and I hasten to relate the melancholy incident that hurried her out of existence in the full bloom of antiquated virginity. In their frolicksome malice the fates had ordered that a french boarding-house, or Pension Francaise, as it was called, should be established directly opposite my aunt's residence. Cruel event! unhappy aunt Charity!-it threw her into that alarming disorder denominated the fidgets; she did nothing but watch at the window day after day, but without becoming one whit the wiser at the end of a fortnight than she was at the beginning; she thought that neighbor Pension had a monstrous large family, and some how or other they were all men! she could not imagine what business neighbor Pension followed to support so numerous a household; and wondered why there was always such a scraping of fiddles in the parlor, and such a smell of onions from neighbor Pension's kitchen; in short, neighbor Pension was continually uppermost in her thoughts, and incessantly on the outer edge of her tongue. This was, I believe, the very first time she had ever failed “ to get at the bottom of a thing;" and the disappointment cost her many a sleepless night I warrant you. I have little doubt, however, that my aunt would have ferretted neighbor Pension out, could she have spoken or 66 understood french; but in those times people in general could make themselves understood in plain english; and it was always a standing rule in the Cockloft family, which exists to this day, that not one of the females should learn french. My aunt Charity had lived, at her window, for some time in vain ; when one day as she was keeping her usual look-out, and suffering all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity, she beheld a little meagre, weazel-faced frenchman, of the most forlorn, diminutive and pitiful proportions, arrive at neighbor. Pension's door. He was dressed in white, with a little pinched up cocked hat; he seemed to shake in the wind, and every blast that went over him whistled through his bones and threatened instant annihilation. This embodied spirit-of-famine was followed by three carts, lumbered with crazy trunks, chests, band-boxes, bidets, medicine-chests, parrots and monkeys; and at his heels ran a yelping pack of little black-nosed pug dogs. This was the one thing wanting to fill up the measure of my aunt Charity's afflictions; she could not conceive, for the soul of her, who this mysterious little apparition could be that made so great a display what he could possibly do with so much baggage, and particularly with his parrots and monkeys; or how so small a carcass could have occasion for so many trunks of clothes. Honest soul! she had never had a peep into a frenchman's wardrobe ; that depot of old coats, hats and breeches, of the growth of every fashion he has followed in his life. From the time of this fatal arrival my poor aunt was in a quandary ;-all her inquiries were fruitless; no one could expound the history of this mysterious stranger she never held up her head afterwards, drooped daily, took to her bed in a fortnight, and in "one little month" I saw her quietly deposited in the family vault:-being the seventh Cockloft that has died of a whim-wham! Take warning, any fair countrywomen! and you, oh, ye excellent ladies, whether married or single, who pry into other people's affairs and neglect those of your own household;-who are so busily employed in observing the faults of others that you have no time to correct your own ;-remember the fate of my dear aunt Charity, and eschew the evil spirit of curiosity. |