 Section 1 of Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Deborah Lynn. Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and Others of the Family by B.P. Schellber. Section 1. To the friends of Mrs. Partington, whose favour has encouraged the old lady in her eccentric sayings, this volume is respectively dedicated. Preparatory. Mrs. Partington once declined an introduction to a party because she did not wish to be introduced to anyone she was not acquainted with. She needs no introduction now. In all parts of our own land and over the sea, her name is familiar as a household word and, as Mrs. Partington would say, forms a tributary clause to many a good story or an apology for many a bad one. A smile attending the utterance of the name in evidence of its appreciation. But a preface, of course, is expected, and so, in the most gentle manner in the world, we will tell you, reader, a little story about the origin of the Partington sayings and why they were said and why they are here collected. Perhaps you have guessed it all, but it is well to be certain. In the first place, they were written, as the canine quadruped is said to have grown to church, for fun, for the author's own amusement, with a latent hope, however half-indulged, that the big world which the author very much loves and wishes to please, might see something in them at which to smile. He was modest in his hope and hid himself behind an incognito, impenetrable, he thought, where he could see the effect of his mild squibs upon the public. The result pleased him, and he kept vigorously blazing away unseen, as much so as the simple bird that thrusts its head under a leaf and fancies itself unobserved, until they have arisen to a magnitude that some people might deem respectable. The origin and object of the Partington sayings, being thus described, the motive for their collection shall be confessed. It is the hope that their author may make a little money on them. He is not so squeamish or pretending as to talk of public good and public amusement as his leading motives in the matter, but if these can be obtained through the publication, he will be most happy. The author confesses to certain pressing contingencies, by no means peculiar to him, however, among authors, that would be relieved by a generous return for his outlay of time, and that his pouch may take a more silvery hue from the circulation of his book, as a consummation devoutly by him to be wished. This motive, so entirely original for the publication of a book, the author has secured under the guarantee of his copyright. There might be no necessity for this, where all the rest of the author tribe are writing and printing from higher motives, but he pleads selfishness, and, like the old lady in her variance with St. Paul, there is where he and they differ. Some wiseacre has recently made a discovery, of what we have proclaimed from the outset, that the name of Mrs. Partington was not original with us, that Sidney Smith first gave it to the world—most profound discoverer—but the character, we claim, is ours, and whether it had been embodied in Mrs. Smith or Brown, instead of Mrs. Partington, would have been immaterial. Those sayings are ours, and we venture to affirm that Sidney Smith would not lay claim to them from the fact that they were uttered by one of the same name as his heroine of the mop. Because, forsooth, he had spoken of Mrs. Partington sweeping back the Atlantic with her broom, would he claim the illustrious Paul, and the roguish Isaac, and the jocos Roger, and the great Philanthropos, and the poetical wide swarth as his progeny? We tro not, even though others might be found ready to do it for him. The reputation of Mrs. Partington belongs to the Boston Post, as much as if Sidney Smith had never uttered the name in his great speech in Parliament. The character has been drawn from life. The Mrs. Partington we have depicted is no fancy sketch and no malaprop imitation, as some have thought, who saw in it not but distorted words and queer sentences. We need no appeal to establish this fact. Mrs. Partington is seen everywhere, and is often without the specs and cap as with them. There are many matters placed within the covers of this book that the sponsor of Mrs. Partington has written beneath the inspiration of her geniality to the influence of which alone their merit, if they possess any, is to be attributed. Her portrait looks down upon him now as he writes, and her pleasant voice seems in woven with the Su Chang's smile it sheds and seems to say, print a book. Biography of Mrs. Partington, Relict of P.P. Corporal Paul Partington, whose name is immortalized by its association with that of the universal Mrs. Partington, a portion of whose oracular sayings our book comprises, was a lineal descendant of, seek the kingdom continually parting tone, who came from the old country, by water probably, somewhere in the early days of our then not very extensive civilization. At that time people were not in the habit of putting everything into the papers as they do now, when the painting of a front door or the setting of a pane of glass or the laying of an egg is deemed of sufficient consequence for a paragraph. Much, therefore, of interest concerning the early history of his family is merely known by the faint light which tradition has thrown upon it. A story has come down to us from remote time through the oracular lips of the oldest inhabitants that seek the kingdom continually parting tone, abbreviated to seek, was troubled in the old country by certain unpleasant and often occurring reminders of indebtedness. Ecclept bills which were always like a summer night falling dew and certain urgently pressing importunities, the which, added to a faith that was not too popular by any means, at last induced him to warily scrape together such small means as he could and incontinently retire from metropolitan embarrassment to the comparative quiet of an emigrant's life, where he might encounter nothing more annoying than the howling of wolves or the yelling of savages, sweet music both when contrasted with the horror comprised in the words, pay that bill which had long distressed him. Here the voice of the donner was done, and seek, under his own vine and pine tree, worshipped God and cheated the Indians according to the dictates of his own conscience and the custom of the times. But little, however, can be gleaned of the early supporters of the family name, save what we procure from the ancient family record, a Dudley Levitt's almanac on which agricultural memoranda had been kept, and from the memory of such members of a foregone generation as remembered the Partington mansion in Beanville, of course before it was torn down to make way for the new branch railroad. The new house, as the mansion has been called for a century, see the accompanying sketch drawn on a piece of birch bark by a native artist. To distinguish it from some old house that had at some previous time existed somewhere, was erected about the year blank as is supposed from the discovery of a receded bill from Godfrey Pratt for aid in raising new edifice which bears date as above and likewise from the fact that a child was born to the erector of the new house the same year, which was Dudley chronicled in the ancient Bible with other blessings and the word house is distinctly to be traced among them. It is supposed by some that the old house was upon a slight hill opposite the gentle aclivity upon which the new house stood, and fancied outlines of an ancient cellar are there discernible by those whose faith is large enough. But a younger class have set up another hypothesis, that what they suppose must have been a cellar was in reality an apple bin, and there is no knowing when or how the point will be determined. The new house was a staunch piece of work, erected at a time when men were honest and infused much of their own character into the work they put together. The beams of oak so sturdy that time, failing to make an impression upon them, gives up at last in despair. The interior of the mansion, in the latter day of its existence, contrasted gloomily with the modern houses that sprang like mushrooms around it. Its oak paneling and thick doors imparted an idea of strength, and the huge beam overhead, beneath which a tall man could not stand erect in the low-studded room, showed no more signs of decay than if placed there a hundred years later. It was not destitute of ornament, for around the fireplace were perpetuated, in the everlastingness of Dutch crockery, numerous scriptural scenes more creditable to the devotional spirit that conceived than to the art or artlessness that executed them. The house was intended as a garrison, and where the clappards had chafed off were revealed the scarf-logs denoting where the loopholes were, and the leaden bullets still left there which Paul was want to dig out with his knife when a boy and make sinkers out for his fishing lines. Many a story that venerable house could tell of ancient warfare, of the midnight attack and gallant defense, but it never told a thing. It was in this house that Paul Partington was born and grew amid all the luxuries that the town of Beanville afforded, said town at that time consisting of five houses and a barn. In this house he was married, the most momentous act of his life, as through the hymenial gate came upon the world the dame whose name we are delighted to honor. We find upon the fly-leaf of a treatise on calcirous manures, yet sacredly treasured the following memorandum in the corporal's own writing, significant of the methodical habits of the man who shed in afterlife, as far as a corporal's warrant could do it, undying glory upon his country. Married this day, January the 3rd, 1808, to Ruth Trotter, by Reverend Mr. Job Snarl, forty bushes of potatoes to widow Greene. There is a blending of bliss and business in this entry that strikes one at the first glance. The record of the sale of the potatoes, in the same paragraph announcing his marriage to Ruth, might signify to some that they were held in equal regard. But we see the matter differently. The purchase of Ruth and the sale of the potatoes were the two great events of that important 3rd of January, and they naturally associated themselves. So you, madam, might associate the birth of your first born, the most blissful moment of your life, with the miserable matter of the death of a lame duck or the blowing down of a pigsty. Of the courtship that preceded that marriage we can say nothing except what we have gleaned by accident from the old lady herself. In rebuking the want of sincerity of devotion nowadays on the part of lovers, she once spoke of a time when someone would ride a hard trotting horse ten miles every night and back for the sake of sitting up with her. But no name was mentioned. When it is remembered that the ancient borough of dogs bondage was just ten miles from Beanville, it is easy enough to guess who the individual was. Ruth Partington, born Trotter, came amid sub-lunar scenes several years before the nineteenth century commenced. Consequently she is older than eighteen hundred. She was a child by law for eighteen years before she became a woman and performed the duties encumbered upon her, as we have been informed by her, with great fidelity. We have often endeavored in fancy to picture the roof of dogs bondage in the Czech apron and homespun gown by the brook engaged in washing or basket in hand feeding the yellow corn to hungry ducks, emblematic of that throwing forth of gems that have since been scrambled for by admiring crowds, or seeking berries in the woods crowned with wintergreen as the meat of popular approbation surrounds her brow in the latter day of her existence, or engaged in incipient benevolences as binding up the broken limbs of barnyard favorites or protecting the songsters of the marsh from predatory boyhood, fitting four heralds of that matured benevolence which embraces the world in its scope. Here speaking the consoling word and their dispensing comfort mingled with catnip tea. In fancy, we say, the Czech apron, homespun gown and all, are but the stuff that dreams are made of. There are vague reminiscences of things that have passed, which we catch occasionally, when Sushong has released the memory of Mrs. Partington from the overriding care for the world's