zeal.  I recollect her whipping me one day when it really appeared to me that I had not been in the least to blame.  I was quite a little fellow then, and drawing my hand across my eyes, I sobbed forth:  ’I wish one of us in this room was dead, I do—­I don’t wish it was me—­and I don’t wish it was the cat—­’ Whatever I had intended to add was suddenly cut short; and I began to think that it was rather foolish of me to subject myself to two whippings instead of one.  I have quite escaped from leading-strings now,” added my father with an expressive look; but the old lady may be of considerable assistance in keeping you young ones in order.

The children looked frightened; and Fred, being now too old to dread any whippings on his own account, kindly undertook the instruction of his younger brothers in the art of being saucy and playing practical jokes.  We were told to call her “grandmother,” and treat her with the greatest respect; but as I dwelt upon my father’s account of her, like the magician in olden story, I almost trembled at the visitor I had invoked.  The letter was written and despatched; and after a while, an answering one received, in which the step-mother accepted her son-in-law’s invitation, “for the sake,” as she said, “of the many happy hours they had formerly enjoyed together.”  I sat reading in a distant corner of the room when this letter was received, almost concealed by the folds of the curtains; and the other children being out of the room, I overheard my father say: 

“I do not remember much else but being whipped, and sent supperless to bed; if they were happy hours, it must have been on the principle of the frogs—­’What is play to you is death to us.’”

My mother smiled; but she replied softly:  “Perhaps she is changed now, Arthur; do not say anything against her before the children, for she is a stranger, entitled to our hospitality—­and I would not have her welcome a chilling one.”

In process of time the old lady arrived, accompanied by a colored servant who answered to the name of Venus.  Fred christened her “the black divinity,” at which she became highly offended; and ever after, there was a perpetual war of words waging between the two.  My grandmother was a small, dark-complexioned woman, with an exceedingly haughty, and very repulsive expression.  She received all her daughter-in-law’s endeavors to make her feel at home as a natural right; and appeared to consider other people intended only for her sole use and benefit.  As I glanced from her to my mother’s fair, soft beauty, and strikingly sweet expression, I formed a comparison between the two not much to my grandmother’s advantage.

We soon found that the old lady had a great idea of taking the reins into her own hands; the children were scolded, and threatened, and locked up in dark closets, until, to use their own expression, they became, most “dreadfully good,” and never dared to show off under the espionage of those eagle eyes.  During the summer, our parents were absent for some weeks on a pleasure jaunt; and Grandmother Chesbury having the entire control of us, we were obliged to behave very differently from usual.  She kept us all in awe except Fred; but on him it was impossible to make the least impression.  If she tyrannized over the rest us, it was abundantly repaid by the teazings of my mischievous brother.