I like to see the old place open; it was about as bad as having no
meeting. I miss seeing the lights, and your aunt was a great hand for
lighting up bright; the big hall lantern was lit every night, and she
put it out when she went up stairs. She liked to go round same's if it
was day. You see I forget all the time she was sick, and go back to the
days when she was well and about the house. When her mind was failing
her, and she was up stairs in her room, her eyesight seemed to be lost
part of the time, and sometimes she'd tell us to get the lamp and a
couple o' candles in the middle o' the day, and then she'd be as
satisfied! But she used to take a notion to set in the dark, some
nights, and think, I s'pose. I should have forty fits, if I undertook
it. That was a good while ago; and do you rec'lect how she used to play
the piano? She used to be a great hand to play when she was young."

"Indeed I remember it," said Kate, who told me afterward how her aunt
used to sit at the piano in the twilight and play to herself. "She was
formerly a skilful musician," said my friend, "though one would not have
imagined she cared for music. When I was a child she used to play in
company of an evening, and once when I was here one of her old friends
asked for a tune, and she laughingly said that her day was over and her
fingers were stiff; though I believe she might have played as well as
ever then, if she had cared to try. But once in a while when she had
been quiet all day and rather sad--I am ashamed that I used to think she
was cross--she would open the piano and sit there until late, while I
used to be enchanted by her memories of dancing-tunes, and old psalms,
and marches and songs. There was one tune which I am sure had a history:
there was a sweet wild cadence in it, and she would come back to it
again and again, always going through with it in the same measured way.
I have remembered so many things about my aunt since I have been here,"
said Kate, "which I hardly noticed and did not understand when they