What she most avoided in those with whom she associated was, not so much ignorance, or even vulgarity of manner, as pure native stupidity.

But even of that, when the need arose, she was tolerant.

I never knew her in the selection of an acquaintance, or even of a friend, to be influenced to the extent of even a hair's-breadth, by station, rank, wealth, fashion, or any consideration whatever, save personal liking and sympathy, which was, in her case, perfectly compatible with the widest divergence of views and opinions on nearly any of the great subjects which most divide mankind, and even with divergence of rules of conduct.

Her own opinions were the honest results of original thinking, and her conduct the outcome of the dictates of her own heart--of her heart rather than of her reasoning powers, or of any code of law--a condition of mind which might be dangerous to individuals with less native purity of heart than hers.
As a wife, as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law, as a mother, she was absolutely irreproachable.

In the first relationship she was all in all to me for seventeen years.