every day. In the beginning of her residence
with us, I exposed her indignantly every time I caught her lying; but
the tenor of her private conversations with me was conducive to a
cessation of my activity along the line of volunteer testimony. In
shorter words, the nurse terrified me with horrid threats until I did
not dare to contradict her even if she lied her head off. The things
she promised me in this life and in the life to come could not be
executed by a person without imagination. The nurse gave almost her
entire attention to us older children, disposing easily of the baby's
claims. Deborah, unless she was teething or whoop-coughing, was a
quiet baby, and would lie for hours on the nurse's lap, sucking at a
"pacifier" made of bread and sugar tied up in a muslin rag, and
previously chewed to a pulp by the nurse. And while the baby sucked
the nurse told us things--things that we must remember when we went to
bed at night.

A favorite subject of her discourse was the Evil One, who lived, so
she told us, in our attic, with his wife and brood. A pet amusement of
our invisible tenant was the translating of human babies into his
lair, leaving one of his own brats in the cradle; the moral of which
was that if nurse wanted to loaf in the yard and watch who went out
and who came in, we children must mind the baby. The girl was so sly
that she carried on all this tyranny without being detected, and we
lived in terror till she was discharged for stealing.

In our grandmothers we were very fortunate: They spoiled us to our
hearts' content. Grandma Deborah's methods I know only from hearsay,
for I was very little when she died. Grandma Rachel I remember
distinctly, spare and trim and always busy. I recall her coming in
midwinter from the frozen village where she lived. I remember, as if
it were but last winter, the immense shawls and wraps which we unwound
from about her person, her voluminous brown sack coat in which there
was room for three of us at a time, and at last the tight clasp of her
long arms, and her fresh, cold cheeks on ours. And when the hugging
and kissing were over, Grandma had a treat for us. It was _talakno_,
or oat flour, which we mixed with cold water and ate raw, using wooden
spoons, just like the peasants, and smacking our lips over it in
imaginary enjoyment.

But Grandma Rachel did not come to play. She applied herself
energetically to the housekeeping. She kept her bright eye on
everything, as i