TOLD IN THE POORHOUSE.


"Le' me see," said old Sally Flint, "was it fifty year ago, or was it
on'y forty? Some'er's betwixt 1825 an' '26 it must ha' been when they
were married, an' 'twas in '41 he died."

The other old women in the Poorhouse sitting-room gathered about her.
Old Mrs. Forbes, who dearly loved a story, unwound a length of yarn
with peculiar satisfaction, and put her worn shoe up to the fire.
Everybody knew when Sally Flint was disposed to open her unwritten book
of folk-tales for the public entertainment; and to-day, having tied on
a fresh apron and bound a new piece of red flannel about her wrist, she
was, so to speak, in fighting trim. The other members of the Poorhouse
had scanty faith in that red flannel. They were aware that Sally had
broken her wrist, some twenty years before, and that the bandage was
consequently donned on days when her "hand felt kind o' cold," or was
"burnin' like fire embers;" but there was an unspoken suspicion that it
really served as token of her inability to work whenever she felt bored
by the prescribed routine of knitting and sweeping. No one had dared
presume on that theory, however, since the day when an untactful
overseer had mentioned it, to be met by such a stream of unpleasant
reminiscence concerning his immediate ancestry that he had retreated in
dismay, and for a week after, had served extra pieces of pie to his
justly offended charge.