sat so quietly upon the old Squire's head, to see them jump out of the carriage each year, run up to the old man to receive his welcome, and then scamper off into the garden and fields like so many young animals; it was pleasant to watch their gleeful faces at his hospitable board, and to hear their merry shouts; it was pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small, solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a buttercup and snatching it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold buckles, strode along, while Cato, dressed in some of the Squire's old clothes, walked close behind him like his shadow. You would have thought my master forty instead of eighty.

Year after year I witnessed this, till, as I said, the children were youths, and their parents no longer young. Then the good Squire began to be, as I am now, a little garrulous; he loved to tell old stories more than once. But who was there that would not, with patient love, listen to them for many a time?

It was affecting to observe how all his dates were from the year fifty. No matter what story he told, or when it really did happen, he always finished by adding, "and that happened in the year fifty."

All his furniture and plate were purchased in the year fifty. It was to him the beginning of the world.

"Uncle," said one of his nieces one day to him, "let me try to dress your wig; I think it wants it."

"My dear, this wig was bought in the year fifty, and looks well now. It has done me good service."

"How beautiful this avenue of elms is!"

"Yes, they were set out in the year fifty."

"You have a good housekeeper, uncle."

"Yes, my dear, she came to me in the year fifty."

And so on with every thing in and about his house, and so it was with every event which had made an abiding mark on his memory.

There was but one thing about which the good Squire showed the real childishness of his old age, and that was his fruit. He had bushels and bushels of apples and pears and peaches, but he never thought them fit to eat till they were at least half rotten.

His nephews and nieces were of a decidedly different opinion, but did not like to debate the subject with him; so they had recourse to a little trick. I don't think it was quite right. The Squire was in the habit every day of gathering the ripe fruit in baskets, and putting it in what he called especially his room; it was a sort of half dressing, half business room. Here it was that he kept the pole upon which he placed me at night. These baskets of fruit, if the good man had had his own way, would have remained there till they were all rotten like the heaps of windfalls which was the fruit he told the family, and the children especially, they might eat.

Now it was the custom of two or three roguish boys and girls, who visited him, to gather baskets of this rotten fruit, and when the good man had gone to bed, to carry them into this room, and put them in the place of the baskets of sound ripe fruit, which they took for themselves and others to eat.

In a day or two, the good Squire would look at his baskets, and, finding the fruit decaying, would call it fit to eat, bring it into the parlor, and then call in the children, and say to them, "Here, boys and girls, here is nice ripe fruit for you; you can just cut out the rotten with your penknives;" and then he would distribute it among them.

The little monkeys, of course, could scarce repress their giggles.

I can make no apology for their cheat, except that, upon this point, the good man was really childish; and, as he did not eat the fruit himself, or sell it, or do any thing with it, but give to the pigs what was not eaten in the family, no one was wronged by the trick. It was, in fact, a piece of sport.

As you see, I had the benefit of being present at the whole of the fun; and I can hear now, it seems to me, as plainly as I did then, the suppressed laughter of these roguish children when they came into the room where I was, to exchange baskets of rotten for baskets of sound fruit.

In his eighty-seventh year, the old man ran a race with one of these children, and contrived, by an artifice, to win it. She got before him; when, fearing he would hurt himself, she stopped to look after him; he came up to her; and then, just pushing her back a little, got before her to the goal, which was very near them. How he did shout, as though he were only twenty, and what a hitch he gave me on the occasion!

In his ninety-seventh year he died. It was a pity he did not live to be a hundred. The night before he died, he went into his room to put me on my accustomed pole. He did not see clearly, and let me fall on the floor.

"Ah!" said he, "the old head will fall too, before long. No matter; it is time it should go. Here, Cato, help your old master."

Cato was at hand, picked me up, put me in my place, and helped his master to bed.

I never saw the dear old man again.

The next thing that I remember, is being put into a box and carried I knew not whither.

The first light I saw was the dim light of this garret.

The mother of that little girl took me out; and as she put me on my pole, which she had caused to be brought here also, "People may laugh at me," said she, "but I will keep the dear old man's wig. It seems to me a part of him, and is a memorial of the happy hours I have passed under his hospitable roof."

It is now one hundred and six years since I was born into this world. For twenty-eight years I flourished on the beautiful head of dear Alice. Ever since then, I have been only a wig. I am now falling into utter decay. If any one were to shake me, I should fall to pieces. I have, like many of you, my friends, since inhabiting this garret, been abused and made fun of, by children. I was once put upon the head of a donkey, while a boy with a fool's cap on his head rode him, and took a love letter to a young man. I was also put upon the head of a great monkey brought to the house for exhibition, who took me off his head and threw me at the boys. Once, as you know, I was made to play the mock judge on the head of a dog. Once that little girl who sleeps there, used me to keep a litter of kittens warm in, on a cold winter night. This nearly killed me, and from that moment the children were forbidden to touch me.

"I have now," concluded the wig, "only to ask your pardon, my friends, for the impatience with which I have listened to your stories when I thought them too long, and for the truly human vanity and inconsistency which made me tell the longest story myself. But I knew that no one waited for me. I shall certainly never speak more. These are my last words. Farewell."

Just at these words, it seemed to me as if the wig gradually dissolved into a bright halo. Then suddenly it fell into golden ringlets all so soft and graceful and beautiful; while I looked, they seemed to shade such a lovely, innocent face, that I knew it must be that of dear Alice looking like an angel in heaven.

I awoke very happy. There was every thing in the old garret just as I first described it, and all as quiet and still as if nothing had happened."