the Yankees during the war. He
was very kind to her. I suppose he had never seen anyone like her.
She used to go every day, and soon dispensed with her friend's escort,
finding no difficulty in getting about. Indeed, she came to be known on
the streets she passed through, and on the cars she travelled by, and
people guided her. Several times as she was taking the wrong car men
stopped her, and said to her, "Madam, yours is the red car." She said,
sure enough it was, but she never could divine how they knew. She
addressed the conductors as, "My dear sir", and made them help her not
only off, but quite to the sidewalk, when she thanked them, and
said "Good-by", as if she had been at home. She said she did this on
principle, for it was such a good thing to teach them to help a feeble
woman. Next time they would expect to do it, and after a while it would
become a habit. She said no one knew what terror women had of being run
over and trampled on.

She was, as I have said, an awful coward. She used to stand still on the
edge of the street and look up and down both ways ever so long, then go
out in the street and stand still, look both ways and then run back; or
as like as not start on and turn and run back after she was more than
half way across, and so get into real danger. One day, as she was
passing along, a driver had in his cart an old bag-of-bones of a horse,
which he was beating to make him pull up the hill, and Cousin Fanny,
with an old maid's meddlesomeness, pushed out into the street and caught
hold of him and made him stop, which of course collected a crowd, and
just as she was coming back a little cart came rattling along, and
though she was in no earthly danger, she ran so to get out of the way of
the horse that she tripped and fell down in the street and hurt herself.
So much for cowardice.

The doctor finally told her that she had nothing the matter with her,
except something with her nerves and, I believe, her spine, and that she
wanted company (you see she was a good deal alone). He said it was the
first law of health ever laid down, that it was not good for man to
be alone; that loneliness is a specific disease. He said she wanted
occupation, some sort of work to interest her, and make her forget her
aches and ailments. He suggested missionary work of some kind. This
was one of the worst things he could have told her, for there was no
missionary work to be had where she lived. Besides, she could not have