[ 274 J [Sepr. 
f IPRA nee , OLD NEIGHBOURS, Pc oatagt 
HOwI9VS Os; DEO No. II. a VILL IOM 
orl omwastiowuine, 4 Quiet Gentlewoman. i ea ee 
‘ (My¥ present reminiscence will hardly be of the tenderest sort, since. I 
am’ about to commemorate one of the oldest bores of my acquaintance, 
one of the few grievances of my happy youth. The person in question, my 
worthy friend Mrs. Allen, was a respectable widow lady, whose daughter 
having married a relation of my father’s, just at the time that:she herself 
came to settle in the town near which we resided, constituted exactly 
that mixture of juxta-position and family connexion, which must: of 
necessity lead to a certain degree of intimacy, whatever .discrepancies 
might exist in the habits and characters of the parties. We were inti- 
mate accordingly; dined with her once a year, drank tea with her occa- 
sionally, and called on her every time that the carriage went into W—; 
visits which she returned in the lump, by a sojourn of at least a month 
every summer with us at the Lodge. How my dear mother endured 
this last infliction I cannot imagine: I most undutifully contrived to 
evade it, by so timing an annual visit, which I was accustomed to pay, 
as to leave home on the day before her arrival and return to it the day 
after her departure, quite content with the share of ennui which the 
morning calls and the tea-drinkings (evils which generally fell to my lot) 
entailed upon me. 
This grievance was the more grievous, inasmuch as it was one of those 
calamities which do not admit the great solace and consolation to be 
derived from complaint. Mrs. Allen, although the most tiresome person 
under the sun,—without an idea, without a word, a mere inert mass of 
matter,—was yet in the fullest sense of those “ words of fear” a good sort 
of woman, well born, well bred, well jointured, and well conducted,— 
a perfectly unexceptionable acquaintance. There were some who even 
envied me my intimacy with this human automaton, this most extraor- 
dinary specimen of still life. i 
In her youth she had been accounted pretty, a fair sleepy blue-eyed 
beauty, languid and languishing, and was much followed, by that class 
of admirers, who like a woman the better the nearer she approaches to 
a picture in demeanour as well as in looks* She had however, with the 
disparity that so often attends upon matrimony, fallen to the lot of a 
‘most vivacious and mecurial country squire, a thorough-paced foxhunter, 
whose pranks (some of them more daring than lawful) had obtained for 
him ‘the cognomen of “mad Allen ;” and having had the good fortune to 
fose this husband in the third year of their nuptials, she had never 
undergone the fatigue and trouble of marrying another. 
When I became acquainted with her, she was a'sleek round elderly 
lady, with very small features, very light eyes, invisible eye-brows, and a 
‘flaxen wig. She sate all day long on a sofa by-the fireside, with her 
-feet canted up on an ottoman; the ingenious machine called.a pair of 
_ * One of her lovers, not quite so devoted to quietude in the fair.sex, adventured ona 
" gentle admonition. He presented to her a superb copy of the ‘ Castle of Indolence,” 
~ and “requested her to read it. A few days after, he inquired of her; sister if his fair 
- mistress had condescended to look into the book. ‘ No,” was the answer. “No; 
but I read it to her as she lay on the sofa.” The gentleman was a man of sense. 
He shrugged his shoulders, and six months after married this identical sister. 
