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AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY.

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crape strewed on two chairs about her, very busily employed in getting up a mourning bonnet, at which she snipped, and clipped, and worked, zealously singing, in a high cracked voice, from time to time, certain verses of a funeral psalm.

Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey Toothacre were two brisk old bodies of the feminine gender and singular number, well known in all the region of Harpswell Neck and Middle Bay, and such was their fame that it had even reached the town of Brunswick, eighteen miles away...

They were of that class of females who might be denominated, in the Old Testament language, "cunning women "-that is, gifted with an infinite diversity of practical "faculty," which made them an essential requisite in every family for miles and miles around.

It was impossible to say what they could not do they could make dresses, and make shirts and vests and pantaloons, and cut out boys' jackets, and braid straw, and bleach and trim bonnets, and cook and wash, and iron and mend, could upholster and quilt, could nurse all kinds of sicknesses, and in default of a doctor, who was often miles away, were supposed to be infallible medical oracles.

Many a human being had been ushered into life under their auspices-trotted, chirrupped in babyhood on their knees, clothed by their handywork in garments gradually enlarging from year to year, watched by them in the last sickness, and finally arrayed for the long repose by their hands.

These universally useful persons receive among us the title of "aunt" by a sort of general consent, showing the strong ties of relationship which bind them to the whole human family. They are nobody's aunts in particular, but aunts to human nature generally. The idea of restricting their usefulness to any one family, would strike dismay through a whole community.

Nobody would be so unprincipled as to think of such a thing as having their services more than a week or two at most. Your country factotum knows better than anybody else how absurd it would be

"To give to a part what was meant for mankind."

Nobody knew very well the ages of these useful sisters. In that cold, clear, severe climate of the North the roots of human existence are hard to strike; but, if once people do take to living, they come in time to a place where they seem never to grow any older, but can always be found, like last year's mullen stalks, upright, dry, and seedy, warranted to last for any length of time.

Miss Roxy Toothacre, who sits trotting the baby, is a tall, thin, angular woman, with sharp black eyes, and hair once black, but now well streaked with grey. These ravages of time, however, were concealed by an ample mohair frisette of glossy blackness woven on each side into a heap of stiff little curls, which pushed up her cap border in rather a bristling and decisive way.

In all her movements and personal habits, even to her tone of voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sybil in all the most awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction? And amid weeping or rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the masterspirit-consulted, referred to by all? - was not her word law and precedent? Her younger sister, Miss Ruey, a pliant, cosy, easyto-be-entreated personage, plump and cushiony, revolved around her as a humble satellite. Miss Roxy looked on Miss Ruey as quite a frisky young thing, though under her ample frisette of carroty hair her head might be seen white with the same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt Ruey had a face much resembling the kind of one you may see, reader, by looking at yourself in the convex side of a silver milk-pitcher. If you try the experiment, this description will need no further amplification.

The two almost always went together, for the variety of talent comprised in their stock could always find employment in the varying wants of a family. While one nursed the sick, the other made clothes for the well; and thus they were always chippering and chatting to each other, like a pair of antiquated house-sparrows,

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retailing over harmless gossips, and moralising in that gentle jogtrot which befits serious old women. In fact, they had talked over everything in Nature, and said everything they could think of to each other so often, that the opinions of one were as like those of the other as two sides of a pea-pod. But, as often happens in cases of the sort, this was not because the two were in all respects exactly alike, but because the stronger one had mesmerised the weaker into

consent.

Miss Roxy was the master-spirit of the two, and, like the great coining machine of a mint, came down with her own sharp, heavy stamp on every opinion her sister put out. She was matter-of-fact, positive, and declarative to the highest degree, while her sister was naturally inclined to the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in sentimental poetry, and keeping a store thereof in her threadcase, which she had cut from the Christian Mirror. Miss Roxy sometimes, in her brusque way, popped out observations on life and things, with a droll, hard quaintness that took one's breath a little, yet never failed to have a sharp crystallisation of truth-frosty though it were. She was one of those sensible, practical creatures who tear every veil, and lay their fingers on every spot in pure business-like good-will; and if we shiver at them at times, as at the first plunge of a cold bath, we confess to an invigorating power in them after all.

