University of Virginia Library

THE
ADVENTURE OF MY AUNT.

My aunt was a lady of large frame, strong
mind, and great resolution; she was what might
be termed a very manly woman. My uncle was
a thin, puny little man, very meek and acquiescent,
and no match for my aunt. It was observed
that he dwindled and dwindled gradually
away, from the day of his marriage. His wife's
powerful mind was too much for him; it wore
him out. My aunt, however, took all possible
care of him, had half the doctors in town to prescribe
for him, made him take all their prescriptions,
willy nilly, and dosed him with physic
enough to cure a whole hospital. All was in
vain. My uncle grew worse and worse the more
dosing and nursing he underwent, until in the
end he added another to the long list of matrimonial
victims, who have been killed with kindness.

“And was it his ghost that appeared to her?”
asked the inquisitive gentleman, who had questioned
the former story teller.

“You shall hear,” replied the narrator:—My
aunt took on mightily for the death of her poor
dear husband! Perhaps she felt some compunction
at having given him so much physic, and
nursed him into his grave. At any rate, she did
all that a widow could do to honour his memory.
She spared no expense in either the quantity
or quality of her mourning weeds; she wore
a miniature of him about her neck, as large as a
little sun dial; and she had a full length portrait
of him always hanging in her bed chamber. All
the world extolled her conduct to the skies; and
it was determined, that a woman who behaved
so well to the memory of one husband, deserved
soon to get another.

It was not long after this that she went to
take up her residence in an old country seat in
Derbyshire, which had long been in the care of
merely a steward and housekeeper. She took
most of her servants with her, intending to make

it her principal abode. The house stood in a
lonely, wild part of the country, among the gray
Derbyshire hills; with a murderer hanging in
chains on a bleak height in full view.

The servants from town were half frightened
out of their wits, at the idea of living in such a
dismal, pagan-looking place; especially when
they got together in the servant's hall in the
evening, and compared notes on all the hobgoblin
stories they had picked up in the course of the
day. They were afraid to venture alone about
the forlorn black-looking chambers. My ladies'
maid, who was troubled with nerves, declared she
could never sleep alone in such a “gashly, rummaging
old building;” and the footman, who was
a kind-hearted young fellow, did all in his power
to cheer her up.

My aunt, herself, seemed to be struck with the
lonely appearance of the house. Before she
went to bed, therefore, she examined well the
fastenings of the doors and windows, locked up
the plate with her own hands, and carried the
keys, together with a little box of money and

jewels, to her own room; for she was a notable
woman, and always saw to all things herself.
Having put the keys under her pillow, and dismissed
her maid, she sat by her toilet arranging
her hair; for, being, in spite of her grief for my
uncle, rather a buxom widow, she was a little
particular about her person. She sat for a little
while looking at her face in the glass, first on one
side, then on the other, as ladies are apt to do,
when they would ascertain if they have been in
good looks; for a roystering country squire of
the neighbourhood, with whom she had flirted
when a girl, had called that day to welcome her
to the country.

All of a sudden she thought she heard something
move behind her. She looked hastily
round, but there was nothing to be seen. Nothing
but the grimly painted portrait of her poor
dear man, which had been hung against the wall.
She gave a heavy sigh to his memory, as she was
accustomed to do, whenever she spoke of him in
company; and went on adjusting her night dress.
Her sigh was re-echoed; or answered by a longdrawn

breath. She looked round again, but no
one was to be seen. She ascribed these sounds
to the wind, oozing through the rat holes of the
old mansion; and proceeded leisurely to put her
hair in papers, when, all at once, she thought she
perceived one of the eyes of the portrait move.

“The back of her head being towards it!”
said the story teller with the ruined head, giving
a knowing wink on the sound side of his
visage—“good!”

“Yes sir!” replied drily the narrator, “her
back being towards the portrait, but her eye
fixed on its reflection in the glass.”

Well, as I was saying, she perceived one of
the eyes of the portrait move. So strange a
circumstance, as you may well suppose, gave
her a sudden shock. To assure herself cautiously
of the fact, she put one hand to her forehead,
as if rubbing it; peeped through her fingers, and
moved the candle with the other hand. The
light of the taper gleamed on the eye, and was reflected
from it. She was sure it moved. Nay,
more, it seemed to give her a wink, as she had

sometimes known her husband to do when
living! It struck a momentary chill to her heart;
for she was a lone woman, and felt herself fearfully
situated.