welfare that would feign keep at home, and we roam back through scenes of her early life that breathe of rurality like a hayfield in June or a barnyard in the month of March. We have tales of apple pairings and attendant scenes and suppers of huskings full of incident and red ears and resonant with notes the sweet import of which Mrs. Partington can well tell. In jolly quiltings great with tattle and tea and moonlight walks home with the laughter of mirth mingling with the song of the cricket in the hedge, or that of the monarch of the swamp singing his younglings to sleep in the distance, or the whipperwell upon the bow, and stupendous candy pullings with their customary consequences to broad-shirt collars and cheeks sweeter than molasses, and slides downhill on the ox-sled runners in winter that the boys hauled up to the summit, disastrous at times due propriety and health, but full of a fun that looked at no result but its own enjoyment, the means of secondary consideration. And there gleams through this array that reveals early loves and dreams that had an existence for a time to be swallowed up eventually in admiration for that embodiment of war and peace, Paul Partington, whose flaming eye and sword upon an ensanguined muster-field won a regard that only ended in Beanville when the name of Trotter became merged in that of Partington. Tradition, which in this instance may be partly right, tells of rivalry for the possession of the bell of dogs bondage. We can conceive of rivalry among the men and envy among the women, of struggles on the one part to gain her favour on the other part the struggle to lose it by provoking her hostility. Hostility? Herein might arise a question as to whether so gentle a being ever entertained hostility to anything. We should be false to our object, that of writing a true biography of Mrs. Partington, did we pretend that she was perfect? We would take this pen and ink stand, as well as they have served us in our need, and throw them in the grate before we would make any such assertion. But we must say that we never heard she had an enemy, and tradition, that grim old chap that has so many bad things to say about people and so few that are good, never said a word about it. Doubtless many a rustic heart beat warm beneath the homespun coat of numberless years, and sighs redolent of feeling poured from beneath the rim of many an old bell-crowned hat of felt. But the meteor came, Paul swept the field, the heart of Ruth surrendered with discretion, and other people stood back. Great was this for dog's bondage. The sun rose on the brightest day of the year when it happened, the brook that had frozen up previously immediately thawed out. Two robins were seen looking round for places to build their nests, thinking it was spring, so mild was it. The lilac buds almost bursted in their anxiety to notice the occasion, and old farmers, as they talked to one another across dividing fences, spoke most sagaciously about the extraordinary spell of weather. As old Roger, Mrs. Pease Cousin remarked when he heard the circumstance, it was a weather very like a lamb. But as we were saying, schools were not so common at that time as now, and as there was none nearer the Trotters than Huckleberry Lane in the Upper Parish, and as there was a quarrel between the Upper and the Lower Parishes, old Trotter, who belonged with the Lower, felt bound to stand by that section, though he knew nothing about the quarrel, and hence Ruth was kept at home to receive by the fireside the domestic accomplishments nowhere else to be learned, and drink in the oracular wisdom of the venerable Trotter as it fell from his lips through the aroma of pigtail tobacco and hard cider. Alas for Trotter, his day is done, his pipe is out, his cider has gone, and even dogs bondage has become a name obsolete among the places of the earth, that town rejoicing now in the more euphonious title of Clover Hill, probably from the fact of there not being a leaf of Clover within seven miles of it. And thou, Dame Trotter, famous for pastry and poultry, beneath whose ready skill thanksgiving became a carnival of fat things, whose memory yet lingers about the olden home now in stranger hands, with the fragrance of innumerable virtues, like the spicy odor of many Christmas dinners, thou too art gone, and dogs bondage may know thee no more forever. The reverend Ann Dyrum Smith, who preached her funeral sermon, drew largely upon the book of Proverbs for illustrations of her character, and said that better pumpkin pies, or a better exhibition of grace he had never known any woman to make before. A kind heart has characterized Mrs. Partington from her childhood up, displayed in many ways. Her benevolence got far in advance of her grammar in her early days, and in her sayings at times are detected certain inaccuracies that some people are inclined to laugh at. But if they will stop a little and see the yellow kernels of wisdom gleaming out through the thickly surrounding verbiage, they will raise their hats in grateful respect for the bounty afforded. The domestic history of Mrs. Partington requires a nice pen to portray it, so full was it of delicate beauty and delightful incident. Marriage meant something in old times. It was no holiday affair, donned like a garment, to be regarded as worthless when the fashion changed. It grew out of no sickly sentiment that had its existence in the yellow fever of a wretched romance, as unlike true life as a cabbage is to a rose or the sear of autumn, a more fitting simile to the vernal spring. It was a healthy, hearty, happy old institution in those days, was matrimony, and people jogged along together in the harness of its duties, as harmoniously as the right hand and the left that help each other and yet don't seem to know it, so natural as the service rendered, as if they were born to it. And as the right hand or the right eye sympathizes with the left, so did the twain thus united sympathize. Duty and affection leaned upon each other and inseparably strove to make the home hearth cheerful. It became pleasure to carry the sweet drink to the thirsty man in the field of mowing, or to bear the basket of lunch into the woods, where the red-browed man was chopping wood for winter, or to patiently hold the light in the long winter evenings when the yolks were to be mended or the harness repaired. And it became pleasure when the good man went to town to stow his pockets with something nice for the wife at home, a new dress or a new apron, the remembrance of whose face would come to him when away and hasten his departure back. It was that remembrance which prompted the mare into an urgent trot on the last mile home, though she couldn't see the necessity for it, and his eye looked brighter when he saw the cheerful face at the window looking down the road and shook his whip at it as it smiled at him, as much as to say, Let me get near you and—and what? Ask the walls and the bureau in the corner and the buffet where the china was, or the milk-pans upon the dresser, what? No jars occurred in a home that owned such a pair. Can the right hand quarrel with the left? Can the left eye cast severe glances upon the right? The home where a true marriage exists is blessed, and the man who finds his domesticity cast in a mold such as we have described may be called happy in the fullest sense of the blissful word. It would have done all of us good to peep in upon fireside scenes at the Partington mansion. The fireplace, with its wide and hospitable arms extended, looked like an incentive to population, having family capacity revealed in its huge dimensions. It was a brave idea of Sikh parting-tone, and when he laid the cornerstone of the Beanville structure he had visions of a posterity as numerous as the leaves of the sweet briar bush that waved by his door. Alas, how were those visions verified as a few generations saw the line of Sikh diminishing to find its end at last like the snap of a whiplash in one little knot? But those scenes it was the custom of the corporal in the long nights of winter to seat himself in the right corner of the old fireplace while the dame occupied the other and read by the light of a mutton-tallow candle such literature as the house afforded. This was comprised in the Family Bible, an old and massive volume that adorned the Black Bureau under the glass, a copy of Army tactics presented to Paul by a revolutionary soldier, and a copy of Dudley Levitt's Almanac. These were read by the light of mutton-fat, aloud, while Mrs. Partington pursued her knitting in the corner, nodding at times, perhaps, as the theme was dull or familiar, but the smile always rewarded Paul's effort to amuse her as much as if he hadn't read the same things over and over a thousand times. The small covered earthen pitcher kept time to his reading often and sung and sputtered upon the coals between the old-fashioned dog and direns as if a spirit were within, struggling to throw off the cover that restrained it and escape. Regularly, as the hand of the old bull's-eye watch on the nail over the mantelpiece denoted the hour of nine, was the book laid by and the mug taken from the fire and its steaming contents poured into the white earthen bowl upon the table, which sent up a vapor that rolled upon the dark walls like a fragrant cloud and made the room redolent with the fume of the mold cider that smoothed the pillow of Paul. It was pleasant, too, to have a neighbor come in at times and spend an evening when the big dish of apples would be brought on and the sparkling cider that snapped and foamed in an ambition to be drank crowned the board. And then such stories as would be told of breaking out and great trainings and immense gunnings in which exploits were achieved that my voracious pen would hardly dare recall. And the old Indian wars would be fought again by the light of tradition and the above-named tallow candle and the tales be retold of revolutionary valor that signalized itself in seventy-six. Perhaps a song would be sung commemorating old times in the quaint melody that knew no artistic skill beyond nature's teaching. Mrs. Partington, as the presiding genius of these scenes, shed the radiance of her presence over the circle as the sunflower claims eminence in a garden of marigolds. Her sage voice was heard in wise counsel and in giving the news of who was sick or dead or about to be married or wasn't about to be married but ought to be. She was at home. The time we speak of was near the close of Paul's career before the sad military reverse took place which broke his heart. It would be impossible in the small space allotted to us to describe all the virtues of Mrs. Partington. It were best to make an aggregate of good and call it all hers. The herbs that adorned the garret walls in innumerable paper bags were not gathered for herself. Both gilead buds and rum that occupied their position in the buffet were not prepared for her, but at the first note of distress from a neighbor her aide was ever ready. She was the first to assent for on important occasions when good wives must be wakened from their beds at midnight, and to this day half the population at Beanville speak of the benevolent face that bent over them in the first moments of their struggle with existence and gave them a better impression of life than after experience verified. And catnip tea and saffron became palatable when commended by a spoon held by her. She knew the age of everyone in the village, and had politicians not rendered the word hack-knead, we would say she had the antecedence of everyone at her fingers' ends. She was as good as an almanac for chronological dates, and in the matter of historical incidents Dudley Levitt and Mrs. P. generally came out neck and neck. She had a great reverence for this same almanac, and we cannot refrain from speaking of an incident in connection with it. She put implicit faith in its predictions, and the weather table stood like a guide-board to direct her on her meteorological march through the year. One year, however, everything went wrong. Storms took place that were not mentioned, and those mentioned never occurred. The moon's phases were all out of joint, and the Good Dames sat up all one cold night to watch for an advertised eclipse that didn't come off. For a long time she tried to vindicate her favorite, but at last, when a windy day predicted proved as mild a one as ever the sun shone on, her faith wavered to be entirely overthrown by a cold northeasterly storm that had been set down for pleasant. A timely discovery that Ike had put a last year's almanac instead of the true one alone saved the credit of that mathematical standard of natural law. Her domestic virtues were of the most exalted kind. Cleanliness was with her a habit, and every windy day was sure to see Paul's regimentals upon a clothesline in the yard, dancing away with a levity altogether at variance with the rules of military propriety. A spider never dared to obtrude his presence upon the homestead. A moth never corrupted the sanctuary of woollen that her care and a little camphor had touched. The white floor of the parting Tonian kitchen was as full of knots as a map of New Hampshire is of hills, from frequent scouring. And though she never scoured through and fell into the cellar, like the Dutch damsel we read of, it did not seem at all improbable that such an event might happen. But her benevolence was the crowning characteristic of her life, developing itself in a thousand and more ways. It sought to make everyone around her happy. She commenced taking snuff with an eye solely to its social tendencies, and her box was a continual offering to friendship. When the last war broke out, she headed a volunteer list of patriotic women to make shirts for the soldiers and gave them encouragement and Sushong tea to work for the brave men that were exposing themselves to peril. And she scraped Paul's only linen shirt—an heirloom, by the way, in the family—up into lint for the wounded soldiers. A fitting spouse was she for Corporal Paul. Her reputation for benevolence was spread all over the land, like butter upon a hot Johnny cake of her own baking, and her current wine for the sick got a premium for three successive years in the cattle fair. Alas! that we have not room to pursue the theme further. We must take a flying leap over many incidents and hasten on. When Paul's younger brother Peter, the Peter that went out west in his youth, whose wife joined the Mormons, died, he sent his little Isaac to the care of the widow of Paul, and from his earliest infancy he has been her care. She never had any children of her own, and her solicitude is earnestly engaged for him. He is as merry a boy as you will find any day, and though a little tricky and mischievous, the first beginning of malice doesn't abide with him. His tricks do not flow from any premeditation of fun even. They spring spontaneously and naturally as the lambs skip or the birds sing. Whether he takes the bellow's nose for a cannon or saws off the acorn on the tall old-fashioned chair for a top, it is all a matter of course, and his bright face knows no cloud when rebuked for what he has done, but he turns to new mischiefs with new zest. Such is Ike. He is now eleven years, just upon the dividing line between accountability and indulgence, beyond which boyish mischief becomes malice, to be trained by the magic of a leather strap. Professor Wideswarth, a member of the Partington family, like a remarkable case in the paper of longstanding, has associated the two in a poem, which, for sublimity, is surpassed by Coleridge's hymn in the Valley of Shamuni, but then they are nothing alike, and parties may divide on their respective merits. One thing about the song is authentic in its details as we have heard a word by the old lady herself. The music, set to a rocking chair movement, was very popular when it was first issued, and the editor of the blaze, in a complementary notice of it, said no musical library could be perfect without it. The poem we give below. Mrs. Partington at T. Good Mistress P. sat sipping her tea, sipping it, sipping it, Isaac and she. What though the wind blew fiercely around, and the rain on the pain gave a comfortless sound, little cared she kind Mistress P. as Isaac and she sat sipping their tea. And in memory, what sights did she see as Isaac and she sat sipping their tea? She turned her gaze to the opposite wall where hung the portrait of Corporal Paul, and fancies free to Mistress P arose in her mind like the steam of the tea. And little saw she, blind Mistress P. as silently she sat sipping her tea, with her eyes on the wall and her mind away, that Isaac was taking that time to play, and wicked was he to Mistress P. as dreamily she sat sipping her tea. For Isaac he, in Diablery, emptied her rappie into her tea, and the old dame tasted and tasted on till she thought good soul that her taste was gone. For the Sushong tea and the strong rappie sorely puzzled the pallet of Mistress P. This moral you see is drawn from the tea that Isaac had ruined for Mistress P. Forever will mix in the cup of our joy the dark rappie of sorrow's alloy, and none are free any more than she from annoying alloys that mix with their tea. We have spoken before of the Partington mansion having been removed to make way for the Beanville Railroad. It was taken after Paul's demise. He never would have parted with it thus. He would have fortified it and defended it while a charge of powder remained in the old powder horn that hung above the mantelpiece, or a billet of wood was left to hurl at a silence. But alas! Paul was not there, and his amiable relic deposed but feeble resistance to the encroachment of the new power. As she herself forcibly expressed it, what was the use of her trying to go again a railroad? It was hard for her to give up the old mansion, endeared by so many recollections, not a thousand merely, the number usually given as the poetical limit, but infinite in number for the embraced all of the days of her wedded happiness and the companionship of the corporal. This sketch of the life of Mrs. Partington would be imperfect where we too omit giving a brief notice of the picture of the inestimable lady that stands as our frontispiece. We have long felt that an admiring public deserved a more definitive expression of her and could be gained from the mere words, however wise, that fell from her oracular lips. A sense of justice to her innumerable merits has impelled us to redeem her from the uncertainty of mere verbal delineation, and here we have produced her the fair ideal of wise simplicity. It was with great difficulty that we secured this boon for the world. A modest diffidence that fifty-seven winters have not weakened unwilling that her lightness should be thus submitted to the unsparing gaze of thousands. In vain we urged many illustrious examples of like martyrdom, of men who, from pure philanthropy, had sacrificed themselves in the everlasting reproach of stereotype, from the never-sowering old Jacob to the meek elder Barry blessing the world with this interested benevolence at a dollar-a-court bottle, six bottles for five dollars. She was not to be moved by any argument we could offer, and we were about to abandon the idea in despair when the strategy of Isaac effected what diplomacy had failed to accomplish. Snuggly ensconced in an old clothes-press by Isaac for three days, our artist was enabled through the keyhole to watch the varied expression that flitted across her time-worn face, and his genius achieved its high triumph at the moment when pain's gas had become the concentrated object of her thought, and oblivious to all external scene and circumstance, her mind was grappling that huge problem in a vain effort to get a little light upon the subject. This is the precise moment at which the artist has taken her, impaled her, so to speak, in view of its correctness on his pencil-point, and transferred her still quick with life to the breathing paper. The faithfulness of this picture cannot be too much admired. We have at a glance the whole character of the old lady in her blessed liniments with a benignity like a cup of sleeper's best Ninyang irradiating every feature. The cat-border crowns like a halo the brow upon whose lofty height benevolence sits enthroned. The lock of gray vibrates tremulously in the wintry air. The specks repose tranquilly in the abstractedness of meditation. The pinned kerchief and modest plates enfolds a breast whose every throb is kindly. The knitting work, the close attendant upon her loneliness, has its position, and the busy fingers in diligent competition ply the gleaming wires. The ancient chair, sacred to memory, the one that came over in the Mayflower, is presented in its puritanic uprightness, and at its back hangs the ridicule in whose mysterious depths dwelleth many a rare antique that the light of day hath not seen since the memorable 14. Upon the little pine table, white as snow, from frequent inflictions of soap and sand, are seen that snuff box and that teapot, the little black one, and the respective solaces of which the ills of life have found mitigation, and grief has been elade of half its bitterness. The amelioration of macaboy relieving the woes of widowhood and sorrow of finding cessation, neath the softening influence of Sushong. Above upon the wall hangs Paul's ancient profile in dark rigidity, like a soldier on parade, staring straight forward at nothing. The unbending integrity of whose dick he stands in marked contrast with the charcoal of his complexion. And long and often has that profile been scanned by fawned eyes in vain effort to detect one line of the olden affection that warmed the original or dwelt in the hard-spelled character of Paul's epistles, that well-worn and well-saved are yet treasured in the old black bureau desk in the corner. And carefully the sprig of sweet fern is renewed above the picture every year when the berries lure ight to the woods and he comes back laden with pine and fern and hemlock to garnish the fireplace and mantelpiece with awe. That handkerchief has been preserved as a sacred relic since the corporal's battle days, when in young devotion he laid it, blazoned with the glory of the Constitution and Gary era upon her lap, standing by her with his artillery sword gleaming in his hand, vowed by its edge that his love for her should divide with that for his country. The story has not been written of his deeds of arms, of his moving accidents by flood and field, and dangers in the imminent deadly breeches of his parades in the artillery and his campaign dinner once a year. These remain to be written, and the biographer of Paul Partington shall set the world aglow with the recital of deeds that have been hid like the diamond in the ashes but have lost no ray of brilliancy. It may, however, be well to give a few of these exploits as illustrative of the character of the person in whose heroism we may detect an influence that dates from dog's bondage and nice discriminators may, by close scrutiny, see there in the fusion of the fiery blood of seek the kingdom continually parting tongue, the trumpeter of Oliver Cromwell and the gentle outside current that met mingled and softened, the Vini Vidi Vici of conjugal triumph informed no merely bloody warrior but a hero whose sword would be stained by nothing worse than the mark of cheese that crowned the board of war. When the news came in the last war that the British had landed on the coast, although nine miles from Beanville, his voice waked the people from their slumbers calling them to arms. It was his plume that was seen gleaming in the light of the stars as he dashed through the town on horseback, urging his steed on through the mud at the rate of five miles an hour. It was his warlike skill that arranged the eleven men of Beanville into a phalanx of attack, and it was his eloquence that called upon them as husbands, fathers, patriots, and Christians to fight and die like men. When afterwards it was discovered that all the alarm arose from seeing two men in their boats drawing lobster nets, the Merida Valor did not depart from Paul Partington, and though he never got the brevet as sergeant promised him by the general of division, yet the people honoured him, and the battle of the Bloody Leaven, as they were called, formed a theme for gossip in the tavern at Beanville for many a day. When the call came for volunteers to throw up fortifications in Boston Harbor he was the first man to enrol his name. His pickaxe struck the first blow for his country in this service. His use of the spade rendered his advice invaluable to the commanding officer, and he could tell to a fraction how many