ne occupation of knitting coarse yarn
stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheerful
air, though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be
accosted by the governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however
slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and,
running hastily through my experiences, I hardly recollect to have seen a
happier one in my life, if you take a careless flow of spirits as
happiness) was an old woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve
heavy-looking females, who plied their knitting-work round about her. She
laughed, when we entered, and immediately began a talk to us, in a thin,
little, spirited quaver, claiming to be more than a century old; and the
governor (in whatever way he happened to be cognizant of the fact)
confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. Her jauntiness and cackling
merriment were really wonderful. It was as if she had got through with all
her actual business in life two or three generations ago, and now, freed
from every responsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up a
mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long time, (and, happy as
she was, she appeared not to care whether it were long or short,) before
Death, who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember to take her
away. She had gone quite round the circle of human existence, and come
back to the play-ground again. And so she had grown to be a kind of
miraculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or eighty years
younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a
child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful
responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused
their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this
world, and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby.

In the same room sat a pauper who had once been an actress of considerable
repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the
brain. The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life,
and disturbed all healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and
the world without. On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and
showed herself ready to engage in conversation; but suddenly, while we
were talking with the century-old crone, the poor actress began to weep,
contorting her face with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wringing her
han