able conduct. Her life was
devoted to the care of some dependent relation, who from sickness was
incapable of self-support. Mrs. Inchbald had a singular uprightness and
unworldliness, and a childlike directness and simplicity of manner,
which, combined with her personal loveliness and halting, broken
utterance, gave to her conversation, which was both humorous and witty,
a most peculiar and comical charm. Once, after traveling all day in a
pouring rain, on alighting at her inn, the coachman, dripping all over
with wet, offered his arm to help her out of the coach, when she
exclaimed, to the great amusement of her fellow-travelers, "Oh, no, no!
y-y-y-you will give me m-m-m-my death of c-c-c-cold; do bring me a-a-a-a
_dry_ man." An aristocratic neighbor of hers, with whom she was slightly
acquainted, driving with his daughter in the vicinity of her very humble
suburban residence, overtook her walking along the road one very hot
day, and, stopping his carriage, asked her to let him have the pleasure
of taking her home; when she instantly declined, with the characteristic
excuse that she had just come from the market gardener's: "And, my lord,
I-I-I have my pocket f-f-full of onions,"--an unsophisticated statement
of facts which made them laugh extremely. At the first reading of one of
her pieces, a certain young lady, with rather a lean, lanky figure,
being proposed to her for the part of the heroine, she indignantly
exclaimed, "No, no, no; I-I-I-I won't have that s-s-s-stick of a girl!
D-d-d-do give me a-a-a girl with _bumps!_" Coming off the stage one
evening, she was about to sit down by Mrs. Siddons in the green-room,
when suddenly, looking at her magnificent neighbor, she said, "No, I
won't s-s-s-sit by you; you're t-t-t-too handsome!"--in which respect
she certainly need have feared no competition, and less with my aunt
than any one, their style of beauty being so absolutely dissimilar.
Somebody speaking of having oysters for supper, much surprise was
excited by Mrs. Inchbald's saying that she had never eaten one.
Questions and remonstrances, exclamations of astonishment, and earnest
advice to enlarge her experience in that respect, assailed her from the
whole green-room, when she finally delivered herself thus: "Oh no,
indeed! I-I-I-I never, never could! What! e-e-e-eat the eyes and
t-t-t-the nose, the teeth a-a-a-and the toes, the a-a-a-all of a
creature!" She was an enthusiastic admirer of my uncle John, and the
he