In a large old land of houses in ---- Street, commonly known by the name of the Ark, and occupied by a number of small families in the lower grade of society, an old woman, Margaret B----, had lived for many years, chiefly upon the bounty of a noble family in the country, whom she had served in the capacity of poulterer--_vulgariter_, henwife. She had been for some time ailing; and I was requested by those who took an interest in her, to pay her occasionally a visit, in the course of my professional rounds in the neighbourhood of her dwelling. I could discover, for a time, no marked complaint about her. Living lonely, she had fallen into a lowness of spirits, which, as one of her neighbours informed me, was most effectually removed or ameliorated for a time, by a recurrence to the remembered employments of her former years. She was, in particular, curiously addicted to thinking and speaking of her former extensive establishment of fowls at ---- House; and made reference to speckled favourites by special name, as if she had treated them by distinctions of superiority, beauty, and utility, after the manner of fond mothers, who indulge a habit of fantastic favouritism among their children. I myself noticed this garrulous peculiarity; but, accustomed to all manner of eccentricities, as well healthy as morbid, I attributed her freaks to a foolish fancy, that sought for food among the cherished recesses of a fond memory of the past. By degrees, however, she underwent a considerable change; falling into moods of silent melancholy, which lasted for days, and rising from them to luxuriate, with a fervour that engrossed her whole soul, on the favourite theme, which seemed to present every day new attractions for her moody mind. As I passed one day along the passage that led to her humble dwelling, her nearest neighbour, a favourite gossip, met me, and whispered, secretly and mysteriously, into my ear, that old Margaret, as she called her, had been, during the whole day, occupied with the regulation of an imagined establishment of her old favourites, the hens. She had been calling them to her by name; using all the technicalities of the domestic fowler's vocabulary; driving some of the more forward away, and endearingly encouraging the backward favourites to participate in the meal of scattered barley she threw upon the floor. The woman added, that she feared she was mad, and yet she laughed at the symptoms of her imputed insanity. I went forward, and, on opening the door, saw good evidence of the truth of my informant's story in the grain that lay about in every direction; but the occupation was gone, the industrious fowler had sunk into a fit of melancholy, and sat, with a drooping head and heavy eye, looking into the fire. She was dogged and silent; and, though I touched gently the irritable chord, I got no response: the illusion was gone, and had left nothing in her mind but the darkness of a morbid melancholy which I possessed no secret to remove.