sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely
hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she warded
off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way that she had
lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the kitchen after they
had taken their bitters. "Quality ladies took their bitters regular," she
added, to remove any sting of personality from her remark; for, from many
things she had let fall, we knew that she did not regard us as quality. On
the contrary, she often tried to overbear us with the gentility of her
former places; and would tell the lady over whom she reigned, that she had
lived with folks worth their three and four hundred thousand dollars, who
never complained as she did of the ironing. Yet she had a sufficient
regard for the literary occupations of the family, Mr. Johnson having been
an author. She even professed to have herself written a book, which was
still in manuscript, and preserved somewhere among her best clothes.

It was well, on many accounts, to be in contact with a mind so original
and suggestive as Mrs. Johnson's. We loved to trace its intricate yet
often transparent operations, and were perhaps too fond of explaining its
peculiarities by facts of ancestry,--of finding hints of the Powwow or the
Grand Custom in each grotesque development. We were conscious of something
warmer in this old soul than in ourselves, and something wilder, and we
chose to think it the tropic and the untracked forest. She had scarcely
any being apart from her affection; she had no morality, but was good
because she neither hated nor envied; and she might have been a saint far
more easily than far more civilized people.

There was that also in her sinuous yet malleable nature, so full of guile
and so full of goodness, that reminded us pleasantly of lowly folk in
elder lands, where relaxing oppressions have lifted the restraints of fear
between master and servant, without disturbing the familiarity of their