But Abby cared little for these things, and she would not suffer her husband to pay any attention to them. She made him one of the best wives in the world, and though she was ten years his elder, and thrice as big as he, nobody ever believed that he repented the step he had taken. Their home was at the South, and, during her husband’s lifetime, Abby never paid a visit to her early friends. But she was visited by her family connections, and we younger members of the circle were often entertained in childhood by the accounts of Aunt Abby’s splendid service of gold-plate, her massive silver ewers and basins in every dressing-room, her Turkey carpets and rich hangings of Gobelin tapestry, and all the paraphernalia of great wealth and magnificent tastes. When Terricott died, she exhibited her peculiarities of character still more strikingly. She knew people had accused her of marrying for money, and she therefore induced him to make a will, bestowing all his large property upon his own relatives, with the exception of a life-annuity of a thousand dollars to his widow. “I don’t want his money,” she said, “I took good care of him while he lived, and if he did not become a great man, it was no fault of mine. He was rich, and I used his money freely, because he liked to see fine things and good things around him; but now I have no occupation here, and so I shall go back to my old home, and ‘live along.’ I dare say something will be given me to do.” So she buried her poor little Sampson, handed over his property to the heirs, and with the first instalment of her annuity in her pocket, came to take up her abode in ——. But her father had been dead for many years, and the place was filled with new people who knew little of her history or of her character. She soon became disgusted with her new home, and removing to New York, established herself there for the rest of her life. In her later years she gave up taking exercise daily, and in consequence of this she grew immensely large. I have the faintest shadow of a reminiscence respecting her personal appearance at that time. I was a child of perhaps five years old, and had a dear old aunt, who was as little as a fairy, and almost as benevolent. This kind little old body once took me to see our great Aunt Abby; but my head was crammed full of fairy legends and nursery tales, and when I saw an immensely large, fat woman sitting in a chair from which she could not lift her ponderous form, and met the full stare of her great black eyes, I thought of the Ogress who always devoured little children, and immediately set up such a howl of terror that I was sent away in disgrace. She died not long afterward, having lived to count her _ninetieth_ birthday. Her disinterestedness left her no fortune to bestow on her relatives, and but for her profile, (which, cut in black paper, hangs in an attic room,) her pincushion, and the traditions which remain in the family respecting her, all trace of her has vanished from