to be the hucksteress of a cent-shop.

This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only
resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of
our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those
tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she
could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years
gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of
ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been
often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review
of her early studies in the New England Primer, with a view to
prepare herself for the office of instructress. But the love of
children had never been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was
now torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people of the
neighborhood from her chamber-window, and doubted whether she
could tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with them. Besides,
in our day, the very A B C has become a science greatly too abstruse
to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.
A modern child could teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzibah
could teach the child. So--with many a cold, deep heart-quake
at the idea of at last coming into sordid contact with the world,
from which she had so long kept aloof, while every added day of
seclusion had rolled another stone against the cavern door of her
hermitage--the poor thing bethought herself of the ancient shop-window,
the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a little
longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted at, had somewhat
hastened her decision. Her humble preparations, therefore, were
duly made, and the enterprise was now to be commenced. Nor was
she entitled to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate;
for, in the town of her nativity, we might point to several little