us
figure in black alpaca and warlike mitts, and that she uttered these
irrevocable words:--

"Pity on _me_! Well, I guess he won't! I'll go to the poor-farm fust!"

And Monday morning, spite of his loyal dissuasions, she packed her "blue
chist," and drove off to a far-away cousin, who got her "nussin'" to do.
Another lesson from the warning finger of Death: let what was life not
dream that it can sway the life that is, after the two part company.

Not always were mothers-in-law such breakers of the peace. There is a
story in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's
death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied her.
These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled the
Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of
certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death;
and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he
walked to town, bought them, and placed them in a foolish order about
her grave. It was a puerile, crazy deed, but no one smiled, not even the
little children who heard of it next day, on the way home from school,
and went trudging up there to see. To their stirring minds it seemed a
strange departure from the comfortable order of things, chiefly because
their elders stood about with furtive glances at one another and
murmurs of "Poor creatur'!" But one man, wiser than the rest, "harnessed
up," and went to tell the dead woman's mother, a mile away. Jonas was
"shackled;" he might "do himself a mischief." In the late afternoon, the
guest so summoned walked quietly into the silent house, where Jonas sat
by the window, beating one hand incessantly upon the sill, and staring
at the air. His sister, also, had come; she was frightened, however, and
had betaken herself to the bedroom, to sob. But in walked this little
plump, soft-footed woman, with her banded hair, her benevolent
spectacles, and her atmosphere of calm.

"I guess I'll blaze a fire, Jonas," said she. "You step out an' git me a
mite o' kindlin'."

The air of homely living enwrapped him once again, and mechanically,
with the inertia of old habit, he obeyed. They had a "cup o' tea"
together; and then, when the dishes were washed, and the peaceful
twilight began to settle down upon them like a sifting mist, she drew a
little rocking chair to the window where he sat opposite, and spoke.

"Jonas," said she, in that still voice which