eet to pay your respects to Mrs. Widesworth!" Every
householder quivered with anxiety until this rite had been solemnly
performed.

Mrs. Widesworth, the actual, was a plump, well-to-do widow, of
threescore years. She lived among her fellow-creatures, but not of
them,--and that in a sense far more comfortable than Byronic misanthropy
could imagine. She managed to keep all the tumult and competition of
this rough world just outside the little whitewashed fence which
inclosed her premises. No solitary saint of the Middle Ages floated in a
more lofty independence of the foolish heresies of vulgar humanity. The
mission of woman must, of necessity, be identical with the mission of
Mrs. Widesworth,--and this was, to bestow a mellow patronage upon all
creation. That whatever is is right, and that this is the best possible
of worlds, were to Mrs. Widesworth propositions which her perfect health
and unmitigated prosperity continually proved. That, in a theological
point of view, everything was wrong, she considered an esoteric
condiment to add piquancy to the loaves and fishes which Providence had
set before her.

Concerning the eminent Twynintuft, it may be remarked that he had
devoted a long life to elocution, and produced a bulky manual full of
illustrative quavers. And as it happened that his work was the first of
the sort published in America, it obtained a pretty general circulation
in schools and colleges, and was even patronisingly noticed in a British
Review,--at that time the apotheosis of our native authorship. But, alas
for the perishable nature of literary productions! "Twynintuft on the
Human Voice" had long been superseded, and lay comfortably buried in
that cemetery of dead textbooks from which there is no resurrection.
Yet, as he had once been one of the notables of Foxden, the inhabitants
of the town indulged themselves in the soothing fiction that his memory
was still verdant among men, and did pious homage to his representative.

Until the correspondence of Colonel Prowley had drawn Miss Hurribattle
to Foxden, Mrs. Widesworth reigned by divine right. All quilting-bees
and charitable fairs seemed but manifestations of her pervading
vitality. Every social detail was submitted to her arbitrament. She
hovered over the gossips of the town like Fate in a Greek tragedy,--but
it was a reformed Fate, with a wholesome respect for family and
condition.

An entertainment widely famous as "Mrs. Widesworth's Semiannual