When Southern Mary left us, she gave to Aunt Hildy something to help make out Jane North's pension papers, and the first step Aunt Hildy took toward doing this was in the fall of 1853, when she painted Jane's house inside and out. Then in the next year she built a new fence for her, and insisted on helping Louis make some improvements needed to give more room, and from this time the old homestead where Jane's father and mother had lived and died, became the children's home, with Jane as its presiding genius, having help to do the work. From six to eight children were with her; three darling little girls whom Louis found in the streets of a city in the winter of 1855, were brought to the Home by him, and he considered them prizes.
To be independent in thought and action was Louis' wisdom. He had regard for the needs of children as well as of adults, for he remembered that the girls and boys are to be the men and women of the years to come, and to help them help themselves was his great endeavor.
"For this," he would say, "is just what our God does for us, Emily. He teaches the man who constantly observes all things around him, that the proper use of his bounty is what he most needs to know, and to live by the side of natural laws, moving parallel with them, is the only way to truthfully solve life's master problem. Yea, Emily, painting pictures is grand work; to see the ideal growing as a reality about us, to know we are the instruments in God's hands for doing great good; and are not the years verifying the truth of what I said to you, when a boy I told you I needed your help, and also that you did not know yourself? I knew the depth of your wondrous nature. My own Emily, you are a glorious woman," and as tenderly as in the olden days, with the great strength of his undying love, he gathered me in silence to his heart. How many nights I passed to the land of dreams thinking, "Oh, if my Louis should die!"
Father and mother were enjoying life, and when Aunt Phebe came to see us, bringing a wee bit of a blue-eyed daughter, she said, "If I should have to leave her, I should die with the knowledge that she would find a home among you here."
"I don't see why we haint thought out sooner," said Aunt Hildy; "you see folks are ready, waitin', only they don't know whar to begin such work, and now there's Jane North, I'll be bound she'd a gone deeper and deeper into tattlin', ef the right one hadn't teched her in a tender spot, and now she's jest sot her heart into the work, and as true as you live, she's growin' handsome in doin' it. I'm ashamed of myself to think I have wasted so much time. Oh, ef I'd got my eyes open thirty years ago."
