have little slips of back
garden. He and his wife--who is as clean and compact a little body as
himself--have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business
twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at
about five years old. The child's portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in
the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about, is
carefully preserved as a relic.

In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and
when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it,
by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will
see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest
delight. In spring-time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and
sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like
epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down,
the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is
perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has, is the
newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally
reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during
breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses
in the parlour-window, and geranium-pots in the little front court,
testify. She takes great pride in the garden too: and when one of the
four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than usual, it is
carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the
edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted
the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a summer's evening,
when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen
times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting
about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little
summerhouse, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching
the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker
and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers--no bad emblem
of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in
their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have
long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they
require no more. They have within themselves, the materials of comfort
and content; and the only anxiety of each, is to die before the other.