shovels full to take from one portion and how many wheel-barrow loads to put in another. His overalls were in the front of the fight. His arm was fearlessly buried in the encounter. But alas for his country he got a grain of gravel in his eye and had to go home after exhorting his comrades in arms to dig on and giving his overalls to one who needed them. He was afterwards penchoned for his injury, having been very favourably mentioned in the orders of the day. But in the muster field was his greatest triumph. The smell of gunpowder he snuffed like the first teed from afar. In the intricacies of sham fight he was at home. He was always selected to lead the forlorn hope in an attack, and his compressed lips and flashing eyes were precursors of victory. It became a standing rule that he must beat. But when the mad sergeant from the city who commanded the point to be attacked wouldn't give in and charged home upon the corporal, driving him back at the point of the bayonet whereby he lost three of his men and his credit in a bog through which they were compelled to pass, the star of the corporal waned. His marshal's spirit departed from that hour. Even though a court-martial was ordered at once and the sergeant ordered to be shot, which fate was only avoided by his speedy departure from Beanville, it was of no avail. The careful nursing of Ruth availed nothing. He took to his bed, had his artillery sword and cap hung upon a nail where he could see and lay down to die. The skill of the country doctor with a pair of saddlebags filled with medicine and the whole pharmacopia of Mrs. P. couldn't save him, and after making his will, like a prudent citizen and a good soldier, he bade the world good night, and Paul was not. No sound can awake him to glory again. He was buried with military honors by the Beanville artillery who for twenty years voted annually to erect a monument to his memory and then gave it up. The poet of the village, in anticipation of the monument, had prepared an epitaph which we subjoined. Here lies beneath this heap of earth a hero of extensive worth, a whole sold man, full six feet tall, surnamed Partington, christened Paul. The perished burying-ground in Beanville, a sketch of which we subjoined, is situated in the bend of the turnpike leading from Clover Hill, and it is a shrine much visited in the summer months by terriers at the village. For all that was Paul Partington rests beneath the turf, with nought but a tall, sweet briar to mark the spot, standing like a sentinel on duty, armed at all points, and watching the slumber of the hero of the bloody Levin. The picture was taken by a traveling artist while riding over the turnpike on the stagecoach, who was so struck with the picturesque beauty of the scene, that he made an eight-miles-an-hour sketch of it in his portfolio. It is to this spot, on each returning season, that Mrs. Partington comes, by virtue of a free pass, allowed her by the Beanville Branch Railroad, and brings Isaac, and praises the ancient corporal's virtues, and tries to incite the boy's ambition to be like him. And he likes to come, for, while he is drinking in the words which Mrs. Partington imparts, he can watch the chipmunks on the decaying wall, and slyly shy stones at birds whose confidence leads them to approach the spot, and twitter upon the malign stocks that grow rankly by the gate. We say nought but a sweet briar tree marks the spot. The old gravestone, with its hard-faced remembrance of Paul, has been carried off in relics by modern vandals. Chip by chip has the ancient monument disappeared. That affection paid for to the city stone-cutter and placed here, until not a scrap of it is left. The ancient stone of blue slate, with its jolly death's head, that appeared as if quick with mirth, the winged, chubby cherubs in the corners that looked like babies living in uncomfortable fat, like donuts. The simple inscription in Roman characters commemorative of the Roman virtues of Paul, and the quaint epitaph that told unequivocal English of a future hope, all have been chipped off. But thanks to art that can restore the lost and create that which never existed, that monument is before us for our admiration. How many shocks of elemental war has that antiquated block of monumental sculpture withstood successfully? Standing, despite the snow and frost of winter, or the tornadoes of summer, to be carried off piece by piece in the pockets of encroaching pilgrims. But there is a glory in the idea of a gravestones being used up in breastpins to be more choicelessly cherished than the richest rubies. There were melancholy days in the parting Tony and Manchin when Paul stepped out. The old chair stood by the right side of the fireplace as if waiting to be occupied. The mug simmered in the winter evenings between the end irons with a mournful measure, as if responsive to the wind that made a mustn't hurly-burly about the chimney-top, but only one now partook of its contents. The regimentals were aired upon the clothesline, and inflated with wind seemed at times like the corporal himself cut up in parcels, who was alas to fill them no more. The settling of the estate broke in upon this dull and monotonous existence, and in the excitement of the law she forgot the sorrow that, as she said, made her nothing but flesh, skin, and bones. The remark she made concerning probate offices is recorded as a living evidence of her sagacity. Someone spoke to her about the probate proceedings regarding the estate. Yes, said she. It is probate, probate all the time, and if the poor, whittlest body gets the whole she don't get half enough. The remark, likewise, about doing things by attorney, will be remembered until it is forgotten. Don't do anything by power of eternity, said she, for if you do you will never see the end of it. What profundity! But the estate was settled after much delay, and the farm carried on at the haves by a neighbor whose honesty was no security against the temptation of plethora crops and opportunity. The hay fell off in the accounts, the recorded corn denoted a speedy famine, and a more disastrous havoc of potato rot has never since transpired than assailed her crops. But this state of things came to an end instead of the farm as was threatened. The march of improvement led to the need of a railroad through Beanville, and the parting Tonian mansion became a sacrifice to the ruthless spirit of progress that all grasping stops not at anything in its path whether it be a homestead or a hemisphere. Mrs. Partington left Beanville reluctantly. As she herself has said, it was useless to try to stand against a railroad, and the city offering inducements in the way of education for Isaac, the legacy left her by the brother of Paul, she anchored her bark in the municipal haven where her benevolence of act, intention, and sentiment has been spread broadcast, and many a smile has grown out of her lines that have been cast in pleasant places. There is a mystery thrown about the brother of Paul that we cannot unravel. All that is known of him is that he was a pioneer in western civilization, was wounded in the Black Hawk War, and died on his way to Beanville, forwarding Isaac and a black silk handkerchief of boys' clothes by stage to their destination. But in Isaac has centered the affection that shed its rays about her early years, and in him she sees the nucleus of a Partingtonian progeny that shall appease the spirit of seek the kingdom, Partington, if it be knocking round amid sublunar scenes. She takes every occasion to describe his exalted origin, on a recent occasion, while in the street with Isaac, a citizen soldier in all the pride of Regulation Uniform passed them. See, said the boy with animation, does that look like Uncle Paul? She looked at him half offended. No, said she with pride in her expression, he is no more like your uncle than Hyperion fluid is like a satire. There was Shakespeare indignity in the remark, and Isaac turned with emotion to look at the picture of a monkey in a window, tempting a chained dog by holding his tail within an inch of the canine nose. Speaking of the monkey's tail reminds us that we are nearly to end of our tale about Mrs. Partington. We at the first thought of getting an autobiography of the old lady, which would have greatly enhanced the interest of the book, and had asked her to give us something of this kind, but one afternoon as we were revolving some stupendous idea, the Nebraska bill, maybe, or the Gadsden Treaty or Mr. Marcy's letter, with our feet in slippers a foot or two above our head, and puffing one of those choice habanos that the importer had sent in, we felt a finger on our shoulder. Get out, woman! we cried, somewhat tartly. There's nothing for you. Heaven help us! We thought it was the woman with the rummy breath that had haunted us for days. The touch was repeated, and looking around to frown down the intruder the mild gaze of Mrs. Partington was bent upon us. The chair from the other room was brought in. So you thought it was the beggar woman, did you? said she. Well, suppose it had have been. Couldn't you have given her a soft word if you hadn't any money? Was there anything harmonious in her asking you for a penny? We felt rebuked. But, continued she smilingly, I have come to say about the writing matter, that it will do just as well if you write it for me. Generally, I suppose, a naughty biography is better if it is written by one's self. But I can trust you to do me justice. What a privilege! McCawley says somewhere that Boswell was the only true biographer that ever wrote. By the star that is now before us, we ejaculated, looking at Mrs. Partington. He shall yet confess that another has been found, and Boswell's glories be shared with us. Mrs. Partington smiled at our enthusiasm, and passed out of the door and down the stairs, and waved in a dew to us a moment afterwards from the steps of an omnibus that was to take her home. Thus given the life of Mrs. Partington, with her antecedents and co-associates. It is a desulterate story, unlike perhaps anything you have seen before, dear reader. Try to fancy its oddity a reason for praise. Remember, the dull and hack-need path of common biographers, and remember, too, that this is the biography of no common person but that of Mrs. Partington, a name not born to die. Perhaps you may recognize, in the oddity of the sketch, a gleam of the eccentricity that has marked her sayings. In the hope that he has pleased you, the biographer places his hand on his heart and bows as the curtain descends to slow music. End of section one. Section two of Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Deborah Lynn. Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and Sayings of the Family, by B. P. Shilliber. Section two. Mild Weather. This is grand weather, mem, for poor people, said Mr. Tigg, the rich neighbor of Mrs. Partington, on a very warm day of winter, and indulged in a half chuckle about it as he rubbed his hands together. It is a remark that almost everybody would make, and mean it, too, at a time when coal, by the rapacity of man, was eight or nine dollars a ton, and cold weather, by the blessing of heaven, that tempers the wind to the shorn lambs and ragged children, was withheld, but not Mrs. Partington. Yes, said she, gently laying her hand at the same time on the sleeve of Mr. Tigg's coat and looking him in the face. Yes, and don't folks use this good weather too much as an excuse for not helping the indignant widows and orphanless children? Depend upon it. Cold weather is the best for the poor, for then the rich feel the cold and seek more of them, and feel more exposed to give them consolation and coal. Cold weather comes down from heaven a purpose to make men feel their duty, and it touches the heart as the frost touches the milk-pitcher and breaks it, and the milk of humane kindness runs out, and the poor are made better for it. Cold weather is a blessing to the poor, depend upon it. She stopped here, and Mr. Tigg cast his eyes down and struck his cane several times against the brick at his feet. Then, bidding the old lady good morning, he moved away. There was a large doctor to sundries on his book that night, which the bookkeeper will find it difficult to explain, but heaven knows all about it. And the secret gift in charity and the prayer of the poor recipient, invoking blessings on the unknown benefactor, were great records that night in the Angel's Book. The China Question. You never see such chaining nowhere now as this, said Mrs. Partington, as she took from an obscure corner of the old cupboard a teapot of antique appearance, nose-less and hand-less, and cracked here and there, and stayed with putty where times mischievous fingers had threatened a dissolution of the union. That teapot was my grandmother's afore she was married. I remember it just as well as it was yesterday. Remember when your grandmother was married? Quarried Ike. No, no, the teapot, responded she. And it was a perfect beauty, with the garden of Eden on it and the flowers and Adam and Eve on it so natural that you might almost smell their fragrance. What? Smell Adam and Eve, said Ike. No, the flower's stupid, replied she. My grandfather gave it to her as a memento mori of his undying infection, because the colors wouldn't fade whenever have, though children are destroying angels, and they made the mischief among the crockery as they always do nowadays. She had held the teapot in her hands as she spoke, and now she gazed in silence upon the picture of Adam and Eve partially concealed in the bushes, and she reveled in the memory of the past and wondered if her grandmother ever came back to look at that old teapot that she had preserved so carefully as an heirloom. Then carefully brushing off some dust that rested upon it she replaced it and charged Ike impressively to keep it most sacrilegiously for her sake. He said he would, as plain as his mouth full of preserved plums would let him, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his best jacket. Sympathy. Here's fresh halibut, cried the fish-vendor beneath Mrs. Partington's window. I know it is, you poor creature, said the estimable lady, looking after him with a commiserating expression. I know it is, and I believe it is the seventh fresh halibut that he has made by here today, and he speaks so pitiful, too, when he is telling us of it, it makes my very heart ache for him. She caught not the deep significance of the cry, but her benevolence, always on the alert, construed it into an appeal for sympathy. Heaven's blessings on thee, Mrs. Partington, and with reverence, be it wished, where hearts are regarded, may you turn up a trump. Paul's Ghost. It was just in the nigh edge of a summer evening, and Mrs. Partington, who had worked hard at her knitting all day, began to feel a little dozy. She felt, as she described it to her neighbor, Mrs. Battlegash, a sort of all-overness. And those who have felt, as she thus described it, will know the precise sensation, for ourselves never having felt so, we cannot explain it. It was a sort of half-twilight, when the daylight begins to be thick and muddy, and a time when ghosts are said to be round fully as plenty as at the classic hour of midnight. We never could see the propriety of restricting ghostly operations to this somber hour, and as far as our experience goes, we have seen as many ghosts at noon of day as at the noon of night. She never told us why or if she were thinking of ghosts at this time. Indeed, all we know about the ghost was for Mrs. Battlegash, and we shall have to give the narration, as we had it, under Mrs. B's own hand. Says Mrs. Partington, says she, Mrs. Battle, she always calls me Battle, though my name is Battlegash, my husband's name is his father's, says she, Mrs. Battle, I've seen an apprehension. And I thought she was going to have an asterisk. She was so very pale and haggard-like, and says I, what's the matter? For I felt kind of skewered. I adhered a good deal about the spiritualist manifestations, and didn't know, but they had been a manifesting her. Says I, what's the matter? Again. And then, says she, as Solomon is a graveyard, I've seen Paul. I felt cold chills, a crawling all over me, but I mustered courage enough to say, do tell. Yes, says she, I saw him with my mortal eyes, just as he looked when he was a tenement of clay with the very soldier clothes and impertnances he had on the last day he served his country in the auxiliary. I tried to comfort the poor creature by telling her that I guess he didn't cure enough about her to want to come back, and as his estate had all been settled sacrilegiously, it would be very unreasonable indeed in him to come back to disturb her. Where did you see him, says I. Out into the yard, said she. When did you see him, says I. Just now, said she. Are you sure it was he, said I, determined to get at the bottom of it? Yes, said she. If ever an apprehension did come back, that error was won. Perhaps it is there now. Then, says I, Ruth says I, let's go and see. She rizzed right up, and we walked along through the long entry into her room and looked out of her back window, and there, sure enough, was a sight as froze my blood to calves foot jelly. There was the soldier cap and coat as natural as life with a tompi and a top. My heart come up into my mouth so that I could have spit it out just as easy as not. Mrs. Parton and says she, what do you think of it? Isn't it his apprehension? But I'm determined to speak to it. I tried to persuade her not to, but she insisted on it, and out she went. Paul, said she, what upon earth do you want that you should come back, utter it so apprehensively? The figure was setting on the top of the pump when she spoke, and it didn't take no notice of her. Paul, said she, a little louder, then slowly and solemnly that air cap turned round, and instead of Paul, Mr. Editor, if you'll believe it, it was Ike, the little scape grace that had frightened us almost out of our wits if we ever had any. That boy, I believe, will be the means of somebody's death. Mrs. Parton grew very red in the face and raised her hand to inflict the corporal punishment onto the young corporal, but the boy looked up kind of pleasantly like, and she couldn't find the heart to strike him, though I told her if she spared the rod she would spoil that air-child. It is fortnight for him that he isn't a child of mine, I can tell him. Here, Mrs. Battlegash's narrative ends. We can fancy the scene in the yard, the youngster in the corporal's coat, the red face changing to pleasant equanimity, the raised hand indicative of temper subsiding, as the waves do when the wind ceases to blow, and peace like the evening star above them, pervading and giving grace to the tableau. Ike, so tender-hearted. There, don't take on so dear, said Mrs. Partington, as she handed Ike a peach he had been crying for. He took the peach, and a minute afterwards was heard whistling Jordan on the ridgepole of the shed. He is such a tender-hearted critter, said she to Mrs. Sled, smilingly, while that excellent neighbor looked at him through the window with two deprecatory eyes. He is so tender-hearted that I can't ask him to go out and draw an armful of wood or split a pail of water without setting him crying at once. She paused for Mrs. Sled's mind to comprehend the whole force of the remark concerning Ike's lacrimosity. And he is the most considerable boy, too, resumed she, that ever you see. For when we had the inclination on the lungs, he wouldn't take a bit of the medicine Dr. Bolas had subscribed, because he knowed it would do me good, and said he'd full his leaves take molasses. She went on with her knitting, and Ike became lost in the foot of a stocking that she was towing out. Those grapes on the trellis opposite where Ike is sitting looked tempting. Mrs. Partington says there must be some sort of kin between poets and pullets, for they both are always chanting their laze. Look up. Perhaps it would not make a raps difference one way or the other in a man's fortunes, whether he looked up or down, but we always fancied that there was a reason for the superstition that made a man's habit of looking down an augury of his success in life. As if his mind, dwelling with his eyes continually on the earth, would better enable him to know how to make money, as a man who dwells in the dark can see better in the accustomed darkness than one who comes directly in from the light. He keeps his eyes on the ground, and no stray fourpences or scents escape his equal vision. Every rag is marked to see if it may not be a bill in disguise, and the hope to find a pocketbook or two while passing along the street seems to be continually present in his mind. His eyes grow heavy with looking down, and when at last there is no longer occasion to look down when he has found all the fourpences and pocketbooks that he has sought for, then the light is painful to him, and he turns to the earth again before he is dead. Habit makes it his only happiness, and he goes to seeking for pocketbooks and fourpences again. If this be the result of looking down, the result of looking up must be, we should suppose, the opposite of this. Lifting the eyes above the world brings one to view things far better than fourpences. As much difference between them as the difference between a star of the first magnitude and a gold dollar. The eyelids turned up, the sunlight streams down upon the mind and prepares therein a soil for the reception of good seed that shall grow up and bear fruit. Look up! Whoever thinks of groping about the foundations of Bunker Hill Monument when there are so many pleasures of vision to be gained by climbing to its summit. The higher the look or climb, the broader the view from the lofty position one gains. The most beautiful and delicate work of a structure is placed at the top. It is sweetest as always the nearest to sun. These are facts that belong to everyday life. To say nothing of that spiritual looking up required to give light to the soul, a commodity which some few people possess and seem desirous of benefitting. But don't, in looking up, lose all memory of earth, for you can't drop your body as you can your coat with your wish and soar off on the wings of the spirit. When you look up, keep part of an eye directed to earth and avoid the coal holes and cellar ways that are open for your unwary feet. A too deep absorption in things above the earth may make the stargazer conscious of a pain in the back from a too sudden contact with the cold, cold ground. As we saw a printer served on a cold morning, the weather he was heaven-seeking is questionable and who looked very simple as he gathered himself up after the prostration. Let the upward look characterize us all with the eye-to-accidents mentioned above and secure for us a name for aspiring above the groveling things of the world and five of us out of six may be deserving of it. Look up. A solemn fact. Your plants are most flagrantly odious, said Mrs. Partington, as she stooped over a small oval red table in a neighbor's house. Which table was covered with cracked pots filled with the exuriant terraniums and a monthly rose and a cactus and other bright creations made their sweetness upon the almost tropical atmosphere of a southerly room in April while a fragrant vine hung in chains graced the window with a curtain more gorgeous than any other not exactly like it. Mrs. Partington stood gazing upon them in admiration. How beautiful they are, she continued. Do you profligate your plants by slips, mem? She was told that such was the case. They were propagated by slips. So was mine, said Mrs. P. I was always more lucky with my slips than with anything else. Bless the kind old heart, Mrs. Partington. It may be so with you, but it is not so with all. For the way of the world is hard and many slips are made and for the unfortunates whose feet or tongues slip on the treacherous path a sentence generally awaits which admits small chance of reversal. A soiled coat or a soiled character sticking to them until both are worn out. Dear old lady, your humble chronicler remembers that many of the young and beautiful are profligated by slips. Slips so gradual that propriety could hardly call them such at first, which end heaven and earth and perdition know how deep. New Remedy for a Drought Mrs. Partington was in the country one August and for a whole month not one drop of rain had fallen. One day she was slowly walking along the road with her umbrella over her head when an old man who was mending up a little gap of wall accosted her, at the same time depositing a large stone on the top of the pile. Mrs. Partington, what do you think can help this ear drought? The