love with
every thing in feminine shape that came in his way, and if he had not
been blessed with an equal facility in falling out again, we do not know
what ever would have become of him. But at length he came into an
abiding captivity, and it is quite time that he should; for, having
devoted thus much space to the illustration of our hero, it is fit we
should do something in behalf of our heroine; and, therefore, we must
beg the reader's attention while we draw a diagram or two that will
assist him in gaining a right idea of her.

Do you see yonder brown house, with its broad roof sloping almost to the
ground on one side, and a great, unsupported, sun bonnet of a piazza
shooting out over the front door? You must often have noticed it; you
have seen its tall well sweep, relieved against the clear evening sky,
or observed the feather beds and bolsters lounging out of its chamber
windows on a still summer morning; you recollect its gate, that swung
with a chain and a great stone; its pantry window, latticed with little
brown slabs, and looking out upon a forest of bean poles. You remember
the zephyrs that used to play among its pea brush, and shake the long
tassels of its corn patch, and how vainly any zephyr might essay to
perform similar flirtations with the considerate cabbages that were
solemnly vegetating near by. Then there was the whole neighborhood of
purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; there were the billows of
gooseberry bushes rolled up by the fence, interspersed with rows of
quince trees; and far off in one corner was one little patch,
penuriously devoted to ornament, which flamed with marigolds, poppies,
snappers, and four-o'clocks. Then there was a little box by itself with
one rose geranium in it, which seemed to look around the garden as much
like a stranger as a French dancing master in a Yankee meeting house.

That is the dwelling of Uncle Lot Griswold. Uncle Lot, as he was
commonly called, had a character that a painter would sketch for its
lights and contrasts rather than its symmetry. He was a chestnut burr,
abounding with briers without and with substantial goodness within. He
had the strong-grained practical sense, the calculating worldly wisdom
of his class of people in New England; he had, too, a kindly heart; but
all the strata of his character were crossed by a vein of surly
petulance, that, half way between joke and earnest, colored every thing
that he said and did.

If you asked a f