The chill was but transient. My aunt, who
was almost as resolute a personage as your uncle,
sir, (turning to the old story teller,) became
instantly calm and collected. She went on adjusting
her dress. She even hummed a favourite
air, and did not make a single false note. She
casually overturned a dressing box; took a candle
and picked up the articles leisurely, one by
one, from the floor; pursued a rolling pin cushion
that was making the best of its way under the
bed; then opened the door; looked for an instant
into the corridor, as if in doubt whether to go;
and then walked quietly out.

She hastened down stairs, ordered the servants
to arm themselves with the first weapons
that came to hand, placed herself at their head,
and returned almost immediately.

Her hastily levied army presented a formidable
force. The steward had a rusty blunder-buss;

the coachman a loaded whip; the footman
a pair of horse pistols; the cook a huge
chopping knife, and the butler a bottle in each
hand. My aunt led the van with a red hot poker;
and, in my opinion, she was the most formidable
of the party. The waiting maid brought
up the rear, dreading to stay alone in the servant's
hall, smelling to a broken bottle of volatile
salts, and expressing her terror of the ghosteses.

“Ghosts!” said my aunt resolutely, “I'll singe
their whiskers for them!”

They entered the chamber. All was still and
undisturbed as when she left it. They approached
the portrait of my uncle.

“Pull me down that picture!” cried my aunt.

A heavy groan, and a sound like the chattering
of teeth, was heard from the portrait. The
servants shrunk back. The maid uttered a faint
shriek, and clung to the footman.

“Instantly!” added my aunt, with a stamp of
the foot.

The picture was pulled down, and from a

recess behind it, in which had formerly stood a
clock, they hauled forth a round-shouldered,
black-bearded varlet, with a knife as long as my
arm, but trembling all over like an aspen leaf.

“Well, and who was he? No ghost, I suppose!”
said the inquisitive gentleman.

“A knight of the post,” replied the narrator,
“who had been smitten with the worth of the
wealthy widow; or rather a marauding Tarquin,
who had stolen into her chamber to violate her
purse and rifle her strong box when all the house
should be asleep. In plain terms,” continued he,
“the vagabond was a loose idle fellow of the
neighbourhood, who had once been a servant in
the house, and had been employed to assist in arranging
it for the reception of its mistress. He
confessed that he had contrived this hiding place
for his nefarious purposes, and had borrowed an
eye from the portrait by way of a reconnoitering
hole.”

“And what did they do with him—did they
hang him?” resumed the questioner.

“Hang him?—how could they?” exclaimed

a beetle-browed barrister, with a hawk's nose—
“the offence was not capital—no robbery, nor
assault had been committed—no forcible entry
or breaking into the premises”—

“My aunt,” said the narrator, “was a woman
of spirit, and apt to take the law into her own
hands. She had her own notions of cleanliness
also. She ordered the fellow to be drawn through
the horsepond to cleanse away all offences, and
then to be well rubbed down with an oaken
towel.”

“And what became of him afterwards?” said
the inquisitive gentleman.

“I do not exactly know—I believe he was
sent on a voyage of improvement to Botany Bay.”

“And your aunt”—said the inquisitive gentleman—“I'll
warrant she took care to make her
maid sleep in the room with her after that.”

“No, sir, she did better—she gave her hand
shortly after to the roystering squire; for she
used to observe it was a dismal thing for a woman
to sleep alone in the country.”

“She was right,” observed the inquisitive gentleman,

nodding his head sagaciously—“but I
am sorry they did not hang that fellow.”

It was agreed on all hands that the last narrator
had brought his tale to the most satisfactory
conclusion; though a country clergyman present
regretted that the uncle and aunt, who figured in
the different stories, had not been married together.
They certainly would have been well
matched.

“But I don't see, after all,” said the inquisitive
gentleman, “that there was any ghost in this
last story.”

“Oh, if it's ghosts you want, honey,” cried
the Irish captain of dragoons, “if it's ghosts you
want, you shall have a whole regiment of them.
And since these gentlemen have been giving the
adventures of their uncles and aunts, faith and
I'll e'en give you a chapter too, out of my own
family history.”