GREAT-AUNT ABIGAIL STILWELL 9 



especially from the late George Ticknor, well remembered as the 

 historian of Spanish literature, who knew him and bore his 

 memory in high esteem. These agree in that they all described 

 him as a singularly impressive personality of a great dauntless 

 aspect, but at heart lovable. 



Only one of that generation, the sister, Abigail Stilwell, lived 

 to my day. Her brother William had established her in a 

 rather stately place in Lancaster, Massachusetts, with her three 

 children and the four left by his brother the privateer captain. 

 Thereto I went in 1855 as a lad of fourteen years, in company 

 with my father on his first return to his childhood home, after 

 an absence of a quarter of a century. My great-aunt was then 

 a venerable woman, over eighty years of age, and of a singular 

 dignity, it may well be said splendor, of shape and manner. 

 She was six feet in height, perfectly erect, clad in black silk, 

 capped with a tall white turban, and armed with a gold snuff- J 

 box, to which she much resorted. I had seen several great 

 dames of the Virginia stamp and have beheld them since in 

 many lands, but none of them compared with that woman. I 

 recall even now the fear of her which even her great kindness in 

 no wise cleared away. She belonged to a variety, apparently 

 now extinct, in which the sense of personal dignity and authority 

 shaped the life. It is characteristic of this remarkable woman 

 that she was found dead sitting upright in her chair with her 

 snuff-box in her hand. 



I remember that I was curiously interested in observing that 

 my father, whom I had never seen awed by any one, was visibly 

 cowed in the presence of his aunt; he seemed, indeed, almost 

 as much in fear of her as I was myself. I also recall in the days 

 of that visit much talk on the part of my great-aunt of matters 

 which dated back to my father's youth ; also of her trials with a 

 certain Frenchwoman then dead, who had been entangled in 

 the life of her brother William, and whom she had taken over 

 with the rest of his estate. These family stories attracted me 

 less than did the house and grounds of the old place. The dwell- 



