particularly blameless;
Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing
to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.

She was an excellent person in every way--and won the respect even of
MRS. GRUNDY,
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted a penny if she
had owned the Koh-i-noor.
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday,
And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the
bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she
had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup for the
deserving poor.

I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE--that outcast of
society,
And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look
dubious and to cough,
She would say, "Oh, my friends, it's because I hope to bring this poor
benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,
And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was
uncommonly well off.

And when MR. BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attention to the
frown or the pout of her,
Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an
unmentionable place,
He would say that "she would be a very decent old girl when all that
nonsense was knocked out of her,"
And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered him with