"I don't know where you could find any at this time," said Mary.
"Well, never mind; I'll just go and open the door as slow and careful as
I can," said Miss Prissy, as she trotted out of the apartment.
The result of her carefulness was very soon announced to Mary by a protracted sound resembling the mewing of a hoarse cat, accompanied by sundry audible grunts from Miss Prissy, terminating in a grand finale of clatter, occasioned by her knocking down all the pieces of the quilting-frame that stood in the corner of the room, with a concussion that roused everybody in the house.
"What is that?" called out Mrs. Scudder, from her bed-room.
She was answered by two streams of laughter,—one from Mary, sitting up in bed, and the other from Miss Prissy, holding her sides, as she sat dissolved in merriment on the sanded floor,
[To be continued.]
OLD PAPERS.
As who, in idly searching o'er
Some seldom-entered garret-shed,
Might, with strange pity, touch the poor
Moth-eaten garments of the dead,—
Thus (to their wearer once allied)
I lift these weeds of buried woe,—
These relics of a self that died
So sadly and so long ago!
'Tis said that seven short years can change,
Through nerve and bone, this knitted frame,
Cellule by cellule waxing strange,
Till not an atom is the same.
By what more subtile, slow degrees
Thus may the mind transmute its all,
That calmly it should dwell on these,
As on another's fate and fall!