nd that we never
need give ourselves any uneasiness, for she would doubtless live to a
good old age, unless some acute disease should intervene, as there was
nothing at all the matter with her except a slight nervous
sensitiveness, that never destroyed anybody. I suppose we were a set of
young heathen, for really there were times, if you will believe it, when
that was not the most reassuring statement in the world.

However. Sometimes Aunt Pen found a doctor, or a medicine, or a course
of diet, or something, that gave her great sensations of relief, and
then she would come down, and go about the house, and praise our
administration, and say every thing went twice as far as it used to go
before we came, and tell us delightful stories, of our mother's
housewifely skill, and be quite herself again; and she would make the
table ring with laughing, and give charming little tea-parties; and then
we all did wish that Aunt Pen would live forever--and be down-stairs.
But probably the next day, after one of the tea-parties, oysters, or
claret punch, or hot cakes, or all together, had wrought their
diablerie, and the doctor was sent for, and the warming-pan was brought
out, and there was another six weeks' siege, in which, obeyed by every
one, and physicked by herself, and sympathized with to her heart's
content by callers, and shut up in a hot room with the windows full of
flowering plants, and somebody reading endless novels to her with the
lights burning all night long--if she wasn't ill she had every
inducement to be, and nothing but an indomitable constitution hindered
it. It was perfectly idle for us to tell her she was hurting herself; it
only made her very indignant with us, and more determined than ever to
persist in doing so.

Of course, then, the longer Aunt Pen staid in her own room the worse she
really did get, and her nerves, with confinement and worry and
relaxation, would by-and-by be in a condition for any sort of an
outburst if we attempted the least reasoning with her. She would
become, for one thing, as sleepless as an owl; then she was thoroughly
sure she was going to be insane, and down would go the hydrate of
chloral till the doctor forbade it on pain of death. After the chloral,
too, such horrid eyes as she had! the eyes, you know, that chloral
always leaves--inflamed, purple, swollen, heavy, crying, and good for
any thing but seeing. Immediately then Aunt Pen went into a new tantrum;
she was going to be