For my part, I think he was taken away to have a little more of that care and nursing which neither his mother nor his wife had been woman enough to give the great baby.

After all, he had not been one of the worst of babies.
Is it strange that one so used to bad company and bad ways should have so altered, in so short a time, and without any great struggle?
The assurance of death at the door, and a wholesome shame of things that are past, may, I think, lead up to such a swift change, even in a much worse man than Tom.

For there is the Life itself, all-surrounding, and ever pressing in upon the human soul, wherever that soul will afford a chink of entrance; and Tom had not yet sealed up all his doors.
When he lay there dead--for what excuse could we have for foolish lamentation, if we did not speak of the loved as _lying dead ?_--Letty had him already enshrined in her heart as the best of husbands--as her own Tom, who had never said a hard word to her--as the cleverest as well as kindest of men who had written poetry that would never die while the English language was spoken.

Nor did "The Firefly" spare its dole of homage to the memory of one of its gayest writers.

Indeed, all about its office had loved him, each after his faculty.