Various

This bird is also known as the Black-capt Titmouse. It is an active, hardy animal, abounding in the Northern and Middle States, Canada, and as far north as the 60th parallel. It is a familiar and amusing bird, often making its appearance in our cities in fall or winter, and approaching near to man, in order to glean from his bounty or carelessness a supply of food. During the same seasons large flocks scour the fields and woods in search of insects, larvÆ, seeds and berries. Kernels containing oil, and the fat of animals are greedily devoured by them. When all these fail, they enter barns, sheds, and the roofs of houses, clearing them of moths, eggs of insects, spiders and wood-worms. They appear to be very little affected by extreme cold, being provided with thick downy feathers, and a constitution naturally robust. In winter, numbers collect on a snow-bank, and swallow small pieces, either to slake thirst or for pleasure. On such occasions, and generally when collecting food, they keep up a continual chattering, which renders their places of haunt easy of discovery.

The Chicadee builds in the hollows of trees, the nest being constructed of moss, feathers, and similar soft materials. The eggs are from six to a dozen in number, white, speckled with red. They rear two broods in a season. The young are strong and lively, requiring little assistance from the old ones, but living with them, as one family, through the fall and winter.

Beside the usual chicking note of this bird, from whence its name, it has a harsh angry tone, to express anger or fright, and a kind of melancholy wail, approaching a song. Sometimes its voice is said to resemble the noise produced by sharpening a saw. “These birds,” says Wilson, “sometimes fight violently with each other, and are known to attack young and sickly birds that are incapable of resistance, always directing their blows against the skull. Being in the woods one day, I followed a bird for some time, the singularity of whose notes surprised me. Having shot him from off the top of a very tall tree, I found it to be the Black-Headed Titmouse, with a long and deep indentation in the cranium, the skull having been evidently at some former time drove in and fractured, but was now perfectly healed. Whether or not the change of voice could be owing to this circumstance, I cannot pretend to decide.” The unnatural practice of destroying their sick is however denied of these birds by late writers.

The Chicadee is five and a half inches in length, and six in extent. The whole upper part of the head and neck is black, and the body a mouse-color. It has often been confounded with the European Marsh Titmouse, but there seems good reason to consider this as an error. The foreign bird is never seen in flocks, frequents streams or water-courses, and has a note quite different from that of the Chicadee. It is also an inch shorter.

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ARIEL IN THE CLOVEN PINE.

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BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

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Now the frosty stars are gone:

I have watched them, one by one,

Fainting on the shores of Dawn.

Round and full the glorious sun

Walks with level step the spray,

Through his vestibule of Day,

While the wolves that howled anon

Slink to dens and coverts foul,

Guarded by the demon owl,

Who, last night, with mocking croon

Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,

And with eyes that blankly glared

On my direful torment stared.

The lark is flickering in the light;

Still the nightingale doth sing—

All the isle, alive with Spring,

Lies, a jewel of delight

On the blue sea’s heaving breast:

Not a breath from out the West,

But some balmy smell doth bring

From the sprouting myrtle buds,

Or from meadows wide, that lie

Each a green and dazzling sky,

Paved with yellow cowslip-stars,

Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars

Of the bloomy almond woods,

And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen

Of the sun that hangs between.

All is life that I can spy,

To the farthest sea and sky,

And my own the only pain

Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.

In the gnarled and cloven Pine

Where that hell-born hag did chain me,

All this orb of cloudless shine,

All this youth in Earth’s old veins

Tingling with the Spring’s sweet wine,

With a sharper torment pain me.

Pansies, in soft April rains

And April’s sun, from Thea’s lap

Fill their stalks with honeyed sap,

But the sluggish blood she brings

To the tough Pine’s hundred rings,

Closer locks their cruel hold,

Closer draws the scaly bark

Round my prison, lightning-riven;

So when Winter, wild and dark,

Vexes wave and writhing wold

And with murk vapor swathes the heaven,

I must feel the vile bat creep

In my narrow cleft, to sleep.

By this coarse and alien state

Is my dainty essence wronged;

The fine sense that erst belonged

To my nature, chafes at Fate,

Till the happier elves I hate,

Who in moonlight dances turn

Underneath the palmy fern,

Or in light and twinkling bands

Follow on with linked hands

To the Ocean’s yellow sands.

The primrose-bells each morning ope

In their cool, deep beds of grass;

Violets make the airs that pass

Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.

I can see them where they spring

Never brushed by fairy wing.

