roof; Uncle James's cross-eyed third wife and her two
silly daughters; Rebecca's sister's scoundrelly second husband, with his
foolish wife and their little boy with a face like a pug dog; Uncle Jason,
who has needed a bath ever since I knew him--I want he should spend his
legacy for soap--and his epileptic stepson, whose name I forget, though he
lived with me five years hand-running; lying Sally Simmons and her
half-witted daughter; that old hen, Belinda Dodd; that skunk, Harold
Vernon Perkins, who never did a stroke of honest work in his life till he
began to dig for this box; monkey-faced Lucretia and the four thieving
little Riley children, who are likely to get into prison when they grow
up; that human undertaker's waggon, Betsey Skiles, and her two impudent
nieces; that grand old perambulating drug store, Israel Skiles; that
Holmes fool with the three reprints of her ugliness--eight cents apiece,
and may you get all possible good out of it.

"Dick Chester, however, having always paid his board, and tried to be a
help to me in several small ways, and in spite of having lived with me
eight Summers or more without having been asked to do so, gets two
thousand two hundred and fifty dollars which is deposited for him in the
savings department of the Metropolitan Bank, plus the three hundred and
seventy dollars he paid me for board without my asking him for it. Sarah
Smithers, being in the main a good woman, though sharp-tongued at times,
and having been faithful all the time my house has been full of lowdown
cusses too lazy to work for their living, gets twelve hundred and fifty
dollars which is in the same bank as Dick's. The rest of you take your
eight cents apiece and be damned. You can get the money changed at the
store. If any have been left out, it is my desire that those remembered
should divide with the unfortunate.

"If you had not all claimed to be Rebecca's relatives, you would have been
kicked out of my house years ago, but since writing this, I have seen
Rebecca and made it right with her. It was not her desire that I should be
imposed upon.

"Get out of my house, every one of you, before noon to-morrow, and the
devil has my sincere sympathy when you go to live with him and make hell
what you have made my house ever since Rebecca's death. GET OUT!!!

"Ebeneezer Judson."

The letter was badly written and incoherent, yet there could be no doubt
of its