Confederacy."

"Don't tell me!" reasoned the fine old lady, holding up the stocking by
its handle to see how much longer it must be to reach the wearer's
waist. "I'm afraid you're a copperhead, OCTAVE."

"How you do cackle, OLDY!" said her son, who was very proud of her when
she kept still. "You can't see anything good in MONTGOMERY, because,
after the first seven or eight breakfasts with us, he said he was afraid
that so many fishballs would make his head swim."

"My child," returned the old lady, thrusting an arm so far into the
charity stocking that she seemed to have the wrong kind of blue worsted
limb growing from one of her shoulders, "I have judged this dissipated
young man exactly as though he were my own son-in-law, and know that he
possesses an incendiary disposition. After the fireworks at Saint Cow's
Church, on Saint VITUS'S Day, that devoted Ritualistic Christian, Mr.
BUMSTEAD, came up to me in the porch, with his eyes nearly closed, on
account of the solemnity of the occasion, and began feeling around my
neck with both his hands. When I asked him to explain, he said that he
wanted to see whether my throat was cut yet, as he had heard that we
kept a Southern murderer at home. He was still very pale at what had
taken place in his room over night, when he finally said 'Good-day,
ladies,' to me.

"MONTGOMERY is certainly attached to me, at any rate," murmured the
Gospeler, reflectively, "and has made no attempt upon my life."

"That's because his sister restrains him," asserted the mother, with a
fond look. "I overheard her telling him, when she was at dinner here one