"Well, now," said Miss Roxy, giving a decisive push to the tea-pot, which buried it yet deeper in the embers, "an't it all a strange kind o' providence that this 'ere little thing is left behind so; and then their callin' on her by such a strange, mournful kind of name-Mara. I thought sure as could be 'twas Mary, till the minister read the passage from Scriptur'. Seems to me it's kind o' odd. I'd call it Maria, or I'd put an Ann on to it. Mara-ann, now, wouldn't sound so strange now."

"It's a Scriptur' name, sister," said Aunt Ruey, "and that ought to be enough for us."

"Well, I don't know," said Aunt Roxy. "Now there was Miss Jones down on Mure Pint called her twins Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser-Scriptur' names both, but I never liked 'em. The boys used to call 'em Tiggy and Shally, so no mortal could guess they was Scriptur."

"Well," said Aunt Ruey, drawing a sigh which caused her plump proportions to be agitated in gentle waves, "'tan't much matter, after all, what they call the little thing, for 'tan't 'tall likely it's goin' to live-cried and worried all night, and kep' a suckin' my cheek and my night-gown, poor little thing! This 'ere's a baby that won't get along without its mother. What Miss Pennel's agoin' to do with it when we is gone, I'm sure I don't know. It comes kind o' hard on old people to be broke o' their rest. If it's goin' to be called home, it's a pity, as I said, it didn't go with its mother"

"And save the expense of another funeral," said Aunt Roxy. "Now when Miss Pennel's sister asked her what she was going to do with Naomi's clothes, I couldn't help wonderin' when she said she should keep 'em for the child."

"She had a sight of things, Naomi did," said Aunt Ruey. "Nothing was never too much for her. I don't believe that Cap'n Pennel ever went to Bath or Portland without havin' it in his mind to bring Naomi somethin'."

"Yes, and she had a faculty of puttin' of 'em on," said Miss Roxy, with a decisive shake of the head. "Naomi was a still girl, but her faculty was uncommon; and I tell you, Ruey, 'tant everybody hes faculty as hes things."

"The poor Cap'n," said Miss Ruey, " he seemed greatly supported at the funeral, but he's dreadful broke down since. I went into Naomi's room this morning, and there the old man was a-sitting by her bed, and he had a pair of her shoes in bis hand-you know what a leetle bit of a foot she had.. I never saw nothing look so kind o' solitary as that poor old man did!"

"Well," said Miss Roxy, "she was a master hand for keepin' things, Naomi was; her drawers is just a sight; she's got all the little presents and things they ever give her since she was a baby, in one drawer. There's a little pair of red shoes there that she had

THE SISTERS' GOSSIP.

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when she wa'n't more'n five year old. You 'member, Ruey, the Cap'n brought 'm over from Portland when we was to the house a-makin' Miss Pennel's figured black silk that he brought from Calcutty. You 'member they cost just five and sixpence; but, law! the Cap'n he never grudged the money when 'twas for Naomi. And so she's got all her husband's keepsakes and things, just as nice as when he giv' 'em to her."

"It's real affectin," said Miss Ruey, "I can't all the while help a-thinkin' of the Psalm

'So fades the lovely blooming flower-
Frail, smiling solace of an hour;
So quick our transient comforts fly,
And pleasure only blooms to die."

"Yes," said Miss Roxy; "and, Ruey, I was a-thinking whether or no it wa'n't best to pack away them things, 'cause Naomi hadn't fixed no baby drawers, and we seem to want some."

"I was kind o' hintin' that to Miss Pennel this morning," said Ruey, "but she can't seem to want to have 'em touched."

"Well, we may just as well come to such things first as last," said Aunt Roxy; "'cause if the Lord takes our friends, he does take 'em; and we can't lose 'em and have 'em too, and we may as well give right up at first, and done with it, that they are gone, and we'v' got to do without 'em, and not to be hangin' on to keep things just as they was."

"So I was a-tellin' Miss Pennel," said Miss Ruey, " but she'll come to it by-and-by. I wish the baby might live, and kind o' grow up into her mother's place."

"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I wish it might, but there be a sight o' trouble fechin on it up. Folks can do pretty well with children when the're young and spry, if they do get 'em up nights; but come to grandchildren, it's pretty tough."

"I'm a-thinkin', sister," said Miss Ruey, taking off her spectacles and rubbing her nose thoughtfully, "whether or no cow's milk an't goin' to be too hearty for it, it's such a pindling little thing. Now, Miss Badger she brought up a seven-months' child, and she

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