seen her, as I did, after twenty years of married life, they would have been convinced she was blest with a true union, and that she and her Italian husband were as much lovers then as any bride and bridegroom could be. Having no children, they were all the world to each other. The literary labors of the successful author never interfered with his domestic affections. He was full of consideration and tenderness for his wife, and had a most cordial kindness for her friends.

Recalling this visit to Geneva, reminds me of our journey from there to Turin, over Mont Cénis, and of an incident which occurred at San Michele. We arrived early in a fine October evening, and took a walk which brought us unexpectedly to a grand view of Mont Cénis, just as it was brilliantly illuminated by the setting

sun.

At first several other snowy peaks were

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equally lighted up, but by degrees all faded but that one, showing how much higher it was than the rest, yet the next day we were to cross its summit. Returning to our inn, which we had left so quiet that it hardly seemed like a public house, we found it all bustle and confusion, and I heard groans and cries from a chamber above our parlor.

On inquiry, we were told that a gentleman and lady, with a maid-servant, had arrived from Turin, and on entering the inn, the lady ran with all speed up stairs and threw herself out of a chamber-window. She broke no bones, but was much hurt and bruised, and it was her groans that I heard. I immediately sent a message to the gentleman offering my services and the use of my medicine-chest. He came to thank me in person, declined my aid, and told me the lady was only twenty-two years of age, the wife of a Brazil merchant who had died suddenly at Naples. he was Chargé d'Affaires of the Emperor of Brazil, he had been requested to escort this lady as far as Turin, where her friends were to meet him and relieve him of his very unpleasant charge; but no one came, and he should be obliged to go on with her to Geneva, which was very inconvenient and disagreeable to him. Not one word of sympathy or compassion for the distracted widow, nothing but his own disinclination to ac

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company her, was apparent in his conversation with me. He gave me his own history and his wife's, none of which did I care to hear; my in-. quiries were only for the unfortunate lady, and of her he did not care to speak. However, I did find out that she was Madame Piton, and that she had not been distracted until to-day, on their way from Turin, and then I surmised that the egotism of this unfeeling man had made him say such hard things about her friends not meeting her there, that it was more than she could bear, added to her deep affliction, and that it was his want of sympathy for her which had driven her to despair and caused her to throw herself from the window. I was disgusted with this Chevalier S. de Macédo, and begged leave to see the lady and to watch with her that night; but he would not let me do either; he thought her maid was sufficient. I sat up late that night, writing my journal, and had not all been silent and still in the poor lady's room before I retired, I should have made an attempt to see her; hoping she was at rest, I went to bed, but it was long before I could sleep for thinking of her.

The next morning we started on our journey over Mont Cénis, before I could hear anything of Madame Piton, and I never expected to hear of her again, but I did. The next spring I was in Paris, and I searched in vain for the lady with

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