old lady looked at him through her spectacles at the same time smelling a fern leaf. I think, said she, in a tone of irracular wisdom, I think a little rain would help it as much as anything. It was a great thought. The old gentleman took off his straw hat and wiped his head with his cotton handkerchief at the same time saying that he thought so too. Hear that voice! Did the reader ever know a man grown and big at that with a very small voice that almost squealed and uttering itself and gave a most ridiculous aspect to what was perhaps of great importance as matters of life and death, the reading of a will, an exhortation to virtue, or an anxious inquiry concerning the health of friends? Of course he has, for there are many such voices about. An agent of a large manufacturing establishment in New Hampshire possessed this peculiarity of voice to a remarkable degree, which once was the cause of a most mortifying and ludicrous mistake. A man came to the factory to get employment. A great burly fellow with a voice like young thunder and saluted the agent, who was a small man, by the way, with the question, Do you want to hire in a tone that seemed to shake the room in which they stood? Starting at the sound, and with a face expressive of nervous irritability, he drawled out in his squeaking, querulous manner as if looking at each word before he uttered it, No, I don't know as I do. The man, not understanding his peculiarity, attributed the strange tones to another cause and kindly extending his huge hand, as one might suppose a friendly bear would, under like circumstances, patted the little agent on the head and soothingly uttered, Well, well, my little fellow, don't cry about it. Don't take on so, if you can't hire me. The contact of crude humanity with his delicate head operated as magically upon the agent as did the touch of Captain Cuddle's hook upon the refined flesh of Dombie, and frightful was the yell with which he met the mechanic's sympathy in a command to leave the room, and awfully vehement was the manner in which he slammed the door, too, as a good-humored fellow passed into the street. Mrs. Partington penned. A friend returned from a visit to New York, presented to Mrs. Partington a gold pen which had been entrusted to him for her. The present was duly examined and admired and turned round and pulled out and held up to the light, and a receipt for pew-rent was brought out from the black bureau on the back of which to test its quality, and she made a straight mark to the right and then crossed it with another straight mark of equal length, and then said it was charming. But who are they? said she speculatively. I don't know them, I'm sure. The friend blandly explained that they knew her very well and that this present was a tribute of regard for her many virtues, which, like the odor of ten thousand flowers, was born across the entire land. The giver was eloquent, touching. Ah, said she, it is very kind to remember a poor widow-less body like me. What friends I have got! I hope that heaven will be rewarded for their kindness to me. It was a fervent aspiration, and though the letter of her prayer might seem to divert the reward from its true object, still its spirit conferred it rightly. She opened the old black bureau desk in the corner and placed the gold pen carefully by the side of the paced shoe-buckles and hoop earrings, valuable relics of bygone times, and then securely locked the desk as she saw Ike looking curiously into the window with his nose flattened close against the glass. The soda fountain. There it goes again, said Mrs. Partington, as she became conscious of the sublimity of a soda fountain one warm day. There it goes again, I declare, fizzing away like a blessed old locomo on the railroad. Don't say anything about Nigeria now. That isn't nothing in comparison to this. And it ain't a bad beer, another. But how in nature they can draw so many kinds out of one faucet, that's the wonderment to me. And she readjusted her specs and took a new survey of the mystery, while Ike, unwatched, was weighing his knife and five jackstones in the bright brass scale on the other counter. Giving Reasons The various reasons which some folks always have ready for their accidents and misfortunes, or as palliatives for their faults and follies, are very amusing. Many stories are told of such. One we remember of a boy who had played truant and gave as the reason for his absence that his father kept him at home to help grind the handsaw. A toper, accounting for a bad cold he had, said he had slept on the comb and got to shut the gate. Another soaker, who was found in the gutter with the water making a free passage over him, when asked how he came there, replied that he had agreed to meet a man there. In our printing office days, when we had to work for a living, it was our luck to work with a queer old fellow who bore the name of Smith or some such odd title. He was a very unhappy man and never smiled unless he had the whole office in a snarl and then he would chuckle right gladly. It was always fancying that his office mates were imposing upon him and a perfect flood of bile would he throw off at times for imagined wrongs. His position was by a window, fronting the east, and over this window he claimed absolute dominion to shut it up or have it open as he just pleased, maugered the fretting of those who were annoyed by his obstinacy. He assumed the office of a thermometer for the men and graduated the heat according to his own feelings. If the wind was east he would as surely have the window open as that he would have it shut if it blew pleasantly from the west. One day with the wind blew east the window was open all day and much audible complaint was made by all hands but without any effect. It was with a feeling nearly akin to exaltation they saw him enter the office next day with indubitable signs of having a cold upon him. His nose looked red in draw and his voice sounded as if he had two tight-fitting cork stoppers in his nostrils. The window that day was not opened you may depend. One of the men undertook to remind him that his cold was in consequence of the wind blowing upon him. "'Go at eight,' said Smith, but I hugged my hat up by the widder and last night, when I put it on, it was brim full of eastward. A small trade. Cold day Mr. Smith said old Roger to dock square omnibus to his neighbor who assented very politely. And yet, continued Roger, cold as it is, I have just seen a man in State Street who does not wear gloves." Ah! responded Smith struck with the singularity of the statement. Why not, pray? Why chuckle the old man because he hasn't any hands. Mr. Smith smiled. On locomotion. So they've got you on the stage, Mrs. Smith, said we to the old lady after seeing her name on a theater bill as one of the characters in a new burletta. On the stage replied she, and a gleam of memory passed over her face like a ray of sunshine over a faded landscape. And she looked out of the window and down the street until her eye rested on an omnibus moving quickly along in the pride of paint and gold and she took passage in it in fancy and went along with it. Yes, said she, they did get me on the stage because it caused a nonsense in my stomach to ride inside, and what a queer figure I did make on it to be sure. But that, dear, was five and twenty years ago and it is so queer they should remember it. All of them stages. I've heard of people riding by easy stages but I never saw one. The easiest way that I ever rid was on a pillory behind Paul there. Easy stages indeed. It would shake the sensuality all out of me and I never got over it for a week. How different it is now. And she looked at the omnibus just passing her door. All you have to do is to get into an ominous all cushioned nicely with a whole picture gallery around it to see for nothing and before you know it you are where you want to go. Stages, but it is the national stage, we said. Well, well, replied she hastily, take no difference only the national stage carried the male and tethered the female passengers. One was just as bad as tether and I don't know but worse. But they've got you in the theatre, the national theatre, we persisted and showed her the bill. She looked at it a moment and wiped her specs and looked at it again in silence as if her mind had and got back from the hard journey it had just taken. At that moment a crash of glass called her hastily to the kitchen. She was covered with fragments of that brittle article and a large ball hopped under a chair as if ashamed of itself while Ike was seen through the broken window making tracks speedily for the shed. We left her picking up the glass so that he might not get it into his bare feet when he came in. Depend upon it he had to take a severe talking to when she caught him. The largest liberty. Now go to meeting, dear, as Isaac stood smoothing his hair preparatory to going out on Sunday he looked down at his new shoes and a thought of the green fields made him sigh. A fishing line hung out of one pocket which Mrs. Partington didn't see. Where shall I go to? asked Ike. Since the old lady had given up her seat in the old north church she had no stated place of worship. Go! replied she sublimely as she pulled down his jacket behind. Now where is where the gospel is dispensed with? Such liberality is rare. Bigotry finds no place in her composition and the truth in her view throws its light into every apartment of the Christian edifice like an Oysterman's chandelier into his many booths. The simile is not the very best but the best to be had at present. Mrs. Partington in court I took my knitting work and went up into the gallery said Mrs. Partington after visiting one of the city courts I went up into the gallery and after I had digested my specs I looked down into the room but I couldn't see any courting going on. An old gentleman seemed to be asking a good many impertinent questions just like some old folks and people were setting round making minuettes of the conversation. I don't see how they made out what was said for the all told different stories. How much easier it would be to get along if they were all made to tell the same story. What a sight of trouble it would save the lawyers. The case as they called it was given to the jury but I couldn't see it and a gentleman with a long pole was made to swear that he'd keep an eye on them and see that they didn't run away with it. By and by and they come again and then they said somebody was guilty of something who had just said he was innocent and didn't know nothing about it no more than the little baby that never had subsistence. I come away soon afterwards but I couldn't help thinking how trying it must be to sit there all day shut out from the blessed air. This experience is a beautiful exhibit of judicial life. True enough Mrs. Partington how easy might be the determining of cases were but one side of the story told. But alas for perplexed jurymen there are unfortunately two sides and the brain is wracked to judge between them. Conscience holding the light tremblingly lest honor be compromised and mercy pointing with raised finger to its fountain as if endeavoring to draw attention from justice who stands sword in hand to urge her claim to well and truly try is the solemn duty fastened by an oath and the Commonwealth reposes in blessed security upon the broad responsibility of twelve honest men. God save the Commonwealth. End of Section 2 Section 3 of Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Debra Lynn Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and others of the family by B. P. Schillaber Section 3 Right and Left There never was a time when the divine right of kings could be better shown said old Roger emphasizing the word right significantly. Why? asked the little man from the provinces looking up. Because, replied he, there will soon be none of them left. An audible whew whistled along the table and one distinct knock from each border denoted equivocal approbation. The dessert was dispensed with. A little truth well put. So you've come down to attend the adversary meetings said Mrs. Partington as she surveyed the three trunks and two valises and a basket that the cab had just left and the owner of them all a gentleman in black with a ghostly looking neck cloth. Ah! said he, humoring her concede and smiling, for he expected to