opened most
unjustifiably into a small sitting-room. There was no vestibule, or
locus poenitentiae, for the embarrassed or bashful visitor: he passed
at once from the security of the public road into shameful privacy.
And here, in the mellow autumnal sunlight, that, streaming through the
maples and sumach on the opposite bank, flickered and danced upon the
floor, she sat and discoursed of George Washington, and thought of
Perkins. She was quite in keeping with the house and the season, albeit
a little in advance of both; her skin being of a faded russet, and her
hands so like dead November leaves, that I fancied they even rustled
when she moved them.

For all that, she was quite bright and cheery; her faculties still quite
vigorous, although performing irregularly and spasmodically. It was
somewhat discomposing, I confess, to observe, that at times her lower
jaw would drop, leaving her speechless, until one of the family would
notice it, and raise it smartly into place with a slight snap,--an
operation always performed in such an habitual, perfunctory manner,
generally in passing to and fro in their household duties, that it was
very trying to the spectator. It was still more embarrassing to observe
that the dear old lady had evidently no knowledge of this, but believed
she was still talking, and that, on resuming her actual vocal utterance,
she was often abrupt and incoherent, beginning always in the middle of
a sentence, and often in the middle of a word. "Sometimes," said her
daughter, a giddy, thoughtless young thing of eighty-five,--"sometimes
just moving her head sort of unhitches her jaw; and, if we don't happen
to see it, she'll go on talking for hours without ever making a sound."
Although I was convinced, after this, that during my interview I had
lost several important revelations regarding George Washington through
these peculiar lapses, I could not help reflecting how beneficent were
these provisions of the Creator,--how, if properly studied and applied,
they might be fraught with happiness to mankind,--how a slight jostle
or jar at a dinner-party might make the post-prandial eloquence of
garrulous senility satisfactory to itself, yet harmless to others,--how
a more intimate knowledge of anatomy, introduced into the domestic
circle, might make a home tolerable at least, if not happy,--how a
long-suffering husband, under the pretence of a conjugal caress,
might so unhook his wife's condyloid process as to al