In the old family house his two surviving daughters had ever since continued to reside, steadily refusing to sell either the building or the lot of ground attached to it, though liberal offers for its purchase had repeatedly been made to them. So deep-rooted was their attachment to this spot, where they had been born, and where they had always lived, that they considered it impossible for them to exist in any other place, continually asserting that a removal from it would certainly kill them. They had a trifling source of income which brought them two hundred dollars annually, and they contrived to save nearly the whole of this little sum. Also, they possessed a tolerable quantity of old-fashioned plate, which they had put away in a chest up stairs, never to be used or sold while they lived. In the mean time their wants were chiefly supplied, (and, indeed, many little luxuries were furnished them,) by the benevolence of certain ladies of Boston, who, in the goodness of their hearts, overlooked the anomaly of two women who had the means of a comfortable independence within their reach, submitting to receive assistance from eleemosynary bounty rather than relinquish the indulgence of what, in those matter-of-fact times, would, by most persons, be regarded as a mere morbid fancy. But on this point of feeling they believed their happiness to depend; and their tolerant benefactresses kindly enabled them to be happy in their own way. The Miss Byleses kept no domestic; but a man came every morning to attend to the wood and water part of their _ménage_, and to go their errands—and a woman was employed every week to do up the Saturday work. A newspaper was sent to them gratuitously—books were lent to them, for the youngest was something of a reader, and also wrote verses; and they frequently received little presents of cakes, sweetmeats, and other delicacies. They rarely went out, except to Trinity church. Then they put on their everlasting suits of the same Sunday clothes: their faces being, on these occasions, shaded with deep black veils suspended from their bonnets, not so much for concealment as for gentility.