the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying breaths these forty years.

See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth, with her gown and
upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her person the
whole warmth of the fire, which, now at nightfall, begins to dissipate
the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers capriciously in
front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms of her wrinkled
visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the outlines of
her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a teaspoon in her
right hand, with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her
left, whence steams a vapory fragrance, abhorred of temperance
societies. Now she sips,--now stirs,--now sips again. Her sad old
heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva, which is
mixed half and half with hot water, in the tumbler. All day long she
has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home, only
when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too.
But now are her melancholy meditations cheered, and her torpid blood
warmed, and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous
years, by a draught from the true Fountain of Youth, in a case-bottle.
It is strange that men should deem that fount a fable when its liquor
fills more bottles than the Congress-water! Sip it again, good nurse,
and see whether a second draught will not take off another score of
years, and perhaps ten more, and show us, in your high-backed chair,
the blooming damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane. Get you
gone, Age and Widowhood! Come back, unwedded Youth! But, alas! the
charm will not work. In spite of fancy's most potent spell, I can see
only an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of decay and
desolation, while the November blast roars at her in the chimney, and
fitful showers rush suddenly against the window.