All those corners I can spy

In the island’s solitude,

Where the dew is never dry,

Nor the miser bees intrude.

Cups of rarest hue are there,

Full of perfumed wine undrained—

Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned,

Canopied by maiden-hair.

Pearls I see upon the sands,

Never touched by other hands,

And the rainbow bubbles shine

On the ridged and frothy brine,

Tenantless of voyager

Till they burst in vacant air.

O the songs that sung might be

And the mazy dances woven,

Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea

And the Pine been never cloven!

Many years my direst pain

Has made the wave-rocked isle complain.

Winds, that from the Cyclades

Came, to ruffle with foul riot

Round its shore’s enchanted quiet,

Bore my waitings on the seas;

Sorrowing birds in Autumn went

Through the world with my lament.

Still the bitter fate is mine,

All delight unshared to see,

Smarting in the cloven Pine,

While I wait the tardy axe

Which, perchance, shall set me free

From the damned witch, Sycorax.

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REMINISCENCES;

OR AUNT ABBY’S PINCUSHION.

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BY EMMA C. EMBURY.

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Reader, do you love old houses, old books, old pieces of furniture, old chairs, in short, all the relics of antiquity which fashionable people usually discard and despise? If so, there is a bond of sympathy between us, and I shall not be afraid to rake among the cold ashes of the past for some unconsumed remnant of other days, even though I find only trifles to reward my search. The very table on which I write, black with age, and wearing a polish which nothing but years and years of manual labor could have given it, owes its peculiar favor in my eyes to the fact of its being more than a century old. What stories could it not tell of days gone by; what reminiscences of tea-drinkings, and christenings, and weddings, and funerals must be imbedded in every pore of the old mahogany!

But for real hearty enjoyment of such a taste for homely antiquities, commend me to an old-fashioned secretary, (that is the true name—bureau is but a modern Gallicism,) with its desk, and pigeon-holes, and secret-drawers, especially if it have been an heirloom in possession of a maiden aunt, who died a spinster of seventy-two, or thereabouts. What stores of relics it contains—locks of hair taken from the heads of pretty children, whom we only recollect as wrinkled old bodies that seemed never to have been young; mourning-rings, with obituary inscriptions of persons whose existence we should never have known but for this record of their death; golden knee-buckles and sparkling paste shoe-buckles, reminding us of the days when the dress of a gentleman was hopelessly inimitable to the rowdies and loafers of the period; fragments of wedding-gowns, carefully rolled in bits of linen, yellow with age—preserved in order to impress the next generation with due respect for some wizened-up, childish old lady, who was once a belle, and was married in a dress of silver brocade.

Perhaps, too, there are more tender memorials hidden in the secret drawer. Let us touch the spring, and lo! what trophies of love’s power are there. Shall we pause to read these verses? The ink is almost faded out, the paper is falling to pieces in its folds, and he who wrote, and she who with fluttering heart first read those tender lines, have long since been dirt and ashes. Here is a quaint old ring—two hands clapped together, and within the circle an inscription in old English characters—the single word, “Forever.” She who once wore that ring was an angel upon earth, and he who placed it there, lived and died “as the beasts that perish;” will their union be, indeed, forever? Look at that bracelet, woven of soft, silken hair, its golden clasps are dimmed with age, but the hair still wears its rich sunshiny lustre, though she who bestowed it as a parting gift to a sister, has been long a tenant of the tomb. What is this, folded so carefully and so closely, like one of the mummied mysteries of the pyramids? A curl, a thick, dark curl—not the long flowing tress that might have floated over woman’s graceful neck; these crisped and glossy tendrils tell of the strength and beauty of manhood. A faint perfume rises from the inner folds of the envelope—the ashes of a rose are there enclosed. And this is all! But what a tale do these scanty memorials of a by-gone love impart to the beholder! What matters it that the details of the story are forgotten? What matters it whether the lady or her lover were to blame? It was a love tender and true, but yet unhappy, else wherefore the curl of raven hair so carefully cherished, and the dead rose so reverently buried beside the more life-like memento? The love which brings happiness becomes diffusive in its expression, and the love-tokens of the youth and maiden are hidden, in after-days, beneath the accumulation of affection’s later offerings. But when one flower becomes the treasure of a life-time; when one lock of hair is guarded like the heart’s pearl of price, then be sure that the hallowing touch of sorrow has been there. It is only when grief and love go hand in hand, that trifles become holy relics wherever they tread. Alas! do we not all wear upon our hearts a reliquary, in which, impearled with tears, and adorned with the fine gold of our best affections, we have enshrined some fragment of the past, whose value we alone can tell?

