brimming with love. The first gush of
feeling over, Aunt Polly again held me at arm's distance, while she
surveyed intently my features, and traced in the laughing eye and
golden ringlets the likeness of her "_dearest_ brother in the world!"
Poor aunty had but one! Nor was my opportunity lost of looking right
into the face I had so often desired to see. It would be hard to draw
a picture of Aunt Polly in words, so good as the reader's fancy will
supply. There was nothing peculiar in her tall, stout figure; in her
well developed features--something between the Grecian and the
Roman--in her complexion, which one could see had faded from a glowing
brunette to a pale Scotch snuff color. But her eyes, they _were_
peculiar--so black--so rapid in their motions--so penetrating when
looking forward--so flashing when she laughed, that really--I never
saw such eyes!

It would be still more puzzling to describe her dress. She wore a real
chintz of the olden time, filled with nosegays, as unlike to Nature's
flowers as the fashion of her gown was to the dresses of modern dames
of her sixty years. Though I don't believe Aunt Polly's attire looked
like any body else's at the time it was made; at any rate, it was put
on in a way that differed from the pictures I had seen of the
old-school ladies. Her cap was indeed the crowner! but let that pass,
for the old lady had these dainty articles so carefully packed in what
had been a sugar-box, that no doubt they were _sweet_ to any _taste_
but mine. I said that Aunt Polly was not a spinster. A better idea of
her lord cannot be given than in her own words to my eldest sister,
who declared in her hearing that she would never marry a minister.
"Hush, hush, my dear!" said Aunt Polly, "I remember saying, when I was
a girl, that whatever faults my husband might have, he should never be
younger than myself--have red hair, or stammer in his speech: all
these objections were united in the man I married!"

One more fact will convey to the imagination all that I need say of
Aunt Polly's husband. Late one evening came a thundering knock at my
father's door, and as all the servants had retired, a youth who
happened to be staying with us at the time, started, candle in hand,
to answer it: Now the young man was of a credulous turn, and had just
awakened from a snooze in his chair. Presently a loud shriek called
all who were up in the house to the door, where, lying prostrate and
faint, was found the yout