re is a lack of real merriment, and the fun is an
odd, rough way of joking: it is a stupid, heavy sort of fun, though
there is much of a certain quaint humour, and once in a while a flash
of wit.

I came upon a short, stout old sister in one room, making all the
effort she possibly could to see what was on the upper shelves of a
closet. We were the only persons there, and she looked longingly at a
convenient chair, and I know she wished I would go away. But my heart
suddenly went out toward an old dark-green Delft bowl which I saw, and
I asked her if she would be kind enough to let me take it, as if I
thought she were there for a purpose. "I'll bring you a chair," said
I; and she said, "Certain, dear." And I helped her up, and I'm sure
she had the good look she had coveted while I took the bowl to the
window. It was badly cracked, and had been mended with putty; but the
rich, dull colour of it was exquisite. One often comes across a
beautiful old stray bit of china in such a place as this, and I
imagined it filled with apple-blossoms or wild roses. Mrs. Wallis
wished to give it to me, she said it wasn't good for any thing; and,
finding she did not care for it, I bought it; and now it is perched
high in my room, with the cracks discreetly turned to the wall. "Seems
to me she never had thrown away nothing," said my friend, whom I found
still standing on the chair when I came back. "Here's some pieces of a
pitcher: I wonder when she broke it! I've heard her say it was one her
grandmother gave her, though. The old lady bought it at a vandoo down
at old Mis' Walton Peters's after she died, so Mis' Wallis said. I
guess I'll speak to her, and see if she wants every thing sold that's
here."

There was a very great pathos to me about this old home. It must have
been a hard place to get a living in, both for men and women, with its
wretched farming-land, and the house itself so cold and thin and worn
out. I could understand that the son was in a hurry to get his mother
away from it. I was sure that the boyhood he had spent there must have
been uncomfortable, and that he did not look back to it with much
pleasure. There is an immense contrast between even a moderately
comfortable city house and such a place as this. No wonder that he
remembered the bitter cold mornings, the frost and chill, and the dark,
and the hard work, and wished his mother to leave them all behind, as
he had done! He did not care for the f