species of awe, to the long stories which she loved so dearly to relate
about everybody whom she visited. She was very short--not seeming to me
much taller than myself--and the cumbrous dress of the period was
calculated to make her appear much shorter. She would sit and relate
wonderful occurrences which seemed constantly taking place in her
daughter's family; one of the children would cut his foot, and for
sometime there would be danger of amputation--another urchin would upset
a kettle of scalding water on himself, and then he would be laid up for
sometime, while mamma turned the green-ribbon room topsy-turvy in her
searches after old linen--and once the daughter fell down stairs, and
was taken up for dead. They seemed to be an unfortunate family--always
meeting with hair-breadth escapes. Aunty Patton's reticule was always
well filled with good things on every occasion of her departure; and
very often a collection of money was added to the stock.

Mamma sometimes endeavored to enlist our sympathies in benevolent
purposes. I remember, on one occasion, when I had been teasing sometime
for a new tortoise-shell comb to keep back my hair with, it suddenly
entered my head that it would be a well-disposed action to ask for some
money to give Aunty Patton.

"Are you willing, Amy, to deny yourself anything," asked mamma, after I
had made my request, "in order that I may give this money to Aunty
Patton? It is no benevolence in you to ask me to give away money, unless
you are willing to do without something in consequence. If I give Aunty
Patton the five dollars that your comb will cost, are you willing to do
without it?"

"Dear me," thought I, "being good is very expensive." I deliberated for
sometime, but finally answered, "No." My mother pressed the subject no