believe house. She amused us in various ways. Once, I remember, in
giving a conversation as between myself and my two cousins, supposing we
were all grown up, the day after a ball.'

Very similar is the testimony of another niece:--'Aunt Jane was the
general favourite with children; her ways with them being so playful, and
her long circumstantial stories so delightful. These were continued from
time to time, and were begged for on all possible and impossible
occasions; woven, as she proceeded, out of nothing but her own happy
talent for invention. Ah! if but one of them could be recovered! And
again, as I grew older, when the original seventeen years between our
ages seemed to shrink to seven, or to nothing, it comes back to me now
how strangely I missed her. It had become so much a habit with me to put
by things in my mind with a reference to her, and to say to myself, I
shall keep this for aunt Jane.'

A nephew of hers used to observe that his visits to Chawton, after the
death of his aunt Jane, were always a disappointment to him. From old
associations he could not help expecting to be particularly happy in that
house; and never till he got there could he realise to himself how all
its peculiar charm was gone. It was not only that the chief light in the
house was quenched, but that the loss of it had cast a shade over the
spirits of the survivors. Enough has been said to show her love for
children, and her wonderful power of entertaining them; but her friends
of all ages felt her enlivening influence. Her unusually quick sense of
the ridiculous led her to play with all the common-places of everyday
life, whether as regarded persons or things; but she never played with
its serious duties or responsibilities, nor did she ever turn individuals
into ridicule. With all her neighbours in the village she vas on
friendly, though not on intimate, terms. She took a kindly interest in