Oh, how the burden rose from my spirits when my dear mother took me in her arms, kissed me tenderly, and said that my mistake was nothing but a trifle that I would be sure to remember, and that the shirt was far better made than she had expected! When father came in to supper, I took it to him and told him that I had made it. He looked both surprised and pleased, kissed me with even more than his usual kindness,—I think mother must have privately told him of my blunder,—and said that he would surely remember me at Christmas.
I know that incidents like these can be of little interest to any but myself. But what more exciting ones are to be expected in such a history as mine? If they are related here, it is because I am requested to record them. Still, every poor sewing-girl will consider that the making of her first shirt is an event in her career, a difficulty to be surmounted,—and that, even when successfully accomplished, it is in reality only the beginning of a long career of toil.
MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.
A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.
THOMAS MOORE.
More than forty years have passed since I first conversed with the poet Thomas Moore. Afterwards it was my privilege to know him intimately. He seldom, of late years, visited London without spending an evening at our house; and in 1845 we passed a happy week at his cottage, Sloperton, in the county of Wilts:—
"In my calendar
There are no whiter days!"
The poet has himself noted the time in his diary (November, 1845).
It was in the year 1822 I made his acquaintance in Dublin. He was in the full ripeness of middle age,—then, as ever, "the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own." As his visits to his native city were few and far between, the power to see him, and especially to hear him, was a boon of magnitude. It was, indeed, a treat, when, seated at the piano, he gave voice to the glorious "Melodies" that are justly regarded as the most valuable of his legacies to mankind. I can recall that evening as vividly as if it were not a sennight old: the graceful man, small and slim in figure, his upturned eyes and eloquent features giving force to the music that accompanied the songs, or rather to the songs that accompanied the music.