No face there was so fair as my mother's.

She was more beautiful than a picture, with her golden hair and fair face, her sweeping dresses and trailing laces.
The tears rise even now, hot and bitter, to my eyes when I think of those happy hours--my intense pride in and devoted love for my mother.
How lightly I held her hand, how I kissed her lovely trailing laces.
"Mamma," I said to her, one day, "it is just like coming to heaven when you call me to walk with you." "You will know a better heaven some day," she said, laughingly; "but I have not known it yet." What was there she did not do?
She sang until the music seemed to float round the room; she drew and painted, and she danced.

I have seen no one like her.

They said she was like an angel in the house; so young, so fair, so sweet--so young, yet, in her wise, sweet way, a mother and friend to the whole household.

Even the maids, when they had done anything wrong and feared the housekeeper, would ask my mother to intercede for them.
If she saw a servant who had been crying, she did not rest until she knew the cause of the tears.