“I presume, Sir, you wish to ascertain where I was born?” “Wal, yes, I shouldn’t mind knowing, if you have no objection to tell, and if you had told me before, you would have saved me a darned sight of trouble.” “Well,” I said, “I was born in Boston, in the year 1809, on the 8th day of October, at six o’clock in the morning.” “At six o’clock, eh?” “At six o’clock precisely, down in Water Street.” “Dew tell. But, stranger, _dew you remember the number of the house?_” ----- [16] By G. H. Hill. XXVII. A SAGE CONVERSATION. I love the aged matrons of our land. As a class, they are the most pious, the most benevolent, the most useful, and the most harmless of the human family. Their life is a life of good offices. At home, they are patterns of industry, care, economy, and hospitality; abroad, they are ministers of comfort, peace, and consolation. Where affliction is, there are they, to mitigate its pangs; where sorrow is, there are they to assuage its pains. Nor night, nor day, nor summer’s heat, nor winter’s cold, nor angry elements, can deter them from scenes of suffering and distress. They are the first at the fevered couch, and the last to leave it. They hold the first and last cup to the parched lip. They bind the aching head, close the dying eye, and linger in the death-stricken habitation, to pour the last drop of consolation into the afflicted bosoms of the bereaved. I cannot, therefore, ridicule them myself, nor bear to hear them ridiculed in my presence. And yet, I am often amused at their conversations; and have amused _them_ with a rehearsal of their own conversations, taken down by me when they little dreamed that I was listening to them. Perhaps my reverence for their character, conspiring with a native propensity to extract amusement from all that passes under my observation, has accustomed me to pay a uniformly strict attention to all they say in my presence. This much in extraordinary courtesy to those who cannot distinguish between a simple narrative of an amusing interview, and ridicule of the parties to it. Indeed I do not know that the conversation which I am about to record, will be considered amusing by any of my readers. Certainly the amusement of the readers of my own times is not the leading object of it, or of any of the “Georgia Scenes;” forlorn as may be the hope, that their main object will ever be answered. My intention is merely to detail a conversation between three ladies, which I heard many years since; confining myself to only so much of it, as sprung from the ladies’ own thoughts, unawakened by the suggestions of others.