wever, there was at least one person who claimed to
be intimately connected with rank and wealth. The governor, after
suggesting that this person would probably be gratified by our visit,
ushered us into a small parlor, which was furnished a little more like a
room in a private dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of
religious books and fashionable novels on the mantel-piece. An old lady
sat at a bright coal-fire, reading a romance, and rose to receive us with
a certain pomp of manner and elaborate display of ceremonious courtesy,
which, in spite of myself, made me inwardly question the genuineness of
her aristocratic pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a
respectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to the very core of her
frostbitten heart by the awful punctiliousness with which we responded to
her gracious and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome. After a little
polite conversation, we retired; and the governor, with a lowered voice
and an air of deference, told us that she had been a lady of quality, and
had ridden in her own equipage, not many years before, and now lived in
continual expectation that some of her rich relatives would drive up in
their carriages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated
with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help thinking, from
a few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might
have been a mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial
exaggeration on the old lady's, concerning her former position in society;
but what struck me was the forcible instance of that most prevalent of
English vanities, the pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side,
and the submission and reverence with which it was accepted by the
governor and his household, on the other. Among ourselves, I think, when
wealth and eminent position have taken their departure, they seldom leave
a pallid ghost behind them,--or, if it sometimes stalks abroad, few
recognize it.

We went into several other rooms, at the doors of which, pausing on the
outside, we could hear the volubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the
female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace when we
stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their
sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number,
classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so
far as I can remember, with the o