His wife died. "This is to let you know," he writes to a cousin,
"that my dear and honoured wife departed this life last night."
And now that his children were motherless, Steele, when he was
away from them, wrote to them, always tender, often funny,
letters. It is Betty, the eldest, he addresses, she is "Dear
Child," "My dear Daughter," "My good Girlie." He bids them be
good and grow like their mother. "I have observed that your
sister," he says in one letter, "has for the first time written
the initial or first letters of her name. Tell her I am highly
delighted to see her subscription in such fair letters. And how
many fine things those two letters stand for when she writes
them. M. S. is Milk and Sugar, Mirth and Safety, Music and
Songs, Meat and Sauce, as well as Molly and Spot, and Mary and
Steele." I think the children must have loved their kind father
who wrote such pretty nonsense to them.
So with ups and downs the years passed. However much money
Steele got he never seemed to have any, and in spite of all his
carelessness and jovialness, there is something sad in those last
years of his life.
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