But I am growing sad, serious, and, of course, dull; yet the object which led me into this train of thought was certainly not calculated to inspire any especial exhibition of sentiment. I was rummaging in such a secretary as I have described, when I accidentally pulled out a round pincushion, banded with silver about the middle, and attached to a substantial silver chain, which terminated in a broad hook, for the purpose of fastening it to the girdle of some thrifty housewife. On the heavily-wrought circlet which made the equinoctial line of the purple velvet globes which had been doomed to do duty in so humble a capacity, were the initials “A. L.,” and I at once recognized it as the constant appendage of my respected and venerated relative, Aunt Abby.

I had just been reading a paragraph respecting the female clubs in Paris, and the sight of this relic of old times, reminded me of the fact that poor Aunt Abbey had lived just half a century too soon, for to the day of her death the old lady’s favorite topic of conversation was the “equality of the sexes.” How would she have rejoiced in the modern attempts to enfranchise woman from her thraldom! how would she have gloried in the idea of woman’s equal rights of property! how would she have delighted in the prospect of political privileges for her sex! how she would have expatiated upon the benefits of a female House of Representatives! Aunt Abby (my great aunt, by the by) was emphatically an advocate for woman’s “standing alone,” (I believe that is the phrase among the reformers,) and certainly, though she had a father, uncles, cousins, to say nothing of a husband, she succeeded in “standing alone,” to a certain extent, all her life.

But what, you will say, had a disciple of progress, a defender of woman’s rights, a declaimer against woman’s slavery, to do with a pincushion? Let me sketch her portrait at full length, and then you will see how curiously she blended the duties and prerogatives of both sexes in her own proper person.

Abigal, or, as she was usually called, Abby Leyburn, was the only child of a learned and eccentric clergyman, who, being disappointed in his hope of exercising his theories of education on a son, chose to educate his daughter after the manner of a boy. Fortunately for him, the little girl possessed a singularly strong and quick mind. She grasped at knowledge as most children would at playthings, and imbibed wisdom with as much zest as others would have sucked an orange. Latin, Greek and Hebrew, mathematics, moral philosophy, to say nothing of the lighter accomplishments of botany, geology, and natural history, were among the young lady’s acquirements. Her father had determined to make her a second Madame Dacier, and he really seemed likely to find her a sort of female Crichton. Nor were these all her acquisitions. The details of housekeeping, the thrift, management, and tidiness necessary to the comfort of American homes, was as easy as the alphabet to Abby. She could knit, and spin, and sew; she could bake, and brew, and cook; she could milk, and churn, and make cheese; and nobody could so effectually and rapidly “set things to rights.”

Beside all this, Abby Leyburn, at twenty years of age, was one of the handsomest girls in the country. She was like nothing so much as the effigy of Britannia on an English penny. Don’t laugh, reader, the comparison is a highly complimentary one, but lest you should not recollect the stately Mrs. Bull, I will describe my heroine. Abby was just six feet high, but magnificently proportioned, a perfect Juno in form, with large black eyes, a high forehead, full red lips, and a chin as massive and as despotic in its expression as Napoleon’s. Her profile was superb—bold, strongly-marked, but beautifully classical. Her abundant hair, usually worn back from her brow, and gathered into a knot at the back of her head, was black as the crow’s wing. Her teeth were white, strong, and somewhat pointed in shape, a peculiarity which rather impaired the softness of her smile, inasmuch as it was always associated with the beholder’s remembrance of a somewhat similar conformation in the dental perfections of the only wild animal who has ever been accused of laughing—I mean the hyena. Not that Abby bore the slightest resemblance to the disagreeable creature just named. But her smile certainly lacked that indefinable charm which usually belongs to such pleasant demonstrations of good humor.

As a specimen of the human animal Abby was perfect. The superb proportions of her well-rounded figure, her complexion, pure, fresh, and radiant with health, her firm step, quick, active motions, and great strength of frame, combined to make her a model of “le grande et beau physique.” Add to these personal attractions, her learning, and her domestic accomplishments, and one might almost fancy that Aunt Abby, in her younger days at least, came near being

“That faultless monster which the world ne’er saw.”