stay some days. The adversary we meet, we subdue with the weapons of the spirit. That is just what dear Deacon Sprig said when he captivated the crazy engine with New England rum and then put him in bridle. Says he, I'll subdue him with the sword of the spirit. He was such a queer man. These meetings are excellent for converting heathens and saving the lost and I do hope, after they have saved everybody else, that they will try and save a few more of their own that need teaching. There is a great many round here that want looking after more than the heathen do and we must look after our own first or be worse than the infiddles. A pair of yarn stockings and a box of butter stopped her mouth for the time and the old silver spoons worked P.P. and the antique china were brought out. Articles that were only used on state occasions. Musical criticism. How did you like the concert? asked Frank of Mrs. Partington at the oratorio. Very much indeed, said she. I liked everything about the Ontario but the consecutives. The corrosives I thought were sublimated but the consecutives I thought was dreadfully out of tune. I explained to her the object of the recitative and smiled a little at the queer mistake she had made in musical terms. Bless thee, Mrs. Partington, thy genius in its extravagance has never retarded by terms. Life on the road. One summer, during the very hot weather, our Ellen, whose life could number seventeen happy summers and nearly the same number of winters, took it into her little roguish head that she would attempt in beach, and when such a whim had once got into her head the question might well be asked how could it be got out. It would be hopeless to attempt it provided anyone were so inclined. But no one said a word and Ellen did go. She and her little friend Charlotte who was on a visit to Ellen started for the beach with lots of precautions and donuts from Ellen's mother, for there is not a better soul between here and Ellen's. The horse and the wagon, bearing its charming freight of two pretty girls moved swiftly and safely over the road to the beach and many a musical echo reverberated through the woods and along the meadows and by the hillsides and from the hill tops as they passed along. The day was very pleasantly spent by the seashore and when weiried with rambling over the fine smooth beach and sporting in the breakers like niads they started their return home with hearts as light and eyes as bright as when they set out in the morning. Their horse was a spirited animal which could ill-brook a whip and was also emulative to a great degree in competing with other horses for mastery on the road. In fact he would allow no horse to go by him and made it a matter of principle, of horses are ever governed by principle, to go by all on the road. They had got perhaps halfway home when they overtook an oldish sort of a man who was driving a fast horse. Billy, Alan's horse, stuck up his ears and put her with an evident determination of going by. The olden stirred his beast up to the strife and away they went over the road as swift as the swallows neither having the advantage. Alan laughed at the sport and held the ribbons with the tact of a veteran Yehu. The contest was soon decided for and the old chap raised his whip and slightly touched Billy with the lash. Billy impetuously kicked at the insult but darted lightning along the road distancing his competitor in a twinkling. The old man was seen no more by the victors but over the road they still flew. Billy heeding neither rain nor word. The remembrance of the insult put him to his speed and he dashed along with terrific velocity. Men rushed out and threw up their hands and cried whoa! Women screamed and prophesied whoa to them. Dogs barked as they skimmed along. But no fear was felt by our Alan in her peril. Her pulse was quick with the excitement but no fear mingled with it. Her cheek was red as the rose and her eyes laughed as her ringing voice told the people to get out of the way. She wound the ribbons round her hands and to keep the middle of the road was her only care. Bravo, Alan! Bravo! And the brave heart and strong arm gave her the victory. A two-mile heat, the quickest ever ran in our county, stands recorded to her fame. This isn't much of a story but it shows what a true woman can do and should do in an emergency. It will not do for Alan's husband to treat her badly we can tell him when he gets her. His bones wouldn't be entirely safe. Fancy Diseases is very various, said Mrs. Partington as she returned from a street-door conversation with Dr. Bolas. The doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Hayes has got two buckles on her lungs. It is dreadful to think of a declare. The diseases is so various. One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs, another way of the brown creatures. Here they tell us of the elementary canal being out of order and there are monsters of the throat. Here we hear of neurology in the head, there of an embargo. One side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcophagus and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any disease nowadays. New names and new nostrils takes the place of the old and I might as well throw my old herb bag away. Fifteen minutes afterwards Isaac had that herb bag for a target and broke three squares of glass in the cellar window and trying to hit it before the old lady knew what he was about. She didn't mean exactly what she said. Deguerreotypes What artfulness said Mrs. Partington as she held her miniature in her hand done in the highest style of the Degurrian art. The features were radiant with benevolence. The cap close folded about her venerable face bore upon it the faded black ribbon the memento of ancient woe. The close folded kerchief about her neck was pinned with mathematical exactness. While from beneath the cap border struggled a dark gray lock of hair like a withered branch in winter waving amid accumulated snows. The specks and box were represented upon the table by her side. The picture was like her and admiration marked every line of maintenance as she spoke. What artfulness here is and how naturally every liniment is brought out. How nicely the dress is digested. She was talking to herself all the while. Why this old black lute string that I have worn twenty years for Paul looks as good as new, only it is a little too short wasted by a great deal. Oh, Paul, Paul, said she as she sat back in her chair engaged with a tear in her eye upon an old smoke profile cut in black that had hung for many a year above the mantelpiece. Oh, Paul, what a blessed thing this is where art helps nader and nader helps art and they both help one another. How I wish I had your dear old fizz mahogany done like this. I'd prize it more than gold or silver. She sat still and looked alternately at the daguerreotype and the profile as if she hoped the profile would speak to her. But it still looked rigidly forward thrusting out its huge outline of nose as if proud of it and then with a sigh she reclassped the case and deposited the picture in the upper drawer of the old black bureau in the corner. Ike was all the while burning holes through a pine shingle with one of Mrs. Partington's best knitting needles. That and that. You do make that child look like a fool wife with all that taggery on him, said Mr. Fogg angrily as they were starting out to talk. Dear me, says Mrs. Partington, meeting them at the door, what a doll of a baby and how much he resembles his papa. Mr. Fogg coughed and they passed along. On politics. As regards these electrical matters, said Mrs. Partington just before election, she lived on a main street and the cheering and noise of parties passing her door kept her awake and wanted to give him their sufferings if he hasn't got any of his own and let him be governor till he dies just as they do the judges in other words, too, as they sometimes do them for they might as well be dead a good many of them. Oh, this confusion of noise and hubbub, my poor head aches the hearing of it and Isaac has got such a cold looking out of the window at the possessions without nothing on the head and then what critters they all be to be sure. Their newspapers are brimful of good resolutions but narrow one of them did I ever know him to keep. They are always resolving like the showman's resolving views and one resolution fades away just as quick as another comes. If I could have my way I would hooray here they come cried Ike breaking in upon the old ladies remarks and banging his slate on the floor and throwing up the window with the vehemence that broke two squares of glass. Hooray came up in a big chorus on the street filling Mrs. Partington's little chamber to its utmost capacity with hooray the great element of political life. There they go again, cried she, with their drums and lanterns like crazy critters and keeping folks awake when they ought to be in the arms of Murphy. Ike pulled in his head and dropped the window and the good old lady mended the fracture of the glass by a hat and a pair of pants of Ikes if he ever did so again. But do you suppose she would have kept it? Ike knew better. When the glacier came in the next day to mend the window she had to tell him the story of how it was broke but all the blame was on the politicians. Don't crowd so good woman said old Roger at the Lowell Institute as he was waiting his turn to give his name. Don't crowd so. And looking over his shoulder he met the reproachful glance of Mrs. who was there for the same purpose. He immediately gave way to her and the next morning found himself not divisible by seven or anything like it. So much for politeness, growled old Roger. She'll get all the natural religion now and much good may it do her. You would have smiled to see the spiteful manner in which the little man said this. Beautiful reflection interrupted. Dear me, said Mrs. Pardington, and so she is, dear, not that she meant so, because under that black bonnet is humility and self praise forms no part of her reflection. It was a simple ejaculation, that was all. Our word for it. Dear me, here they are going to have war again over the sea and only for a turkey and it don't say how much it weighed nor whether it was tender and Prince Knackham Stiff is going off in a myth and the Russian bears and ostriches are all to be let loose by the power of the people and heaven knows where the end of it will leave off. War is a dreadful thing so destroying to temper in good clothes and men shoot at each other just as if there was gutter purchase and cheap at that. How sorrowfully the cover of the snuff box shot as she ceased speaking and the spectacles looked dewy like a tumbler in summer heat filled with ice water as she looked at the profile of the corporal with the sprig of sweet fern above it what did Ike mean as he stole in and deposited some red article under the cricket upon which her feet rested and then stole out again a hissing sound followed crack, snap, bang, whiz when a bunch of crackers and Mrs. Partington in consternation and cloth slippers danced about the room forgetful of distant war and her present alarm ah, Ike appointing inspectors inspectors of customs said Mrs. Partington energetically as she laid down the paper chronicling some new appointment here was a new idea that broke upon her mind like a ray of sunshine through a corn barn inspectors of customs and she looked up at the rigid profile of the old corporal as if she would ask what he had to say about it but that warrior had hung there too long to be now disturbed by trifles and he took no notice of her inspectors of customs continued she as she turned her attention to the old black teapot and then turned out the tea which celestial beverage gurgled through the spout in harmony with her reflections not too strong that's a new idea to me but thank Providence I haint got no customs that I had in his lives they'd inspect as not only I'd a little rather they wouldn't I wish everybody could say so but I'm afraid there are many customs that won't bear looking into well let every tub stand on its own bottom I say I won't cast no speciousness on nobody but I don't see what they want to do a point anymore for and be to so much suspense whenever place has so many in it that will inspect customs for nothing if they'd only make the next door neighbor Miss Juniper now an