One Of Our Treasures

In my opinion no household is complete without a grandmother or aunt; a white haired old lady who sits in the corner with knitting or darning, who sometimes lectures the matronly mistress of the family as if she were a naughty child, who frowns over her spectacles at the children when they are noisy, and, at other times, dries their tears, settles their disputes and binds up their cut fingers and toes; one whom the whole house holds venerates and loves. Always lenient towards her foibles and indulgent to her whims.

We are a large family and we have just such a household treasure. A dear old aunt who is our oracle in a small way. Although she is a queer old lady, we would not for the world have her one jot other than she is. Her education was not much attended to in her youth, but, by much reading and observation, she has added a varied information to her good common sense and has picked up many odds and ends of knowledge from different sources.

She takes numerous magazines and devours the newspapers, going regularly through each daily sheet, not even neglecting the politics and price currents, after the usual womanly fashion.

Having an innate distaste for all that is new or strange, that which was good and proper to her when a child, retains its authority over her still. Having a trick of absent mindedness, she often puts words and things in the wrong places, much to our amusement and her own confusion. There is a coolness about her temper which is equal to all great occasions, but invariably fails her under trifling circumstances. Her sympathies are unbounded, they extend even to the animal tribe, and she has always a lame duck or chicken or some such unfortunate, under her especial care.

She is fond of physicking people, and, if one may use such an expression, she is never happier than when grieving over some slight ailment of ours and dosing us with quinine and various teas.

She greatly dislikes the taste of our mineral water here, but, having often read and heard of its medicinal properties, she goes up to the well, evening after evening, and, with closed eyes and corrugated brow, she dutifully disposes of a glassful of the water. She loves only good, old-fashioned music and was very much scandalized over the organization of a brass band in our town.

There is one of the young musicians living next door to us, who practices most execrably on a tenor horn and I am often very much amused at Aunty's grimaces over his efforts. Last evening the young amateur undertook to learn "Yankee Doodle" and, as he practised into the 'wee sma' hours without accomplishing anything, the dear, old lady waxed impatient: "He can get the Yan very nicely but mistakes the kee and gives it up at the Doodle," she exclaimed as she sat with distended cheeks and puckered lips, as if trying to assist the performer. “He would have helped materially at Jericho with that noise; it is a shame for him to do so, and I am going to ask his mother to stop it."

She preaches fortitude under bodily suffering, but weeps and moans with you; she enjoins bravery with respect to cows, dogs, snakes, etc. but she is a terrible coward herself. She has a strict theory for the management of children, but practises just the reverse. She sternly disclaims all sympathy with drunkards as a class, but she sighs over and finds excuses for each individual of that class, excuses which no one else can ever find. In short, she is most delightfully inconsistent, but I would not have her different, as I have said, not for the world.

She goes regularly to Church and each Sunday evening she visits and strews flowers over the grave of her young soldier son who was buried here, shrouded in the gray.

We always celebrate her birthdays with great pomp while in our hearts we are sad to think how few are the remaining mile-stones on her homeward journey. Some day, ere long, we will lay her to sleep, in the churchyard by her boy with a feeling of peculiar desolation.

This piece first appeared in The Cycle (1875-1877), a newspaper published and edited by Major William T. Walthall out of Mobile, Alabama.