What did she lack? you will ask. Certainly not virtues, for she abounded in them. No; her defects were of a very different character. She had every thing that one would consider desirable; but Aunt Abby lacked “one sweet weakness.” There was the difficulty. She had no weaknesses. That magnificent person of hers was brimful of strong, stubborn intellect. If she had a heart, it was only a piece of mechanism, necessary to the workings of the human machine. The brain—the strong, massive, abundant brain, which lay behind that immense forehead, was the only motive power which she acknowledged. Had she no benevolence, no kindly impulses, no yearning tenderness of soul, no sentiment? Not an atom of either; yet she did the most benevolent things in the world, lavished kindness upon all who deserved it, was full of gentleness toward little children, and, if judged by her deeds, would have seemed overflowing with the milk of human kindness. But still it was the dictates of that cold despotic intellect which she obeyed. “People must be in want, and must be relieved by those who had means. Humanity was full of suffering—the healthy must look after the sick. Little children are incipient men and women, therefore must be taken care of. Sentiment was but the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow as unsubstantial as itself.” Such were among the apothegms of this singular woman. Reversing the established axiom, that “there is nothing in the intellect which does not come by the senses,” she seemed to assert that “there was nothing in the senses which did not come by the intellect.”

As Mr. Leyburn held the office of president over one of the few institutions of learning then in America, Abby had ample opportunity for displaying her talents and beauty to the admiring eyes of sundry young students. But Abby had no personal vanity; she knew she was handsome, just as she knew she was strong and robust, and she would have scorned the idea of being a belle. The young men, although belonging to that peculiarly inflammable species known by the name of “College Boys,” would as soon have thought of falling in love with the stone image of Minerva on the college-green, as with the president’s learned daughter. There was something in her sturdy good sense which everybody rather liked, yet the want of softness and pliability in her character excited a certain dread in all who came near her. Gifted with peculiar powers both of mind and body, she had no compassion for feebleness of frame or infirmity of purpose, for she had no clear perception of such things. Her intellect was like a telescope through which she could examine the grand and the remote, but she could not use it as a microscope to examine the littlenesses of humanity. It is only through the sympathies of the heart that we learn respect for the sufferings, or compassion for the weaknesses of our fellows—and Abby Leyburn had no sympathies, except those of the brain.

Perfectly self-possessed, because thoroughly conscious of her own vast superiority, and utterly indifferent as to the impression she was likely to make, Abby’s manners in society had all the elegance and nonchalant ease which fashion tries so hard to teach. She conversed exceedingly well on all subjects, and possessed the gift (most rare among talented women) of making herself as agreeable to her own sex, as to the men. Everybody admired her, yet everybody feared her; everybody acknowledged her rare powers, yet everybody kept at a certain distance. “He comes too near who comes to be denied,” so says one of the wits and demi-reps of a past age; but Abby never suffered any one to reach the confines of Love-Land, and, of course, none ever attained to Declaration Point.

It is difficult to imagine a character like that of Aunt Abby. A woman without softness, and tenderness, and sentiment, seems such an anomaly, that we are tempted to doubt the probability of her possessing any of the qualities we seek in woman. But Abby had all the necessary knowledge of womanly duties, all the considerateness we look for in woman, all the attention to detail which is a woman’s peculiar province, and withal was possessed of the most indomitable good humor. She was sententious, because every truth became, in her mind, an axiom, to be stowed away in the smallest possible space; she was dogmatic, because her opinions were made up by her own unaided reflection, and were not to be changed or modified by words. Her self-esteem was prodigious; it was not the puny vanity which is so often dignified with such a title, it was rather a magnificent Johnsonesque self-appreciation, precisely like that which looms so grandly beside the vain pettinesses of the biographer of the great lexicographer.

She was certainly a great puzzle to every one. A woman who could quote Longinus, read Homer, expound a disputed text in the Hebrew Bible, chop logic with the most caviling acuteness, and talk of the Differential Calculus as if it were the last new poem, was certainly something of a wonder; but when that same woman was seen seated on the milking-stool, or standing at the churn, or presiding over a blazing oven, or, broom in hand, raising motes in the sunbeams by her vigorous attack upon the “dust of the schools,” or displaying the beauty of her Juno-like figure, as she paced to and from the huge spinning-wheel; she was certainly a world’s wonder. There is a half-remembered story of Aunt Abby’s spirit, which no one dares to talk of openly; but it is believed that a certain gentleman, now high in civic honors, received, when a youth of twenty, a severe caning from the lady, in consequence of some impertinence, offered when under the influence of a deep potation. But this may be only a piece of scandal.

