My Cousin Fanny





We do not keep Christmas now as we used to do in old Hanover.
We have not time for it, and it does not seem like the same thing.
Christmas, however, always brings up to me my cousin Fanny;
I suppose because she always was so foolish about Christmas.

My cousin Fanny was an old maid; indeed, to follow St. Paul's turn of phrase,
she was an old maid of the old maids. No one who saw her a moment
could have doubted it. Old maids have from most people a feeling rather akin
to pity -- a hard heritage. They very often have this feeling from the young.
This must be the hardest part of all -- to see around them friends,
each "a happy mother of children," little ones responding to affection
with the sweet caresses of childhood, whilst any advances that they,
their aunts or cousins, may make are met with indifference or condescension.
My cousin Fanny was no exception. She was as proud as Lucifer;
yet she went through life -- the part that I knew of -- bearing the pity
of the great majority of the people who knew her.

She lived at an old place called "Woodside", which had been in the family
for a great many years; indeed, ever since before the Revolution.
The neighborhood dated back to the time of the colony,
and Woodside was one of the old places. My cousin Fanny's grandmother
had stood in the door of her chamber with her large scissors in her hand,
and defied Tarleton's red-coated troopers to touch the basket