216 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



aunt of the famous Governor John Hancock, whose signa- 

 ture stands so big and bold on the Declaration of American 

 Independence. Succeeding Boweses had intermarried into 

 good Massachusetts families — Whitneys and Stoddards 

 and Remingtons — and had thus preserved to an unusual 

 extent the purity of their local strain. 



Miss Emily Bowes had suffered from severe vicissitudes 

 of fortune. Her infancy, and that of her two younger 

 brothers, had been spent in moderate circumstances ; but 

 her father, who had a splendid capacity for the dispersion 

 of wealth, had meanwhile inherited a large property and 

 spent it, nearly to the last penny. Almost the only 

 advantages which had accrued to his daughter from the 

 few years of their opulence, were comprised in the very 

 complete and extensive education which Mr. Bowes, proud 

 of her intellectual gifts, had provided her. She was not 

 only taught all that girls at that time were supposed 

 capable of learning, but, at her own desire, excellent tutors 

 had been engaged to ground her in Latin, in Greek, and 

 even in Hebrew. She had great force of character and 

 rapidity of action. When the crash came, her brothers 

 were at that critical age when to pursue education a little 

 further is the only means by which what has been learned 

 can be made of any service in the future. Emily Bowes 

 undertook the training of the boys, and when the time 

 came for the eldest to go to college, she devoted the 

 interest of her own small capital to his maintenance there, 

 and went out as a governess that she might add to that 

 scanty sum. A governess she remained until her brothers 

 — excellent young men, but with none of her force of 

 mind — were started in life, and then, with deep thankful- 

 ness, she retired from work to the irksomeness of which 

 she preferred the most straitened independence. At the 

 time that my father became acquainted with her, she was 