The circumstances of Aunt Abby’s marriage were as peculiar as were her own traits of character. Among the students of the college was a young gentleman of large fortune and fine talents, who was afflicted with a constitutional timidity and nervousness that paralyzed all his powers. He was the only child of a widowed mother, who had foolishly resisted the boy’s wish to go to school. He had therefore remained at home under the charge of tutors, and when the death of his mother released him from her affectionate tyranny, he entered college only to find himself inferior in attainments to every one else, and a perfect butt, from his timid shyness. He was full of poetry and sentiment. Among realities he was lost and bewildered, but in the world of fancy he was a hero even to himself.

To a gay set of frolicksome students nothing could offer better game than the mental and personal peculiarities of the rich young Southerner, who rejoiced in the name of Sampson Terricott, (a name soon transmuted into Sampson Tear-your-coat) by his companions. Nothing could be more ludicrous than the association of such a name with such a person. The redoubtable Sampson was some five feet four inches in height, with an exceedingly slight figure, small features of the style usually designated as “snub-faced,” with a skim-milk complexion, and hair of that sun-burned flaxen color, so common among hatless country urchins. His voice was a piping treble, with an occasional tone in it like that of a cracked penny-trumpet. His hands and feet were ridiculously small, and when attired in his college-gown, it required but little caricaturing to draw his portrait in a style decidedly feminine, yet decidedly like. He received all kinds of nicknames for his personal peculiarities, but, perhaps, none annoyed him more than the soubriquet of “Miss Dalilah,” which was generally bestowed upon him. Yet a mind filled with images of beauty was hidden beneath this unpromising exterior. He had no force of character, no iron strength of intellect, but he had an unbounded imagination, and an unlimited reach of vision into spiritualities. He was a poet, but lacking the key to a poet’s harmonies of utterance, he expended his strength in the beautiful cloud-land of metaphysics and became a moral philosopher.

Like all diminutive men Sampson had a decided partiality for large women. The colossal beauty of Abby Leyburn had struck him when he first beheld her, and he loved nothing so well as to contemplate her from a distance, being quite too timid to address himself to her. Now there was in Abby a certain propensity that might almost be called compassion toward little people. She regarded them as a huge Newfoundland dog often looks upon a poodle—their very insignificance and feebleness seemed a claim upon her protection. It had often been remarked that Miss Leyburn showed especial favor to those whom she denominated “the poor little fellows,” and no one was surprised, therefore, to find her taking a great fancy to Sampson Terricott. There was something so appealing in his manner, such a tacit acknowledgment of inferiority in his humble demeanor, such an irresistible claim to tender treatment in his timid little voice and stammering speech, that Abby at once took to him as to one of those “incurables” for whom the world is a hospital, and every charitable person ought to be a nurse. To the gentle Sampson the lady became “like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” She overshadowed him so completely that he could find repose and refreshment in her presence. Instead of attempting to be any thing, or do any thing, or say any thing, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of a consciousness of perfect insignificance as compared with the splendid creature, who could excel any and every body. It was a comfort to see everybody look small in her presence, but to the nervous student it was a positive luxury to feel small, without being mortified and disgraced.

Sampson was not in love with his Minerva, he had no sentiment, no passionate longings for any thing which the world of reality could afford. His loves were all idealities, and could not be prisoned in flesh. But with the same weak fondness that had once tied him to his mother’s apron-string, he submitted to the guidance of Abby Leyburn. What were Abby’s motives for troubling herself with little Sampson no one knew or cared; but when it was known that she was soon to become Mrs. Terricott, everybody thought that the large fortune of the tiny lover would account for the whole affair.

As usual, the world was mistaken. Abby was as free from all mercenary feelings as she was from all other frailties. But she had her own notions about doing good. She saw in Sampson Terricott a highly imaginative and gifted man, wasting mental power in immature schemes which his timidity thwarted in their very outset, and suffering a fine fortune to be idle in his hands for want of energy to take up his stewardship. He was weak in health, and subject to attacks of morbid spirits which sometimes threatened his reason. In a word, Abby saw that he wanted some one to take care of him, and she fixed upon herself as the fittest person. She was now nine-and-twenty, in the full bloom of health and beauty, and, as she argued, “if society provides no other resource for destitute females than marriage, I must marry, or at my father’s death find myself a beggar.” Having come to this conclusion, she decided that, as the giving herself a master was out of the question, and the idea of possessing a slave in her husband was equally disagreeable, she had better divide the difference, and unite herself to one who needed a stronger nature on which to rest.

