When in a merry mood (and that was not
seldom) I used to hear Aunt Bella as I came in,
"brumming" over her work a comical old pet
stave which I never heard sung by anyone else,
though, for aught I know, it may be to be found
in one of the plays she had seen in her childhood.
Rare or common, its roystering curtness
used to delight me, and thus it ran, duly pointed
here and there with satirical emphasis:

Master Tom is married,
Pray what says St. Paul?
If I'm not mistaken,
"Marry not at all!"
Boys, before you marry,
Mind the golden rule,
Look before you leap,
Or else you'll play the fool!

For my delectation, too, on grand occasions,
Aunt Bella would perform a moral and descriptive
nursery ballad, entitled, "Go to Church,
Kitty." The words, looked at now through the
spectacles of my latter days, seem a sort of
versified Whole Duty of Woman, for the use of
the prim little damsels of old mother-in-law
Vance's time, in breast-knots and high-heeled
shoes; though, indeed, it might give useful
rudimentary instruction to the present improved
generation in the social duties of their after
life. The ballad was in the form of a dialogue
between "Kitty," who seemed to be a maiden
of low degree, and her admirer, whose superior
rank was delicately hinted at by his appearing
only under the title of "Mr. Gentleman." One
fine Sunday morning, Mr. Gentleman opens the
conversation as follows:

Go to church, Kitty!
Go! go! go!

(Kitty, answering con fuoco.)

No! Mr. Gentleman,
No! no! no!

(Mr. Gentleman, astonished.)

For why? For why? Miss Kitty, for why?
(Kitty, doggedly.)

Because I can't go to church like a Ladye.

Here the poet strikes in with a description of
the subsequent action, pithy in matter, though
faulty in rhyme:

then, Mr. Gentleman, he bespoke,
And a fine silk gown for Kitty was bought.

Mr. Gentleman, now confident of success,
again attempts to lead Miss Kitty in the way
she should go, but again unsuccessfully. Once
more Miss Kitty pertly replies with her "No!
no! no!" and her swam once more attempts to
influence her by the gift of some other choice
article of dress. "A fine straw hat," for
instance, or, "A fine lace veil," but all to no
purpose. The art of the singer used to consist in
protracting the denouement as long as possible,
by enumerating all the contents of a fine lady's
wardrobe, one by one, whether they would fit into
the verse or no. At last, after half an hour's
haggling, driven to desperation by repeated
refusals, Mr. Gentleman chances to hit on the
attractive bait of " a gold ring," at which the
cunning little hussy was aiming all the time,
and she fairly forgets herself in the joy of her
success, and answers in an allegro movement:

O yes, Mr. Gentleman!—now I will go!
O, now I will go! O, now I will go!

Whereupon, in a hazy vision of wedding finery,
the audience applauds rapturously, and the
performance closes.

Poor, patient Aunt Bella! How I used to
worry her, by pertinaciously insisting on Mr.
Gentleman offering more and more bribes of
pretty things to his wily sweetheart; though
I knew, with a child's quickness, that finery
was not her forte! I could see even then
that she had no notion of setting off her
homely little person to the best advantage;
nay, she would often make her appearance in
raiment of such incongruous forms and colours,
that my dear mother, who made her own spare
but graceful figure a very model of quakerish
neatness, used sometimes to remonstrate with
her on the subject, as seriously as if those terrible
buff chintzes à grand ramage, and those salmon-
coloured and blue-striped taffeties—I always
marvelled where she got them, unless they were
relics of her London days—were really signs of
some great moral delinquency. But it was all
of no use. Aunt Bella's taste was not to be
reformed by precept or example. She still
persisted in fastening fantastic poufs (I think
she called them) of spotted muslin round her
grizzled hair, instead of .decent caps; held
pertinaciously to high-heeled shoes to her life's
end; and was never seen without a flounced
apron of some sort. Yet, Heaven knows it
was no inherent love of finery that made Aunt
Bella obstinate in her eccentricities of dress,
for she never put on, to my knowledge, the few
trinkets she possessed. They were heirlooms
of some value, inherited from cross old Mrs.
Vance. One day, I remember her showing me
a beautiful little antique ring, a diamond and
ruby star; and my asking her why she never
wore it? How she laughed, dear soul, at the
question! "Why, Boonie, dear," she answered
Boonie was the pet name she always called
me by; but its derivation is utterly lost to me
in the mists of infancy "why, Boonie, do you
think these ivory hands of mine are likely to
be improved by putting jewels on them?"

I thought they did not want improving, and
I told her so.

"Ah, child!" said she, "but I know better;
and so I told Captain Vance, when he tried to
smarten me up, years and years ago, with a
pearl suit from Hamlet's. We were living near
P— then (the cathedral town where the glee
club was), and my beloved had been up to town
about some improved telescope, which he was
very anxious to get, and which cost a world of
money."

I must stop a moment to think over the sweet
cadence which that strangely-poetical title, "my
beloved," pronounced in three distinct syllables,
used to have in Aunt Bella's mouth, and how
far from laughable it sounded, though applied
by a homely old woman to her homely old