though if you should not happen to be, it does not matter--I have
about three quarters of a mind to let you know what I think of the
practice of _putting on airs_. The best way to do the thing perhaps,
will be in the form of a story, and a story it shall be--a story
about a friend of mine who is sometimes called Aunt Kate, and who has
been known to call herself by that name.

It is true that some of the incidents in this story are not much to my
friend's credit. But I am sure she cannot blame me for mentioning them
to you; for she gave me the whole story, and I shall tell it almost
exactly in her own words. Are you ready for it? Well, then, here it
is:

Reader, have you ever been from home? Of course you have. Everybody
goes from home in these days; but in the days of my childhood such an
event was not a matter of course affair, as it now is. Most people
stayed at home then, more then they do now--the very aged, and the
very young, especially.

When I was a child, my parents sometimes took me with them, when they
went to visit their city friends. These journeys used to excite the
envy of all my young companions, none of whom, if I recollect right,
had ever been to a city. But times have changed even in my native
village; and the juvenile portion of its inhabitants begin their
travels much earlier in life now, than they did then.

But the first time I went from home alone--that was an event! Went
alone, did I say? I am too fast. My father saw me safely to the place
where I was to go, and left me to spend a few days and come home in
the _stage_.