ual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her
powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works.
Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus-fever and other
formidable and protracted forms of disease were to our ears quite
wonderful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint of the
sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so bright, and so devoted,
that it never occurred to us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above
all things, being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by
night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and always
amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of questions with which
a child persecutes a grown person.

"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her
own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked
down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple orchard, where
daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time, and, on
the other, faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two
shady elms between them and the street. No nun's cell was ever neater,
no bee's cell ever more compactly and carefully arranged; and to us,
familiar with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there was
something always inviting about its stillness, its perfect order, and
the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over it. She lived there in
perfect independence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every office
of life for herself. She was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber
maid, her own laundress; and very faultless the cooking, washing,
ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's
gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all believed, certain
magical properties such as belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a
handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious
closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach.
The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall
was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we
supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all
subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,--for she was always
telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, or plants, or
animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimulated our inquiries, and,
above all, led us to wonder where she had learned it all