s were much more refreshing than those dreary fancy
death-bed scenes, common in two-story country-houses, in which Washington
and other distinguished personages are represented as obligingly devoting
their last moments to taking a prominent part in a tableau, in which
weeping relatives, attached servants, professional assistants, and
celebrated personages who might by a stretch of imagination be supposed
present, are grouped in the most approved style of arrangement about the
chief actor's pillow.

A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which was hidden from
vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind the glass. It would have been
instructive to get a look at it, as it always is to peep into one's
neighbor's book-shelves. From other sources and opportunities a partial
idea of it has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books from
her mother, who was something of a reader: Young's "Night-Thoughts;" "The
Preceptor;" "The Task, a Poem," by William Cowper; Hervey's
"Meditations;" "Alonzo and Melissa;" "Buccaneers of America;" "The
Triumphs of Temper;" "La Belle Assemblee;" Thomson's "Seasons;" and a few
others. The Major had brought in "Tom Jones" and "Peregrine Pickle;"
various works by Mr. Pierce Egan; "Boxiana," "The Racing Calendar;" and a
"Book of Lively Songs and Jests." The Widow had added the Poems of Lord
Byron and T. Moore; "Eugene Aram;" "The Tower of London," by Harrison
Ainsworth; some of Scott's Novels; "The Pickwick Papers;" a volume of
Plays, by W. Shakespeare; "Proverbial Philosophy;" "Pilgrim's Progress;"
"The Whole Duty of Man" (a present when she was married); with two
celebrated religious works, one by William Law and the other by Philip
Doddridge, which were sent her after her husband's death, and which she
had tried to read, but found that they did not agree with her. Of course
the bookcase held a few school manuals and compendiums, and one of Mr.
Webster's Dictionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay on the
centre-table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and the
scrap-book with pictures from old annuals and illustrated papers.

The reader need not apprehend the recital, at full length, of such
formidable preparations for the Widow's tea-party as were required in the
case of Colonel Sprowle's Social Entertainment. A tea-party, even in the
country, is a comparatively simple and economical piece of business. As
soon as the Widow found that all her company were co