My father's mother was a fine, sprightly, robust old lady, rather small in stature, and already bending a little under the burden of years at the time when I first recollect her as mingling in the visions of my childhood, though I know that even from infancy I was the delight of her warm honest heart. She was simplicity itself in manners, her blunt speeches sometimes clashing a little with her son's notions of polish and refinement, as also did her inveterate antipathy to the reigning fashion, whatever that might be. I remember her reading me a lecture upon something novel in the cut of a sleeve, ending by this remark: "I never wore a gown but of one shape; and because I don't follow the fashion, the fashion is forced to come to me sometimes by way of a change. I can't help that, you know, my dear; but I never was fashionable on purpose." She added some pious remarks on vanity and folly, which I soon forgot; but the other dwelt on my mind because it chimed in with my own love of independence--a prominent characteristic with me; too often carried to the excess of self-willed obstinacy. However, I dearly loved and exceedingly respected my grand mother, and used in my heart to glory in her smooth clean locks, half brown, half grey, combed down from under a snowy cap of homely make, when she had successfully resisted alike the entreaties and examples of contemporary dames, who submitted their heads to the curling-irons and powder-puff of a _frizeur_, preparatory to an evening party. I used to stand proudly at her knee, admiring the high color of her cheek, and uncommon brilliancy of her fine dark hazle eye, while her voice, remarkably rich and clear, involuntarily swelled the chorus parts of our magnificent music. She was a Percy, not by name, for that had been lost in the female line some generations before, but the pedigree in my possession shows how just was her vaunt in that respect. For vaunt it she did, to us at least, often bringing it forward to check any tendency to behavior unbefitting those who claimed descent from "The stout earl of Northumberland," with whom I ought to be well acquainted, for the singing of Chevy Chace in proper time and tune with her, was the only secular accomplishment in which my dear grandmother personally labored to perfect me, except knitting and curious old-fashioned needlework. The pride of ancestry took strong hold of my mind, and such an ancestry accorded but too well with my romance, innate and acquired. It stood me, many a time, in the stead of better things, when nerving myself to endure affliction and wrong; and therefore I notice it, to warn you against exposing your own children to the same snare.