A MEMORIAL

OF

ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY,

WITH SOME OF THEIR LATER POEMS.

BY

MARY CLEMMER AMES.

ILLUSTRATED BY TWO PORTRAITS ON STEEL.

NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. Cambridge: Riverside Press.

1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by

HURD AND HOUGHTON,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED by

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

WHO, TO THEIR LAST EARTHLY Hour, gave TO HER AUNTS A

DAUGHTER'S TENDEREST LOVE AND DEVOTION, THIS

MEMORIAL OF THEIR LIVES

Es Affectionately Bedicated,

BY HER FRIEND AND THEIRS,

MARY CLEMMEP AMES.

PREFACE.

WHEN, at the request of the brothers of Alice and Phoebe Cary, I sat down to write a Memorial of their lives, and, looking through the entire mass of their papers, found not a single word of their own referring in any personal way to themselves, every impulse of my heart impelled me to relinquish the task. To tell the story of any human life, even in its outward incidents, wisely and justly, is not an easy thing to do. But to attempt a fit memorial of two women whose lives must be chiefly interpreted by inward rather than outward events, and solely from personal knowledge and remembrance, was a responsibility that I was unwilling to assume. With the utter absence of any data of their own, it seemed to me that the lives of the Cary sisters could only be produced from the combined reminiscences of all their more intimate personal friends. Months were consumed in writing to, and in waiting for replies from, long-time friends of the sisters. All were willing, but alas! they "had destroyed all letters," had forgotten "lots and lots of things that would have been interesting;" they were preoccupied, or sick; and, after months of waiting,