ckler, as your ma, Miss,--'specially 'bout de
pleetin' and clare-starchin'."

I have to accuse myself of habitually shocking her aristocratic
sensibilities by profanely ignoring, in favor of the society of dirty
little plebeians, the relations to whom the sacred charm of a common
ancestry should have drawn me. "Make haste, honey," she used to say;
"wash yer face and hands, and pull up yer stockin's, and tie yer shoes,
and bresh de sand out of yer hair, and blow yer nose, and go into de
parlor, and shake hands wid yer Cousin Jorjana." But I would not. "O
bother, Auntie! who's my Cousin Georgiana?" "Why, honey, don't you know?
Miss Arabella Jane--dat's your dear dead-an'-gone grandma's second
cousin--had seven childern by her first husband,--he was a
Patterson,--and nine by her second,--_he_ was a McKim,--and five--but
'tain't no use, honey; you don't 'pear to take no int'res' in yer own
kith and kin, no more dan or'nary white trash. I 'spec' you don't know
de diff'ence, dis minnit, 'twixt yer poor old Aunt Judy and any
no-account poor-house nigger." And so my Cousin Georgiana, of whom I had
never heard before, remains a myth to me, one of Aunt Judy's Mrs.
Harrises, to this day. It was wonderful what an exact descriptive list
of them she could call at a moment's notice; and for keeping the run of
their names and numbers, she was as good as an enrolling officer or a
directory man. "Our family" could boast of many Pharisees, as well as
blush for many prodigals; but her sympathies were wholly with the
latter; and for these she was eternally killing fatted calves, in
spite of angry elder brothers and the whole sect of whited
sepulchres, who forgive exactly four hundred and ninety times by the
multiplication-table, and compass sea and land to make one hypocrite. If
she had had a fold of her own, all her sheep would have been black.

One day in January, 1849, I called to see Aunt Judy for the last time.
Superannuated, and rapidly failing, she had been installed by my father
in a comfortable room in the house of a sort of cousin of hers, a worthy
and "well-to-do" woman of color, where she might be cheered by the
visits of the more respectable people of her own class,--darkies of
substantial character and of the first families, among whom she was
esteemed as a mother in Israel. Thither either my father or one or two
of his children came every day, to watch her declining health, to
administer to her comfort, and to wait upon her