We and Our Neighbors; or The Records of an Unfashionable Street

Mrs. Betsey as a younger sister had been accustomed to these sudden pullings-up of the moral check-rein from Miss Dorcas and received them as meekly as a well-bitted pony. She rose immediately and laying down her knitting work turned to the book-case. It appears that the good souls were diversifying their leisure hours by reading for the fifth or sixth time that enlivening poem Young's Night Thoughts. So taking down a volume from the book-shelves and opening to a mark Mrs. Betsey commenced a sonorous expostulation to Alonzo on the value of time. The good lady's manner of rendering poetry was in a high-pitched falsetto with inflections of a marvelous nature rising in the earnest parts almost to a howl. In her youth she had been held to possess a talent for elocution and had been much commended by the amateurs of her times as a reader of almost professional merit. The decay of her vocal organs had been so gradual and gentle that neither sister had perceived the change of quality in her voice or the nervous tricks of manner which had grown upon her till her rendering of poetry resembled a preternatural hoot.