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"Wal now -- drum, drum -- that's about all a body can 'spect of life now days. I'm tolerable too -- thanks to a good constitution from Providence, and a merry sort of spirits --

"Drum de drum; drum de drum, drum dro;
Once I thought my mountain strong -- mountain strong,
Drum, drum -- "

"Never mind, aunt Dorothy," interrupted the widow, well knowing her visitor's wandering, loquacious tongue, and endless songs -- so hoping to put her on a new track, "How old do you think I am to-day?" she asked.

"How old! -- drum, drum, drum -- I reckon you are nigh on t' eighty, p'raps eighty-five or ninety -- at any rate, considerable up in life and growing older mighty fast, ai?"

"Why, aunt Dorothy! you don't now -- why I am only seventy-four, that's not so very old, specially on Bible grounds. You know the Bible tells us of persons living -- "

"Three score and ten -- dum de dum -- ," interrupted aunt Dorothy.

"Yes, I know; and four-score -- but they used to live several hundreds, and now-a-days persons often live ninety and a hundred years."

"Not very often. -- drum dru -- "

"Once, aunt Dorothy, people lived to be eight hundred years old. There was Adam, the first man, who lived even till he was nine hundred and thirty years old; and Methuselah, you know, was nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. And there was Noah "

"Pshaw, pshaw, widow Prescott! Them's old folks that's been dead and gone morne a thousand years, when there warn't any poor-houses, and everybody was rich, and all the women rode in coaches, in silk dresses, and never knew when they got old. But I say -- drum, drum, drum -- nobody now-a-days sees such times; nor nobody wants to -- do you. Miss Prescott? They were a great long time ago; folks now-a-days get old when they are fifty or sixty -- drum de drum, drum, drum -- who cares for Adam?"

"But, aunt Dorothy, the Bible's the Bible for all that, and you know we must believe it."

"Sartin! I've been a firm believer of it all my born days."

"It ain't of no consequence, aunt Dorothy, whether we are old or young, if we have a good firm faith in the Bible, and a good hope, for then we are ready to die any time, you know!"

"Sartin! I know it, and that's what I tell them all -- drum, drum, dro."

"You see, aunt Dorothy, ain't your pipe going out?"

"I believe so. (Puff, puff, puff) Now it smokes again."

"Well, as I was going to say, we're in rather straitened circumstances here -- but it might be worse; now we want the Bible to comfort and support us."

"Yes." (Puff, puff, puff. ) "Is this pipe out or not?" (Puff, puff, puff).

"I don't let a day go by without drawing comfort from it."

"It's a great comfort to you." (Puff, puff, puff)

"I find it so. I read very often the words of good old pious David. 'I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"

"Is that in the Bible? Now it goes. (Puff, puff, puff).

"'In the Bible,' aunt Dorothy! Indeed it is, every word of it; did not you know that?"

"Well, I guess I did, but I don't know exactly. Drum, drum, drum."

"Precious words they are for us poor souls," said the widow.

"Well, we are poor souls, sure enough. I told Cap'n Bunce I had'nt a whole dress to my back, nor a sheet to my bed, and what do you think he said, ai?"

"I don't know; sometimes he speaks rather quick and ---"

"I know. He told me to go to ---, with my back; he'd give me a new dress when his ship come in from India, and not afore, ai! How do you like that, widow?

D--- him!" said she, with a fury-fire in her face -- a shake of her staff; after which she hummed away as before --

"Drum de drum; drum-de drum, dri, dro;
Rise my soul and stretch thy wing "

"Oh, well, aunt Dorothy -- he's 'quick,' I say -- and it's a trying world; but we must have patience and not return railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing "

"I 'blessed' him," she replied. "I told him he'd go there before I did, or never get his just desarts."

"You did, not now, aunt Dorothy, speak so to him?"

"Yes I did too; and I slamm'd the door in his face. He's an old, hard, grinding hypocrite. Hang him! He's starving us to death, and freezing us to death -- and the other day he kicked old Joe so that he's laid up for all winter, I'll bet you a guinea, as stiff as my cane."

"What made him do that?"

"Nothing. Just because Joe did'nt incline to work out in a rain storm. Nothing."

"And is old Joe really hurt?"

"'Really hurt!' I guess you'd think so."

"And laid up?"

"'Laid up?' Yes, he can't get off the bed. He's half dead; and he says he'd rather die than live any longer, any how."

"It's terrible to die so, aunt Dorothy."

"Who cares?" (Puff, puff, puff).

"Perhaps I can go and comfort him with something out of the Bible -- what do you think, aunt Dorothy?"

"Well now, that's a good notion, Mrs. Prescott, any way. Just do it now. He's a harmless old crittur, we all know, and it won't hurt him if it does him no good, just as it don't me, you know.

"Drum, drum, drum; dri, dro, dri,
Saints and sinners there shall meet -- shall meet,
Dri, dro, dri, drum, dri, dro ---- "