University of Virginia Library

MY AUNT CHARITY.

My aunt Charity departed this life in the fifty-ninth
year of her age, though she never grew older after twenty-five.
In her teens she was, according to her own
account, a celebrated beauty,—though I never could meet
with any body that remembered when she was handsome.
On the contrary, Evergreen's father, who used to gallant
her in his youth, says she was as knotty a little piece

of humanity as he ever saw; and that, if she had been
possessed of the least sensibility, she would, like poor old
Acco, have most certainly run mad at her own figure and
face the first time she contemplated herself in a looking-glass.
In the good old times that saw my aunt in the
hey-day of youth, a fine lady was a most formidable animal,
and required to be approached with the same awe and
devotion that a Tartar feels in the presence of his grand
Lama. If a gentleman offered to take her hand, except
to help her into a carriage, or lead her into a drawing-room,
such frowns! such a rustling of brocade and taffeta!
Her very paste shoe buckles sparkled with indignation,
and for a moment assumed the brilliancy of diamonds!
In those days the person of a belle was sacred—it
was unprofaned by the sacrilegious grasp of a stranger:—
simple souls:—they had not the waltz among them yet!

My good aunt prided herself on keeping up this buckram
delicacy; and if she happened to be playing at the old
fashioned game of forfeits, and was fined a kiss, it was
always more trouble to get it than it was worth; for she
made a most gallant defence, and never surrendered until
she saw her adversary inclined to give over his attack.
Evergreen's father says he remembers once to
have been on a sleighing party with her, and when they
came to Kissing-Bridge, it fell to his lot to levy contributions
on Miss Charity Cockloft, who after squalling at a
hideous rate, at length jumped out of the sleigh plump into
a snow-bank, where she stuck fast like an icicle, until he
came to her rescue. This Latonian feat cost her a rheumatism,
which she never thoroughly recovered.

It is rather singular that my aunt, though a great
beauty, and an heiress withal, never got married.—The
reason she alleged was, that she never met with a lover
who resembled Sir Charles Grandison, the hero of her
nightly dreams and waking fancy; but I am privately of
opinion that it was owing to her never having had an
offer. This much is certain, that for many years previous
to her decease she declined all attentions from the gentlemen,
and contented herself with watching over the
welfare of her fellow creatures. She was, indeed, observed
to take a considerable lean towards methodism, was frequent
in her attendance at love-feasts, read Whitfield and
Wesley, and even went so far as once to travel the distance
of five and twenty miles to be present at a camp-meeting.
This gave great offence to my cousin Christopher, and

his good lady, who, as I have already mentioned, are rigidly
orthodox;—and had not my aunt Charity been of
a most pacific disposition, her religious whim-wham
would have occasioned many a family altercation. She
was indeed, as the Cockloft family ever boasted—a lady
of unbounded loving-kindness, which extended to man,
woman, and child; many of whom she almost killed
with good nature. Was any acquaintance sick?—in
vain did the wind whistle and the storm beat—my aunt
would waddle through mud and mire, over the whole
town, but what she would visit them. She would
sit by them for hours together with the most persevering
patience; and tell a thousand melancholy stories
of human misery, to keep up their spirits. The
whole catalogue of yerb teas was at her fingers' ends,
from formidable wormwood down to gentle balm; and
she would descant by the hour on the healing qualities of
hoar-hound, catnip, and penny-royal. Wo be to the patient
that came under the benevolent hand of my aunt
Charity; he was sure, willy nilly, to be drenched with a
deluge of decoctions; and full many a time has my cousin
Christopher borne a twinge of pain in silence, through
fear of being condemned to suffer the martyrdom of her
materia-medica. My good aunt had, moreover, considerable
skill in astronomy; for she could tell when the sun
rose and set every day in the year;—and no woman in the
whole world was able to pronounce, with more certainty,
at what precise minute the moon changed. She held the
story of the moon's being made of green cheese as an
abominable slander on her favourite planet; and she had
made several valuable discoveries in solar eclipses, by
means of a bit of burnt glass, which entitled her at least
to an honorary admission in the American Philosophical
Society. “Hutching's Improved” was her favourite
book; and I shrewdly suspect that it was from this valuable
work she drew most of her sovereign remedies for
colds, coughs, corns, and consumptions.

But the truth must be told; with all her good qualities,
my aunt Charity was afflicted with one fault, extremely
rare among her gentle sex—it was curiosity.
How she came by it, I am at a loss to imagine, but it
played the very vengeance with her, and destroyed the
comfort of her life. Having an invincible desire to know
every body's character, business, and mode of living, she
was for ever prying into the affairs of her neighbours;

and got a great deal of ill-will from people towards whom
she had the kindest disposition possible. If any family
on the opposite side of the street gave a dinner, my aunt
would mount her spectacles, and sit at the window until
the company were all housed, merely that she might know
who they were. If she heard a story about any of her acquaintance,
she would forthwith, set off full sail, and never
rest, until, to use her usual expression, she had got “to the
bottom of it;” which meant nothing more than telling it
to every one she knew.

