by the neighborhoodas a matter of course, and involving no sense of dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
I would like to write about several of those ancient dames, as they were affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like Portsmouththe obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and womenquaint, shrewd, and racy of the soilwho linger in little, silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and byways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett or Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic pages they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of long-kept lavender and penny-royal.
Peculiarity of any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower. The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated, the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition
