A dozen or more carriages were in the road before the shabby frame house I had heard spoken of as “old Mrs. O’Hara’s,” but which I had never entered. Eight or ten horses were tethered to the fence, and a group of men loitered about the door. As we went up the steps I saw that the parlor was full of villagers. Some were sitting; more were standing in a kind of expectant way; all were so grave that my spirits fell to church-temperature. Something solemn was going on. Just inside of the parlor door the mother of my most intimate girl-friend sat in a rocking-chair. She had on a black silk dress and her best bonnet. Every woman present wore black. I saw Mrs. D. beckon up Major Goode, an elderly beau who was a notable figure in the neighborhood, and whisper audibly to him, “If you want more chairs, you may send over to our house for them.” It was evidently a great function, for Mrs. D. was a notable housekeeper, and her furniture the finest in the place. Her drawing-room chairs were heavy mahogany, and upholstered with black horsehair. Her house, altogether the best within a radius of several miles, was not a hundred yards from the O’Hara cottage; but that she should make the neighborly offer thrilled me into nameless awe. My mother moved forward slowly, holding my hand fast in hers, and I was led, without warning, up to a long, black, open box, set upon two chairs, one at each end. In the long, black box lay a woman I had never seen before. She was awfully white; her eyes were shut; she looked peaceful, even happy; but she was not asleep. No sleeping creature was ever so moveless and marble-pale. Her terrible stillness impressed me most painfully by its very unlikeness to the heaving, palpitating crowd about her. A mob-cap with a closely fluted border framed the face; she was dressed in a long cambric gown of a pattern entirely new to me. It lay in moveless plaits as stiff as paper from her chin to her feet, which it hid; it was pinked in tiny points at the bottom of the skirt and the cuffs; the hands, crossed at the wrists as no living hands are ever laid, were bound at the crossing with white satin ribbon. Under the moveless figure was a cambric sheet, also pinked at the edges, that fell straight to the floor over the sides of the coffin. I must have pinched my mother’s hand with my tightening fingers, for she eyed me in grave surprise, not unmixed with reproof, in taking a seat and drawing me to her side. There was no place for children to sit down. I am sure that she had not an inkling of the unspeakable fright that possessed my ignorant mind.