the aggressive
and impudent squalor of an Irish quarter, and none of the surly
wickedness of a low American street. A gayety not born of the things
that bring its serious joy to the true New England heart--a ragged
gayety, which comes of summer in the blood, and not in the pocket or the
conscience, and which affects the countenance and the whole demeanor,
setting the feet to some inward music, and at times bursting into a line
of song or a child-like and irresponsible laugh--gives tone to the
visible life, and wakens a very friendly spirit in the passer, who
somehow thinks there of a milder climate, and is half persuaded that the
orange-peel on the side-walks came from fruit grown in the soft
atmosphere of those back courts.

It was in this quarter, then, that we heard of Mrs. Johnson; and it was
from a colored boarding-house there that she came out to Charlesbridge
to look at us, bringing her daughter of twelve years with her. She was a
matron of mature age and portly figure, with a complexion like coffee
soothed with the richest cream; and her manners were so full of a
certain tranquillity and grace, that she charmed away all our will to
ask for references. It was only her barbaric laughter and lawless eye
that betrayed how slightly her New England birth and breeding covered
her ancestral traits, and bridged the gulf of a thousand years of
civilization that lay between her race and ours. But in fact, she was
doubly estranged by descent; for, as we learned later, a sylvan wildness
mixed with that of the desert in her veins: her grandfather was an
Indian, and her ancestors on this side had probably sold their lands for
the same value in trinkets that bought the original African pair on the
other side.

The first day that Mrs. Johnson descended into our kitchen, she conjured
from the malicious disorder in which it had been left by the flitting
Irish kobold a dinner that revealed the inspirations of genius, and was
quite different from a dinner of mere routine and laborious talent.
Something original and authentic mingled with the accustomed flavors;
and, though vague reminiscences of canal-boat travel and woodland camps
arose from the relish of certain of the dishes, there was yet the
assurance of such power in the preparation of the whole, that we knew
her to be merely running over the chords of our appetite with
preliminary savors, as a musician acquaints his touch with the keys of
an unfamiliar piano before breakin