n
a few days. Aunt Lucinda never uttered an impatient word, but began
quietly to make preparations for their reception. Very likely she
remembered what her mother had said sometime before. It is very often
the case that advice which we give little heed to while the giver is in
life and health becomes a sacred obligation after their death. Almost
every day she went over to the house which was to be their home, and
spent several hours in putting it in order, and when they arrived, a
comfortable home awaited them. Cousin Silas was, as may be supposed, a
much talking, do-nothing kind of a man, his language was plentifully
adorned with flowery words, to which he often added scripture
quotations, although seemingly he took little pains to inculcate in his
own family the principles taught in that sacred volume. When, soon after
his arrival, he was informed of their late bereavement, he made a long,
and I suppose very appropriate speech, but I am inclined to think, it
failed to carry much consolation to his listeners. It would be difficult
for one to imagine a more disorderly family than was that of Cousin
Silas, and yet strange to say he seemed to regard his wild unmanageable
children as models of perfection. His own imagination was very fertile,
and he really indulged the illusion that they were all he would have
liked them to be. His wife, her spirits broken down by poverty and care,
had long since ceased to make the best of the little left in her hands,
and her family government was also extremely nominal in its nature, so
that their arrival at Uncle Nathan's, to say the least of it, was not
a desirable affair. There were five children altogether. I believe it
would have been hard to find a worse boy than their eldest son Ephraim,
aged about fourteen. The next in age was George Washington, but I am
certain, had he lived in the days of that illustrious man, he would have
looked upon his namesake with any other feeling rather than pride.
Ephraim had one way, and George Washington had another. The eldest was
noisy and boisterous and delighted in malicious fun, and was continually,
as the neighbors said, "up to some kind of mischief;" while the other was
too indolent even to do mischief; he had one of those disagreeable sulky
natures which we sometimes meet with always grumbling and out of humor
with himself and every one else. Then there were three little girls, and
all that caused them to be less troublesome than the boys, was,