If I thought any language of mine could do justice to her character, I would try to describe my mother.

Were I to _speak_ of her, my voice would choke at the mention of her name.

As I write, a mist gathers over my eyes.

Grief for the loss of such a being is immortal, as the love of which it is born.
I have said that we were poor,--but ours was not abject poverty, hereditary poverty,--though _I_ had never known affluence, or even that sufficiency which casts out the fear of want.

I knew that my mother was the child of wealth, and that she had been nurtured in elegance and splendor.