and cry out. We had the incontestable proof that it was all "put on";
for if you began to talk to her, and got her interested,
she would forget all about her ailments, and would run on and talk and laugh
for an hour, until she suddenly remembered, and sank back again
in her shawls and pains.

She knew a great deal. In fact, I recall now that she seemed to know
more than any woman I have ever been thrown with, and if she had not been
an old maid, I am bound to admit that her conversation would have been
the most entertaining I ever knew. She lived in a sort of atmosphere
of romance and literature; the old writers and their characters
were as real to her as we were, and she used to talk about them to us
whenever we would let her. Of course, when it came from an old maid,
it made a difference. She was not only easily the best French scholar
in our region, where the ladies all knew more or less of French,
but she was an excellent Latin scholar, which was much less common.
I have often lain down before the fire when I was learning my Latin lesson,
and read to her, line by line, Caesar or Ovid or Cicero, as the book
might be, and had her render it into English almost as fast as I read.
Indeed, I have even seen Horace read to her as she sat
in the old rocking-chair after one of her headaches, with her eyes bandaged,
and her head swathed in veils and shawls, and she would turn it into
not only proper English, but English with a glow and color and rhythm
that gave the very life of the odes. This was an exercise we boys all liked
and often engaged in -- Frank, and Joe, and Doug, and I, and even old Blinky
-- for, as she used to admit herself, she was always worrying us
to read to her (I believe I read all of Scott's novels to her).
Of course this translation helped us as well as gratified her.
I do not remember that she was ever too unwell to help us in this way
except when she was actually in bed. She was very fond of us boys,