The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had had claims to be considered a Beauty.  When I saw them in the old meeting-house on Sundays, as they rustled in through the aisles in silks and satins, not gay, but more than decent, as I remember them, I thought of My Lady Bountiful in the history of “Little King Pippin,” and of the Madam Blaize of Goldsmith (who, by the way, must have taken the hint of it from a pleasant poem, “Monsieur de la Palisse,” attributed to De la Monnoye, in the collection of French songs before me).  There was some story of an old romance in which the Beauty had played her part.  Perhaps they all had had lovers; for, as I said, they were shapely and seemly personages, as I remember them; but their lives were out of the flower and in the berry at the time of my first recollections.

One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly attention to the good people round, leaving little or almost nothing, and nobody to inherit it.  Not absolutely nothing, of course.  There must have been a few old dresses—­perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible, and the spectacles the good old souls read it through, and little keepsakes, such as make us cry to look at, when we find them in old drawers;—­such relics there must have been.  But there was more.  There was a manuscript of some hundred pages, closely written, in which the poor things had chronicled for many years the incidents of their daily life.  After their death it was passed round somewhat freely, and fell into my hands.  How I have cried and laughed and colored over it!  There was nothing in it to be ashamed of, perhaps there was nothing in it to laugh at, but such a picture of the mode of being of poor simple good old women I do believe was never drawn before.  And there were all the smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples standing.  I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special mercies in heaven for her good deeds,—­for I read her name on a proper tablet in the churchyard a week ago,—­sent a fractional pudding from her own table to the Maiden Sisters, who, I fear, from the warmth and detail of their description, were fasting, or at least on short allowance, about that time.  I know who sent them the segment of melon, which in her riotous fancy one of them compared to those huge barges to which we give the ungracious name of mudscows.  But why should I illustrate further what it seems almost a breach of confidence to speak of?  Some kind friend, who could challenge a nearer interest than the curious strangers into whose hands the book might fall, at last claimed it, and I was glad that it should be henceforth sealed to common eyes.  I learned from it that every good