ss the fatal threshold of forty, I despaired of ever convincing
her to the contrary. "However," said I to myself, "I will not
anticipate trouble."

I had just recovered from a dangerous fit of illness, through which my
kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of
my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in
Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside
the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her
nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient
watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks
of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved
earnestly and pains-taking around my chamber; but, alas! the kitchen
told a different story when I was well enough to make my appearance
there. Biddy, a raw, bewildered-looking Irish girl, with huge red arms
and stamping feet, had quite lost her confused, stupid expression of
countenance, and was most eloquent in telling me, with all the
volubility of our sex, of the "quare ways of the ould maid."

"Sure, and if the ould sowl could only have had a husband and a parcel
of childthers to mind, she wouldn't have been half so stiff and
concated," exclaimed Biddy.

Even poor little roguish Ike, with mischief enough in his composition
to derange a dozen well-ordered houses, looked wise and quiet when my
prim, demure aunt came in sight. Complaints met me on all sides,
however, for my Aunt Lina was quite as dissatisfied as the rest.

"I found them all wrong, my dear," she said, "no order, no regulation,
every thing at sixes and sevens; and as for the woman Biddy, she is
quite, quite incorrigible. I showed her a new way of preparing her
clothes for the wash, by which she could save a deal of labor; but all
in vain, she persisted most obstinately to follow the old troublesome
way. Then she confuses her work altogether in such a manner that I
never can tell at which stage of labor she has arrived; and when I put
them all _en traine_, and leave them a few instants, I find on my
return every thing as tangled as ever. Method is the soul of
housekeeping, Enna. You will never succeed without order. I fear you
are too easy and indulgent; although I have never kept a house, I know
exactly how it should be done. A place for every thing--every thing in
its place, as your grandpapa used to say. If you insist upon your
servants doing every thing at a certain hour, and i