inspector of customs they wouldn't need another for a long ways that's mortally certain she stirred her sousong as she ruminated untasting and Ike helped himself unheeded to the last preserved pair there was in the dish Mrs. Partington at tea adulterated tea said Mrs. Partington as she read in the transcript an account of the adulteration of teas in England at which she was much shocked I wonder if this is adulterated and she bowed her head over the steaming and fragrant decoction in the cup before her whose genial odors mingled with the silvery vapor and encircled her venerable pole like a halo it smells virtuous continued she smiling with satisfaction and I know this Xu Shan tea must be good because I bought it of Mr. Xu Shan himself at Reddings adulterated she meandered on pensively as a brook in June and it's again the commandment too which says don't break that Isaac as she saw that interesting juvenile amusing himself with making refracted sunbeams dance upon the wall and around the dark profile and among the leaves of the sweet fern like yellow butterflies or fugitive chips of new June butter the alarm for her crackery dispelled all disquietude about the tea and she sipped her beverage all oblivious of Dela tea furious infusions sir you owe me a cent other things may be great said you with a nod besides what's called so some very little thing if just done well can be a great one in impudence say for instance yesterday a boy asked me pitifully for a four pence I gave him what I thought to be one and passed on presently I felt a twitch at my coat tail and looked round and there stood the boy sir says he you owe me a cent this ear won't pass for five cents it's crossed I gave the little rascal a shilling at once I couldn't help it the thing was sublime admirable hang me if it wasn't and the little man struck his cane violently on the ground and laughed happily at the supreme impudence displayed in the affair guessing at a name drive him out screamed Mrs. Partington as Ike whistled in an immense house dog who perambulated the kitchen dotting the newly washed floor with flowers and audaciously smelling Mrs. Partington's toes as the old lady stood up in a chair to avoid him drive him out what is his name Isaac guess replied Ike I can't I know perhaps it's watch your Ponto or Caesar what is it why guess I tell you I can't guess perhaps it's Hector or Tiger or Rover what is his name guess oh you provoking creature I'll be tempered to whip you within an inch of your skin if you provoke me so why don't you tell me I did tell you the first time wind Ike pulling the dog's ear with one hand while he wiped his dry eyes with the other his name is guess the old lady was melted by his emotion and as soon as the dog was sent out some nice quince jelly settled the difficulty he is such a queer child murmur chi so bright I suppose because he was weaned on pickles Ike ate his preserves in silence but his eye was on the acorn on the post of the old lady's highback chair and he thought what a nice top it would make if he could saw it off some day burning water while this is a discovery exclaimed Mrs. Partington smilingly as she stood with a small picture in her right hand her left resting upon the pine table and her eyes fixed upon the flame of a glass lamp that sputtered for a moment and then shot out a gleam of cheerful light that irradiated every part of the little kitchen revealing the portrait of Paul upon the wall and Ike asleep by the fire she spoke to herself it was a way she had and she met with no contradiction from that quarter this is a discovery this lamp was almost burnt out and I filled it up with water and it burns like the real isle the experiment was perfectly triumphant the problem of light from water was demonstrated and yet with this vast fact revealed to her Mrs. Partington with a modesty equal to that of the great philosopher who picked up a pocketful of rocks on the shore of the vast ocean of truth smiled with delight at her discovery nor once thought of putting out a patent or selling rights was entirely willing all might burn water that could a striking manifestation I can't believe in spirituous knockings said Mrs. Partington solemnly as some things were related to her which had been seen that appeared very mysterious I can't believe about it for I know if Paul could come back he would revolve himself to me here and wouldn't make me run a mile only to get a few dry knocks strange that the world should be so superstitional as to believe such a rhapsody or think a spirit can go knocking about a boy in vexation I can't believe it and I don't know if I could if that teapot there was to jump off the table right before my eyes she paused and through the gloom of approaching darkness could be seen the determined expression of her mouth a slight movement was heard upon the table and the little black teapot moved from its position crawled slowly up the wall and then hung passively by the side of the profile of the ancient corporal old lady could not speak but held up her hands in wild amazement while her snuff box fell from her nervous grasp and rolled along upon the sanded floor she left the room to procure a light and as soon as she had gone the teapot was lowered by the invisible hand to its original station and Ike stepped out from beneath the table, stowing a long string away in his pocket and grinning prodigiously Ike and the elephant said Ike looking the elephant directly in the eye at the same time doubling up his huge fist as big as a half-cent bun and putting on an air of defiance after the animal had stolen his gingerbread well you got it didn't you you old thief you I suppose you think you've done thunder and great things don't you for my part I don't call it no better than stealing oh you may stand there and swing that ridiculous looking trunk of yarn just as much as you're a mind to you can't skewer fellow I can tell you this is a free country old club feet and you and are going to take any more liberties here like that I can tell you it won't be safe for that ingy rubber hidey yarn if you do you take my gingerbread away again if you dare that's all you just try it you ungainly reptile you oh you may look saucy and pretend you don't care but you just say two words just knock that chip off my head and if I don't give you fits my name at Ike partington that's all put down that big ingy rubber bludgeon and I'll black your eyes for you you old tough leather you darsens say a word you ill-mannered old hunch I'd knock your eye teeth out if you did well take it up if you're a mind to you needn't think to bully it over me because you're a little bigger than I am I can tell you we don't stand no such nonsense as that around here if for that policeman looking here I'd pitch into you like a thousand of bricks I wouldn't get out of your way as people do when they go along and I should like to see you just step on my toes why can't you just try it now will you I guess I'd make you here thunder with them leather apron ears to yarn you big overgrown vagabond you can't no use to talking to you but I shall be here and if you don't mind your eye I'll lick you like blazes before I go out here Isaac undoubled his hands and shaking his head threateningly at the huge animal he went over to get a look at the monkeys the elephant lazily swung his trunk from side to side and good naturely fanned himself with his big ears as if he hadn't minded a word the little fellow had said a substitute I haven't got any money said Mrs. Partington as the box came round at the close of a charity lecture but here's a couple of elegant sausages I have brought that you can give the poor creeders the boxholder looked confounded the people smiled with her view of charity she saw nothing wrong in the act bless thee Mrs. Partington angels shall record the deed on the credit side of thy account and where hearts are judged shall thy simple gift way like gold in the day of award wholesome advice Isaac said Mrs. Partington as that interesting juvenile was playing a game of knuckle-up against the kitchen wall to the imminent danger of the old clock which ticked nearby and Babson says and perhaps there's no harm in them but I'm afraid no good will come out of it no good at all for you to keep playing marvels all the time as you do I am afraid you will learn how to gamble and become a bad boy and forget all the good device I have given you I would break my soul Isaac to have you given to naughty tricks like some wicked boys that I know who will be raked shames in the earth if they don't die before their time comes and I will be here and always play as if you had just his leaves the minister would see you as not she handed him a little bag she had made for him to keep his marvels in and patted his head kindly as he went again to play Ike was fortified for the next five minutes against temptation to do evil but chase, span, in the ring knuckle-up or anything are potent when arrayed in his much reason in the old lady's fear a ghost story in the vicinity of a town not many miles from Boston was a dark glen by the roadside reputed to be haunted a traveller had been found here many years before frozen to death and his troubled spirit with a disposition to trouble everybody else was said nightly to visit the scene of his mortal termination to have a melancholy satisfaction all alone by himself he was as much auditors as he could press in to participate in the services of the evening an old fellow who resided in the town and was fully imbued with a superstition had been one night to a husking where the milk punch had circulated with more than common generosity and though not foul he had enough on board to make him comfortable and happy and glorious are all the ills of life victorious towards the hour of breaking up the situation turned upon the ghost by whose dark hunting ground our friend had to pass over a road raised up amid an elder swamp whose sad gloom could hardly be dispelled by a noonday sun and where nothing but a ghost of the most simple sort would wish to abide with tippany we fear na evil with uskwabe we'll face the devil burns said and milk punch we supposed to be about the same in its courage inspiring properties snapped his fingers at danger from ghosts and unholy angels and cared for neither a boatel it was a mile walk good to the spiritual precinct and thinking on his way that it would be the part of prudence to prepare for emergency before he came to the dark gulf he was to pass he gathered a small artillery from a stone wall determined if assaulted to do battle manfully for the credit of the punch he had crossed a little brook a rude bridge above it and had fairly got through the dangerous part as he considered it of his journey and muttered to himself and rather a tone of disappointment I guess he must be sick fog isn't good for him when low almost directly in the path before him was an object that made him come to a stand at once it was all ghostly white and he had barely time to look at it when a hideous groan came towards him on the night air the punch could hardly counteract in its effect on his nervous system rallying however he selected a missile and let it fly to his ghostly obstructor another groan like the last fellow of expiring nature answered this assault he hurled another huge stone and gathering courage from the excitement he blazed away in a manner that would astonish either human or superhuman antagonist but without any apparent effect upon the adversary he was found on his ground manfully or perhaps we should say ghostfully as the last stone of his ammunition was expended however with a cry that echoed fearfully through the alders the ghost rushed towards him and a violent shock laid him senseless upon the ground of anquished man he was found the next morning pensively sitting by the roadside contemplating the scene of his night's exploit with his head in his hand he told his story the scattered missiles for proof of what he had done and he was believed for to give up the ghost was out of the question but on going home a small white two-year-old bull was seen grazing by the roadside and suspicion for a moment crossed their minds that this might have been the ghost after all seen through the medium of the punch but this would have been voted rank heresy against the ancient institution of ghosts and they held their peace End of section 3