her fan; and
surely, I thought, no one in the whole world ever went tripping to a
ball in such strange and monstrous headgear as she wore. Yet she had
been a notable beauty in her day, and even in her old age was still
something of a coquette.

"It was sometimes my privilege to sleep with my grandmother, and I
felt it to be a great one, for she was the best teller of stories I
ever heard. Her religion was of the most terrible kind--the
old-fashioned Presbyterianism which taught that hell was paved with
infants' souls, and such horrors. She always said, when she heard of
the death of a young child, that the chances were it would become a
little angel, which it would not have done if it had lived to be a
little older. I was shocked to hear my mother say she preferred having
her children little living devils rather than dead angels. After
prayers, all about hell and damnation, which she said aloud, I was put
to bed against the wall. The bedstead, a big mahogany four-poster, had
to be mounted like an omnibus. That, and the feather bed, and the
mattress stuffed with the 'best curled hair,' were presents sent to my
father from Philadelphia, and were a great source of pride to me,
especially the mattress, which I believed to be stuffed with beautiful
human curls.

"From my nest in the feather bed I watched my grandmother disrobe with
growing terror. First she unpinned and folded away a white kerchief
she always wore primly crossed over her bosom. Then she removed a
white lace cap that was tied under her chin with ribbons; then she
took off what I supposed to be a portion of her scalp, but now know
was a 'false front.' This was bad enough, but there was worse to come;
there still remained a black silk skull cap that covered the thick
white hair worn cropped closely to her head. When she took off this
cap she seemed to stand before me as some strange and terrible man, so
at this point I always covered my head with the bedclothes until the
light was extinguished.

"After getting into bed, my grandmother, who told every incident as
dramatically as though she had participated in it herself, related
appalling stories about witches, death, apparitions, and the
Inquisition. These stories made such a powerful impression on me that
it is no wonder that I remember them after sixty years. Though my
terror of my grandmother in this guise was excessive, I do not think I
should have liked the stories, generally grim and tragic, so well i