Ay, but she was a firm-nerved woman. If metempsychosis be a true doctrine, her spirit must have once animated, in the chivalrous times, a steel-clad knight of the doughtiest mould. She did not faint--did not vent a scream--but gazed upon its awfulness in silence, as if her eyes were riveted to it for ever.
We felt completely mortified to think that our well-laid scheme had failed--that we had failed to terrify her; when, to perfect our chagrin, she broke into a low laugh. We strode into the room, determined to express in words what our deeds had evidently failed to convey; when, ere she had become fully aware of our presence, we noticed her laughter was becoming hysterical. We spoke to her--shook her by the shoulder--but still she laughed on, increasing in vehemence and intensity. It began to excite attention in the lower apartments, and even in the street; and soon loud knocks and wondering exclamations began to alarm us for the consequences of our participation. We strove to take the fearful object from her, but she clung to it with the tenacity of madness, or a young doctor to his first scientific opinion. "She is gone demented!" we exclaimed; "we had better be leaving"--when a rush up the steps and through the passage, cut off our retreat, and told us the daughters and crowd were coming; but still the old lady laughed on, fiercer, faster, shriller than before. In rushed the crowd--a full charge for the room, impelled by the ramrod of curiosity--but ere they had time to discover the cause of the commotion, or make a demonstration, the widow ceased her laughter, and, putting on an expression of the most supreme contempt, coolly remarked:--"Excuse me, gentlemen, if I have caused you any inconvenience by my unusual conduct. I was just _smiling aloud_ to think what fools these students made of themselves when they tried to scare me with a dead nigger's face, when I had slept with a drunken husband for twenty years!" The crowd mizzled; and we, too, I reckon, between that time and the next up-heaving of the sun.
THE MISSISSIPPI PATENT PLAN FOR PULLING TEETH.
|I had just finished the last volume of Wistar's Anatomy, well nigh coming to a period myself with weariness at the same time, and with feet well braced up on the mantel-piece, was lazily surveying the closed volume which lay on my lap, when a hurried step in the front gallery aroused me from the revery into which I was fast sinking.