when I told her who I was. She said that
she had read 'Outre-Mer,' of which one number was lying on her
side-board. She then took me all over the house and showed me every room
in it, saying, as we went into each, that I could not have that one. She
finally consented to my taking the rooms mentioned above, on condition
that the door leading into the back entry should be locked on the
outside. Young Habersham, of Savannah, a friend of Mrs. Craigie's,
occupied at that time the other front chamber. He was a skilful
performer on the flute. Like other piping birds, he took wing for the
rice-fields of the South when the cold weather came, and I remained
alone with the widow in her castle. The back part of the house was
occupied, however, by her farmer. His wife supplied my meals and took
care of my rooms. She was a giantess, and very pious in words; and when
she brought in my breakfast frequently stopped to exhort me. The
exorbitant rate at which she charged my board was rather at variance
with her preaching. Her name was Miriam; and Felton called her 'Miriam,
the profitess.' Her husband was a meek little man.

"The winter was a rather solitary one, and the house very still. I used
to hear Mrs. Craigie go down to breakfast at nine or ten in the morning
and go up to bed at eleven at night. During the day she seldom left
the parlor, where she sat reading the newspapers and the
magazines,--occasionally a volume of Voltaire. She read also the
English Annuals, of which she had a large collection. Occasionally, the
sound of voices announced a visitor; and she sometimes enlivened the
long evenings with a half-forgotten tune upon an old piano-forte.

"During the following summer the fine old elms in front of the house
were attacked by canker-worms, which, after having devoured the leaves,
came spinning down in myriads. Mrs. Craigie used to sit by the open
windows and let them crawl over her white turban unmolested. She would
have nothing done to protect the trees from these worms; she used to
say, 'Why, sir, they are our fellow-worms; they have as good a right to
live as we have.'"

It was certainly a strange chance which threw the young poet, on his
return from Europe, into the curiously cosmopolitan atmosphere of Mrs.
Craigie's mind. The sale catalogue of her books lies before me, a mass
of perhaps five hundred odd volumes of worthy or worthless literature:
Goethe's "Werther" beside the American "Frugal Housewife," and Heath's