It ran thus:--"I am not crazy, Ruth, no, no--but I shall be; the air of this place stifles me; I grow weaker--weaker. I cannot die here; for the love of heaven, dear Ruth, come and take me away." * * * * * "Only three mourners,--a woman and two little girls," exclaimed a by-stander, as Ruth followed Mary Leon to her long home. CHAPTER LV. The sudden change in Mrs. Skiddy's matrimonial prospects necessitated Ruth to seek other quarters. With a view to still more rigid economy, she hired a room without board, in the lower part of the city. Mrs. Waters, her new landlady, was one of that description of females, whose vision is bounded by a mop, scrubbing-brush, and dust-pan; who repudiate rainy washing days; whose hearth, Jowler, on the stormiest night, would never venture near without a special permit, and whose husband and children speak under their breath on baking and cleaning days. Mrs. Waters styled herself a female physician. She kept a sort of witch's cauldron constantly boiling over the fire, in which seethed all sorts of "mints" and "yarbs," and from which issued what she called a "potecary odor." Mrs. Waters, when not engaged in stirring this cauldron, or in her various house-keeping duties, alternated her leisure in reading medical books, attending medical lectures, and fondling a pet skull, which lay on the kitchen-dresser. Various little boxes of brown-bread-looking pills ornamented the upper shelf, beside a row of little dropsical chunky junk bottles, whose labels would have puzzled the most erudite M. D. who ever received a diploma. Mrs. Waters felicitated herself on knowing how the outer and inner man of every son of Adam was put together, and considered the times decidedly "out of joint;" inasmuch that she, Mrs. Waters, had not been called upon by her country to fill some medical professorship. In person Mrs. Waters was barber-pole-ish and ram-rod-y, and her taste in dress running mostly to stringy fabrics, assisted the bolster-y impression she created; her hands and wrists bore a strong resemblance to the yellow claws of defunct chickens, which children play "scare" with about Thanksgiving time; her feet were of turtle flatness, and her eyes--if you ever provoked a cat up to the bristling and scratching point, you may possibly form an idea of them.