In his youth the Doctor had been reckoned a handsome young fellow, and, to the day of his death, he preserved his good looks to a wonderful degree. A cheerful temper like his is a famous preventive of gray hairs and wrinkles. So the jovial Doctor never seemed to grow old; and at fifty, his erect form, smooth, ruddy cheeks, curly brown poll, and merry blue eyes made him look younger than many of his neighbors who were his juniors by a dozen years. When a very young man, not quite twenty years of age, and before he had finished his course of professional study, the Doctor had taken to wife his cousin, Miss Naomi Bugbee, who had lived in his father's house ever since he could remember; for the young lady was an orphan, with a good estate, and during her minority had been her uncle's ward. The bride was not an uncomely damsel, neither was she distinguished for beauty; and between the ages of the happy young couple there was quite a difference; a circumstance by no means unusual, and which would not have been mentioned here, but for the fact, that, in this case, it was the bride who was the senior of the pair. Some people said she was ten years older than the Doctor; and, for a wonder, these gossips had the evidence of the registry to back their statements. In fact, the youthful bridegroom had been very tenderly dry-nursed, in his infancy, by his bride; and a certain sound spanking which she gave him when he was just coming four, because he insisted upon crying and keeping awake, one evening, while his mother was gone to a wedding, instead of going to sleep in his trundle-bed like a good boy,--this chastisement, I say, had been one of the earliest and most vivid of the bridegroom's recollections of his childhood. But though he had not forgotten this grievance, he had doubtless forgiven it with all his heart; thereby setting an example worthy of imitation by the fair Naomi, who, indeed, was doubly bound to exercise forgiveness and forbearance towards her lord; for, whatever might have been the faults and failings of the youth to whom she surrendered the ripened harvest of her charms, it certainly did not lie in the mouth of one to complain of them unduly, who had enjoyed such rare and excellent opportunities to train up for herself a husband in the way he should go. There was not wanting at that time in Belfield a class of spiteful people, who, doubtless, being inspired by envy at beholding the felicity of the happy pair, affected to laugh and sneer a good deal at what they jeeringly called Jack Bugbee's marrying his grandmother. But, as if it had been specially ordered on purpose to confound these ill-natured jokers, this union, the object of their ridicule, was most signally prospered, and in due time the Doctor himself put his wife to bed with a pair of nice little girls.