"I often said to Cousin Martha, 'What did you see in this big horse of a man?' 'Oh,' she replied, 'he's the best overseer in Virginia. He looks after my property as no other man could.'"

"Then," said Mrs. Custis, emphatically, "he was one man out of a thousand."

"That's the kind of man you married, Vesta," spoke up Mrs. Dennis.

"Her husband," said Mrs. Custis, "looked after her father's property, I am sure, for he got it all."

"And returned it all," exclaimed Vesta.

Mrs. Custis remarked that Washington certainly was a blue-blooded man.

"Is thar people with blue blood comin' outen of 'em?" asked Rhoda Holland. "Lord sakes! I should think it would make 'em cold."

"I wonder if men are ever great?" asked Vesta; "or whether it is not great occasion and trial that project them. A crisis comes in our lives, and, finding what we can endure, we incur greater risks, and finally delight in such adventure."

"That is the way with my poor boy, Levin," said Mrs. Dennis, quietly, to Vesta. She was a pretty woman, somewhat past thirty, with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, neat but rather poor attire, and a simple, artless manner, and might have passed for the sister of her son.

"Is Levin coming for you to-night?" Vesta asked.

"No," blushed the widow; "James Phoebus will see me home. Levin has gone off in his boat, and I have been worried about him all day. Some time, I am afraid, he will go and never return. Oh, Cousin Vesta, this waiting for a husband neither alive nor dead is very trying."

Overhearing the remark, Mrs. Custis remarked, "Norah, you ought to be ashamed to keep that faithful fellow waiting on you, when you could give yourself a good husband and reward him so easily."

"I think you had better look out for old age," Mrs. Tilghman also said, "while you have youth and good looks to obtain the provision. Oden Dennis is probably dead; if not dead, he does not mean to return, for I can think of no circumstances in this age which would forcibly detain a man from his wife fifteen years. Even if he was in a prison, he would be allowed to write to you. He may not be dead, Norah, but he is not coming back. Get a father for your son; you cannot manage Levin."

"Maybe he has been stoled by Injins," exclaimed Rhoda, with great fervor; "thar was a Injin captive in a shew at Nu-ark, that had been kept nineteen years. He forgot his language, and whooped dreffle. Misc Somers say he was an imploster, an' worked on the Brekwater up to Lewistown. She's always lookin' behind the shew to find out somethin'." (Slight sniffle.)

"Do get that girl a pocket-handkerchief, and show her how to use it," exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, breaking out. "Ah! girls, I have been a widow thirty years. I never gave up the expectation of marrying again till I lost my eyesight; and even after that, at sixty-five, I had an offer of marriage; but I said to my gallant old beau, 'I will not take a man I cannot compliment by seeing him and admiring him every day. I love you, but my blindness would give you too much pain.' In our quiet towns, all the life worth living is domestic joy. Do not lose it, Ellenora; do not put it off too long!"