say so of herself, but she was as
smart a young girl then as you'd wish to see. She recollects she took a
friend of hers up-stairs to see Miss Emma dressed for church; her name
was--ah! she forgets the name, but she remembers that she was a very
pretty girl, and that she married not long afterwards, and lived--it has
quite passed out of her mind where she lived, but she knows she had a bad
husband who used her ill, and that she died in Lambeth work-house. Dear,
dear, in Lambeth workhouse!

And the old couple--have they no comfort or enjoyment of existence? See
them among their grandchildren and great-grandchildren; how garrulous
they are, how they compare one with another, and insist on likenesses
which no one else can see; how gently the old lady lectures the girls on
points of breeding and decorum, and points the moral by anecdotes of
herself in her young days--how the old gentleman chuckles over boyish
feats and roguish tricks, and tells long stories of a 'barring-out'
achieved at the school he went to: which was very wrong, he tells the
boys, and never to be imitated of course, but which he cannot help
letting them know was very pleasant too--especially when he kissed the
master's niece. This last, however, is a point on which the old lady is
very tender, for she considers it a shocking and indelicate thing to talk
about, and always says so whenever it is mentioned, never failing to
observe that he ought to be very penitent for having been so sinful. So
the old gentleman gets no further, and what the schoolmaster's niece said
afterwards (which he is always going to tell) is lost to posterity.

The old gentleman is eighty years old, to-day--'Eighty years old, Crofts,
and never had a headache,' he tells the barber who shaves him (the barber
being a young fellow, and very subject to that complaint). 'That's a
great age, Crofts,' says the old gentleman. 'I don't think it's sich a
wery great age, Sir,' replied the barber. 'Crofts,' rejoins the old
gentleman, 'you're talking nonsense to me. Eighty not a great age?'
'It's a wery great age, Sir, for a gentleman to be as healthy and active
as you are,' returns the barber; 'but my grandfather, Sir, he was
ninety-four.' 'You don't mean that, Crofts?' says the old gentleman. 'I
do indeed, Sir,' retorts the barber, 'and as wiggerous as Julius Caesar,
my grandfather was.' The old gentleman muses a little time, and then
says, 'What did he die of, Crofts?' 'He died acc