I remember one night my aunt Charity happened to
hear a most precious story about one of her good friends,
but unfortunately too late to give it immediate circulation.
It made her absolutely miserable; and she hardly slept a
wink all night; for fear her bosom friend, Mrs. Sipkins,
should get the start of her in the morning, and blow the
whole affair.—You must know there was always a contest
between these two ladies, who should first give currency
to the good-natured things said about every body;
and this unfortunate rivalship at length proved fatal to
their long and ardent friendship. My aunt got up full
two hours that morning before her usual time; put on her
pompadour taffeta gown, and sallied forth to lament the
misfortune of her dear friend.—Would you believe it!—
wherever she went, Mrs. Sipkins had anticipated her;
and instead of being listened to with uplifted hands and
open-mouthed wonder, my unhappy aunt was obliged to
sit down quietly and listen to the whole affair, with numerous
additions, alterations, and amendments! Now
this was too bad; it would almost have provoked Patient
Grizzle or a saint; it was too much for my aunt, who
kept her bed three days afterwards, with a cold as she
pretended; but I have no doubt it was owing to this affair
of Mrs. Sipkins, to whom she never would be reconciled.

But I pass over the rest of my aunt Charity's life chequered
with the various calamities and misfortunes and
mortifications, incident to those worthy old gentlewomen
who have the domestic cares of the whole community upon
their minds; and I hasten to relate the melancholy incident
that hurried her out of existence in the full bloom of
antiquated virginity.

In their frolicsome malice the fates had ordered that
a French boarding-house, or Pension Francaise, as it was
called, should be established directly opposite my aunt's

residence. Cruel event! unhappy aunt Charity!—it
threw her into that alarming disorder denominated the
fidgets: she did nothing but watch at the window day
after day, but without becoming one whit the wiser at the
end of a fortnight than she was at the beginning; she
thought that neighbour Pension had a monstrous large family,
and somehow or other they were all men! She
could not imagine what business neighbour Pension followed
to support so numerous a household; and wondered
why there was always such a scraping of fiddles in the
parlour, and such a smell of onions from neighbour Pension's
kitchen: in short, neighbour Pension was continually
uppermost in her thoughts, and incessantly on the outer
edge of her tongue. This was, I believe, the very first
time she had ever failed “to get at the bottom of a thing;”
and the disappointment cost her many a sleepless night, I
warrant you. I have little doubt, however, that my aunt
would have ferretted neighbour Pension out, could she
have spoken or understood French; but in those times
people in general could make themselves understood in
plain English; and it was always a standing rule in the
Cockloft family, which exists to this day, that not one of
the females should learn French.

My aunt Charity had lived at her window, for some
time in vain; when one day she was keeping her usual
look-out, and suffering all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity,
she beheld a little meagre, weazel-faced Frenchman,
of the most forlorn, diminutive, and pitiful proportions,
arrive at neighbour Pension's door. He was dressed in
white, with a little pinch-up cocked hat; he seemed to
shake in the wind, and every blast that went over him
whistled through his bones, and threatened instant annihilation.
This embodied spirit of famine was followed
by three carts, lumbered with crazy trunks, chests, band-boxes,
bidets, medicine-chests, parrots, and monkeys;
and at his heels ran a yelping pack of little black-nosed
pug-dogs. This was the one thing wanting to fill up
the measure of my aunt Charity's afflictions; she could
not conceive, for the soul of her, who this mysterious
little apparition could be that made so great a display;—
what he could possibly do with so much baggage, and
particularly with his parrots and monkeys; or how so
small a carcass could have occasion for so many trunks of
clothes. Honest soul! she never had a peep into a Frenchman's
wardrobe—that depot of old coasts, hats, and

breeches, of the growth of every fashion he has followed
in his life.

From the time of this fatal arrival my poor aunt was in a
quandary;—all her inquiries were fruitless; no one could
expound the history of this mysterious stranger: she
never held her head up afterwards—drooped daily, took to
her bed in a fortnight, and in “one little month,” I saw
her quietly deposited in the family vault—being the seventh
Cockloft that has died of a whim-wham!

Take warning, my fair countrywomen! and you, O! ye
excellent ladies, whether married or single, who pry into
other people's affairs and neglect those of your own household;
who are so busily employed in observing the faults
of others that you have no time to correct your own; remember
the fate of my dear aunt Charity and eschew the
evil spirit of curiosity.