But if I apologize for a story that is nowise tragic, nor fitted to “the fashion of these times,” possibly somebody will say at its end that I should also have apologized for its subject, since it is as easy for an author to treat his readers to high themes as vulgar ones, and velvet can be thrown into a portrait as cheaply as calico; but of this apology I wash my hands.  I believe nothing in place or circumstance makes romance.  I have the same quick sympathy for Biddy’s sorrows with Patrick that I have for the Empress of France and her august, but rather grim lord and master.  I think words are often no harder to bear than “a blue bating,” and I have a reverence for poor old maids as great as for the nine Muses.  Commonplace people are only commonplace from character, and no position affects that.  So forgive me once more, patient reader, if I offer to you no tragedy in high life, no sentimental history of fashion and wealth, but only a little story about a woman who could not be a heroine.

Miss Lucinda Jane Ann Manners was a lady of unknown age, who lived in a place I call Dalton, in a State of these Disuniting States, which I do not mention for good cause.  I have already had so many unconscious personalities visited on my devoted head that but for lucidity I should never mention persons or places, inconvenient as it would be.  However, Miss Lucinda did live, and lived by the aid of “means,” which, in the vernacular, is money.  Not a great deal, it is true,—­five thousand dollars at lawful interest, and a little wooden house, do not imply many luxuries even to a single-woman; and it is also true that a little fine sewing taken in helped Miss Manners to provide herself with a few small indulgences otherwise beyond her reach.  She had one or two idiosyncrasies, as they are politely called, that were her delight.  Plenty of dish-towels were necessary to her peace of mind; without five pair of scissors she could not be happy; and Tricopherous was essential to her well-being:  indeed, she often said she would rather give up coffee than Tricopherous, for her hair was black and wiry and curly, and caps she abhorred, so that of a winter’s day her head presented the most irrelevant and volatile aspect, each particular hair taking a twist on its own responsibility, and improvising a wild halo about her unsaintly face, unless subdued into propriety by the aforesaid fluid.

I said Miss Lucinda’s face was unsaintly,—­I mean unlike ancient saints as depicted by contemporary artists:  modern and private saints are after another fashion.  I met one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose, thick lips, and sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years’ standing, further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak and cat-skin tippet, would have cut a sorry figure in the gallery of the Vatican or the Louvre, and put the tranquil Madonna of San Sisto into a state of stunning antithesis; but if Saint Agnes or Saint Catharine was half as good as my saint, I am glad of it!