How the courtship was managed no one ever knew. I am inclined to think there was not much love-making, and from the kind of dreamy surprise which Sampson exhibited when questioned about his engagement, it is presumed he was scarcely conscious of his own happiness. People said that Miss Leyburn, reversing the usual order of things, had popped the question to Sampson, who stammered out, “Yes,” through sheer fright. The probability is that he did exactly as she directed him. She gave him to understand she meant to marry him, and if he offered no resistance, feeling rather pleased at being relieved from responsibility for the rest of his life.

They were married in the chapel of the college, and the half-suppressed glee of the saucy students may be imagined. All the blank walls about the college were filled with caricatures, illustrative of the one idea, “paired, not matched.” One of these charcoal libels was particularly annoying, it represented a nondescript and beautiful winged animal—a Hippogriff—with the face of a woman, curving her proud neck beneath a rein held in the hands of Apollo, while directly beneath was a second representation of the same magnificent creature tamely yoked with an ox to the plough.

But Abby cared little for these things, and she would not suffer her husband to pay any attention to them. She made him one of the best wives in the world, and though she was ten years his elder, and thrice as big as he, nobody ever believed that he repented the step he had taken. Their home was at the South, and, during her husband’s lifetime, Abby never paid a visit to her early friends. But she was visited by her family connections, and we younger members of the circle were often entertained in childhood by the accounts of Aunt Abby’s splendid service of gold-plate, her massive silver ewers and basins in every dressing-room, her Turkey carpets and rich hangings of Gobelin tapestry, and all the paraphernalia of great wealth and magnificent tastes.

When Terricott died, she exhibited her peculiarities of character still more strikingly. She knew people had accused her of marrying for money, and she therefore induced him to make a will, bestowing all his large property upon his own relatives, with the exception of a life-annuity of a thousand dollars to his widow. “I don’t want his money,” she said, “I took good care of him while he lived, and if he did not become a great man, it was no fault of mine. He was rich, and I used his money freely, because he liked to see fine things and good things around him; but now I have no occupation here, and so I shall go back to my old home, and ‘live along.’ I dare say something will be given me to do.”

So she buried her poor little Sampson, handed over his property to the heirs, and with the first instalment of her annuity in her pocket, came to take up her abode in ——. But her father had been dead for many years, and the place was filled with new people who knew little of her history or of her character. She soon became disgusted with her new home, and removing to New York, established herself there for the rest of her life. In her later years she gave up taking exercise daily, and in consequence of this she grew immensely large. I have the faintest shadow of a reminiscence respecting her personal appearance at that time. I was a child of perhaps five years old, and had a dear old aunt, who was as little as a fairy, and almost as benevolent. This kind little old body once took me to see our great Aunt Abby; but my head was crammed full of fairy legends and nursery tales, and when I saw an immensely large, fat woman sitting in a chair from which she could not lift her ponderous form, and met the full stare of her great black eyes, I thought of the Ogress who always devoured little children, and immediately set up such a howl of terror that I was sent away in disgrace. She died not long afterward, having lived to count her ninetieth birthday. Her disinterestedness left her no fortune to bestow on her relatives, and but for her profile, (which, cut in black paper, hangs in an attic room,) her pincushion, and the traditions which remain in the family respecting her, all trace of her has vanished from the earth.

Poor Aunt Abby! she used to shock the women of her time by talking of women’s rights, and was guilty once of the enormity of wishing to be Pope of Rome, in order to carry out some scheme for the advancement of woman’s social position. She talked of freedom until some pious prudes really suspected she meant license, and she predicted that the time would come when the genius of woman would rise superior to the imposed trammels of sex. She should have lived in the present age, when she would have seen woman’s struggles for emancipation, as exhibited in the French female clubs, and the German free associations, to say nothing of the free inquirers and declaimers against female slavery in this country. She should have lived till now to exhibit a rare and peculiar instance of masculine power submitting itself cheerfully to feminine duties; and perhaps the knowledge that Aunt Abby, with all her mental, moral, and physical perfections, lived and died unloving and unloved, might go far toward settling the question of woman’s rights, and make her quite satisfied with her easily accorded privileges.

INSCRIBED TO MY SISTER ADELA M. WADSWORTH.

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BY MRS. LYDIA JANE PEIRSON.

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