around. It never occurred to them to get a new one. Like their old Bible, its places could be found.

I went, one frosty autumn day, to get a pattern for silk embroidery. Stamping-blocks and tracing-wheels were unknown quantities to Miss Chrissy. Her stumpy little pencil—and that, too, seemed always the same—had to do the transfering. She liked a bit of harmless gossip, dear soul; and the young girls of the town made a point of supplying the lack of a newspaper with their busy tongues. So she knew at once who I was.

"Oh," she said, with her kindly smile, "you are young Mrs. John: I remember when your husband was a babe. I think I can find it;—yes, it is down in this corner,"—rummaging in the yellow box; "here it is—the pattern your aunt,—Mrs. John, selected for your husband's first short dress. All the Hunt family were customers of ours. Mrs. John, she they called Aunt Lou, was a great favorite. She was rich, and had no children. Well, she came one day all in a flurry to get a pattern—a nice wide one she said, for little John's dress. He was the first baby, and they fairly idolized him. This is it. I recollect the wheel and the overcasting. It was—let me see—forty years ago, come this December. Now, this little scallop is as popular as any" and she fished up another, all full of needle-pricks. "Some ladies don't like much embroidery, but they want a little finish. This one trimmed a set of linen for Mrs. Senator Jones. It took me a good while to draw it. She don't like this turn in the corner, so I made up something else. You know I design my own patterns."

Then resisting the temptation to give the history of the rest of her favorites, she put the box aside and turned her attention to the quart bottle in hand, with its strip of muslin stretched tight around it, over a bewildering collection of grapes and leaves. This was her method, and the admiring sisters thought it perfect.

That night I teased John's mother into hunting up the dress, and there was the identical pattern, edging the fine white cambric now yellow with age. She was amused at my report of Miss Chrissy.

In my annual journeyings to the old town I never neglected "The Pears." They always looked as if I had just stepped out for an hour, and come back. The carpet did not wear out; the stove never lacked luster; the tiny window-panes were always just washed, and the diligent fingers went on just the same. They had a quaint way not easy to describe. When one talked all the rest chimed in with little whispering echoes, to support the assertion; and yet they did not seem to interrupt. They were to me living wonders, so perfectly unspotted from the world, so earnest in their pigmy money-making, and so thoroughly united, I felt consumed with curiosity as to their inner life. They must sometimes put by the quilting and the knitting and the patterns.

"How do you interest yourselves evenings, Miss Chrissy?" I asked, half ashamed of the question.

"Oh, we read," she said, smiling her ready smile. "Yes, read," echoed Miss Suffy and the rest. "We read Sunday-School books, and our Bible, of course. Sometimes we don't go to bed till ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock—o'clock—o'clock," assented the gentle voices. It was not silly; the smiling faces all wore the sweet, simple look of guileless childhood.

Miss Suffy's window overlooked a time honored graveyard, where gray slabs were tottering. Next to her beloved patterns and their varied experiences, Miss Chrissy liked to tell of scenes and memories suggested by these somber reminders.

"It was a very cold day, Mrs. John," (so she always called me), "when they buried your husband's uncle out there. Poor fellow! He was shot at Buena Vista. A cannon-ball took off both his legs, and went right through the horse he rode. He was a gallant officer. They thought at first he would rally. The surgeons did their work quickly, and he suffered little or no pain, but there was no chloroform in that day, and he died from the shock. The snow was deep on the ground, but it was a grand funeral. They've got a fine new cemetery out on the hill, but we never go there. Our dead are all here where we can see their graves."

"Graves," came the echo, they had all along nodded, or murmured, assent.

"One of the saddest funerals we have ever seen." Miss Chrissy went on, "was a double funeral. Two young men, both only sons, were drowned in the river while bathing. Their mothers were widows. It was terrible. Two hearses and two long lines of mourners. There they lie—over there in that enclosure. They were cousins, and were buried side by side."

"The mothers, Chrissy!" mildly prompted the whisper, when the narrator paused.

"Yes, the mothers! one died of a broken heart, and the other lost her mind outright. She is living yet, an old woman, who regularly goes to the front door of the asylum every morning and takes her seat. If it is cold weather, she sits inside. She asks every one who enters if Luther is coming—that was her boy's name."

"Did you know the first Mrs. John Hunt, Miss Chrissy—my husband's grandmother?" I asked, willing to change the gloomy subject.

"Just as well as I know you, Mrs. John. She was a beautiful little woman, I was very young at the time I am thinking of. She sent at night for an embroidered flannel I was doing. It was my first wide pattern, and it went slow. At 10 o'clock it was finished, and my father went with me to take it home. They were all going to Washington to the President's ball—President Monroe, it was—and the trunk was packing. It was to go on the big traveling-coach. When I ran up stairs and knocked,—I had often been there before—she opened the door herself. 'Oh, it's you Chrissy,' she said in her pleasant way; 'come in child; don't you want to see something pretty?' And she showed me two elegant brocaded silk gowns, very narrow and very short-waisted, but stiff enough to stand alone.'

"She praised my work and said I was a good girl. Then she paid me the money and tied a little blue silk handkerchief around my neck for a keepsake. 'There,' she said, in her quick voice, 'you may go.' I did many other patterns for the family, but poor lady! she never saw me again. She had an illness and lost her eyesight. She was stone blind for many years. I have the keepsake yet. It is put away in the hair-trunk."

The sisters were all in full sympathy, as usual. Thus I sat and listened scores of times, making a pretence of wanting a pattern,—anything to get Miss Chrissy story-telling.

In the centennial year I found "The Pears" much shaken from their even tenor. The relic-hunters had penetrated their omnium gatherum and offered fabulous sums for the quaint old bits they found there. One of them declared he must and would have these wonders for the New England Kitchen. But the sisters were outraged. Adroitly I managed to hint a desire to see those treasures inestimable, and then for the first time I moved from my accustomed seat, and they moved from theirs. The magnitude of their wrongs would admit of nothing like routine or monotony. The chairs were pushed back, and I saw five tall, slim figures standing erect, in straight black gowns, white kerchiefs and spotless caps. They were devout Lutherans, and their pew at the Sunday service was never vacant; but I had never seen them outside the workshop.

We filed into the funny little chambers where were the high beds, with their steps to be climbed. What a wilderness of feathers and patchwork! Some of Miss Becky's work was there. The bureaus nearly to ceilings, ornamented with round glass knobs, had their little mirrors perched up above my head. The candle stands, with spindle