. I learned
it afterward from the lips of Aunt Nora Meriwether.

Dear Aunt Nora! If thou _wert_ yclept "spinster," never did a heart
more filled with good and pure and kindly impulses beat than thine!
Indeed, I have ever ascribed my deep reverence for the sisterhood in
general to my affectionate remembrances of this childhood's friend.
The oracle of our village was Aunt Nora Meriwether--and how could "old
maid" be a stigma upon her name, when it was by virtue of this very
title that she was enabled to perform all those little kindly offices
which her heart was ever prompting, and which made up the sum of her
simple daily existence! It was said that Aunt Nora was "disappointed"
in early life--but however this may have been, certain it was that the
tales (and they _did_ intimate--did the good people of our
village--that if Aunt Nora had a weakness, it consisted in
over-fondness for story-telling) she treasured longest, and oftenest
repeated, were those in which the fair heroine was crossed in love.

Many a time have we, a group of gay and happy-hearted children,
gathered round her feet, as she sat in the low doorway of her
cottage-home, and listened with intense interest to a tale of her
youthful days, gazing the while with eyes in which the bright drops of
sympathy oft would glisten, upon the kind face bent upon our own in
such loveful earnestness. And we would hope, in child-like innocence
of heart, that _we_ might never "fall in love," but grow up and be
"old maids," just like our own dear Aunt Nora! Whether we still
continued to hope so, after we had grown in years and wisdom, it
behoveth me not to say! I am quite sure you would rather listen to the
tale now before thee, dear reader, from the good old lady's own
lips--for it is but a simple sketch at best, and needeth the charm
thrown around it by a heart which the frost of many winters had not
sealed to the tenderest sympathies of our nature--and the low-toned
voice, too, that often during her narrative would grow tremulous with
the emotion it excited. But, alas! this may not be! that low voice is
hushed--the little wicket-gate now closed--the path which led to her
cottage-door untrodden now for many a day--and that kind and gentle
heart is laid at rest beneath bright flowers, planted there by loving
hands, in the humble church-yard. But this day is so lovely--is it
not? With that soft and shadowy mist hanging like a gossamer veil over
Nature's face, through which