t exercise of fancy than, while gazing
at a figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and without
entirely obliterating the identity of form and features to restore
those graces which Time has snatched away. Some old people--especially
women--so age-worn and woeful are they, seem never to have been young
and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent
into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with
sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at
funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential
to their existence; all their attributes combine to render them
darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life.
Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creatures
and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color, and
repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen
in the old matron's elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let
the years roll back again, each sadder than the last, and the whole
weight of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure.
Wrinkles and furrows, the handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered
and found to contain deep lessons of thought and feeling.

Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my
much-respected friend the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute who
has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these
forty years. See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth with her
gown and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her
person the whole warmth of the fire which now at nightfall begins to
dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers
capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms
of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar
the outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a
teaspoon in her right hand with which to stir up the contents of a
tumbler in her left, whence steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of
temperance societies. Now she sips, now stirs, now sips again. Her sad
old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva which
is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler. All day long she
has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only
when the spirit of her patient left the clay an