Uncle Ezra was a man who said but little. I never found him in the house; he was always out on the farm, or in the barn, or sometimes in the woodshed. This seemed the nearest that he ever came to the house. Uncle Ezra was a short man with a bald head and a round face. He had white whiskers and a little fringe of white hair around his head. He had no teeth, at least none that I can remember to have seen. He was slightly stooping, and was lame from rheumatism; and he wore a round black hat, and a brown coat buttoned tightly around his waist, and trousers made of some sort of brown drilling, and almost always rubber boots. In the woodshed he kept another pair of trousers and clean boots, which he put on when he went into the house to get his meals, or after it was too late to stay outside. I never heard him joke or laugh, or say anything angry or unkind. He always spoke of Aunt Mary as “the old woman,” and showed no feeling or emotion of any sort in connection with her. Whenever he was asked about any kind of business, he directed inquirers to “the old woman.” Aunt Mary was tall and thin and very straight. Her hair was white, and done up in a knot on the back of her head. It seems as if she wore a sort of striped calico dress, and an apron over this. No doubt she sometimes wore other clothes; but she has made her impression on my memory in this way. Poor thing! like all the rest of the mortals who ever lived and died, she doubtless tried to make the best impression she could, and at some fateful time this image was cast upon my mind, and there it stayed forever, and gets printed in a book,—the only one that ever held her name. The real person may have been very different indeed, and the fault have been not at all with her, but with the poor substance on which the shadow fell.