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I HAVE seen her at last. She is a hundred
and seven years old, and remembers George
Washington quite distinctly. It is somewhat
confusing, however, that she also remembers a
contemporaneous Josiah W. Perkins of Basking
Ridge, N.J., and, I think, has the impression
that Perkins was the better man. Perkins,
at the close of the last century, paid her some
little attention. There are a few things that a
really noble woman of a hundred and seven
never forgets.

It was Perkins, who said to her in 1795, in
the streets of Philadelphia, “Shall I show thee
Gen. Washington?” Then she said carelesslike
(for you know, child, at that time it wasn't
what it is now to see Gen. Washington), she
said, “So do, Josiah, so do!” Then he pointed
to a tall man who got out of a carriage, and
went into a large house. He was larger than
you be. He wore his own hair — not powdered;
had a flowered chintz vest, with yellow breeches
and blue stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat.

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In summer he wore a white straw hat, and at
his farm at Basking Ridge he always wore it.
At this point, it became too evident that she
was describing the clothes of the all-fascinating
Perkins: so I gently but firmly led her back
to Washington. Then it appeared that she did
not remember exactly what he wore. To assist
her, I sketched the general historic dress of
that period. She said she thought he was
dressed like that. Emboldened by my success,
I added a hat of Charles II., and pointed shoes
of the eleventh century. She indorsed these
with such cheerful alacrity, that I dropped the
subject.

The house upon which I had stumbled, or,
rather, to which my horse — a Jersey hack,
accustomed to historic research — had brought
me, was low and quaint. Like most old houses,
it had the appearance of being encroached upon
by the surrounding glebe, as if it were already
half in the grave, with a sod or two, in the
shape of moss thrown on it, like ashes on ashes,
and dust on dust. A wooden house, instead of
acquiring dignity with age, is apt to lose its
youth and respectability together. A porch,
with scant, sloping seats, from which even the
winter's snow must have slid uncomfortably,
projected from a doorway that opened most unjustifiably
into a small sitting-room. There was

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no vestibule, or locus pœnitentiœ, for the embarrassed
or bashful visitor: he passed at once
from the security of the public road into
shameful privacy. And here, in the mellow
autumnal sunlight, that, streaming through the
maples and sumach on the opposite bank, flickered
and danced upon the floor, she sat and
discoursed of George Washington, and thought
of Perkins. She was quite in keeping with the
house and the season, albeit a little in advance
of both; her skin being of a faded russet, and
her hands so like dead November leaves, that I
fancied they even rustled when she moved
them.

For all that, she was quite bright and cheery;
her faculties still quite vigorous, although performing
irregularly and spasmodically. It was
somewhat discomposing, I confess, to observe,
that at times her lower jaw would drop, leaving
her speechless, until one of the family
would notice it, and raise it smartly into place
with a slight snap, — an operation always performed
in such an habitual, perfunctory manner,
generally in passing to and fro in their
household duties, that it was very trying to
the spectator. It was still more embarrassing
to observe that the dear old lady had evidently
no knowledge of this, but believed she was still
talking, and that, on resuming her actual vocal

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utterance, she was often abrupt and incoherent,
beginning always in the middle of a sentence,
and often in the middle of a word. “Sometimes,”
said her daughter, a giddy, thoughtless young
thing of eighty-five, — “sometimes just moving
her head sort of unhitches her jaw; and, if we
don't happen to see it, she'll go on talking for
hours without ever making a sound.” Although
I was convinced, after this, that during my interview
I had lost several important revelations
regarding George Washington through these
peculiar lapses, I could not help reflecting how
beneficent were these provisions of the Creator,—
how, if properly studied and applied, they
might be fraught with happiness to mankind,—
how a slight jostle or jar at a dinner-party
might make the post-prandial eloquence of
garrulous senility satisfactory to itself, yet harmless
to others, — how a more intimate knowledge
of anatomy, introduced into the domestic circle,
might make a home tolerable at least, if not
happy, — how a long-suffering husband, under
the pretence of a conjugal caress, might so
unhook his wife's condyloid process as to allow
the flow of expostulation, criticism, or denunciation,
to go on with gratification to her, and
perfect immunity to himself.

But this was not getting back to George
Washington and the early struggles of the

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Republic. So I returned to the commander-in-chief,
but found, after one or two leading
questions, that she was rather inclined to resent
his re-appearance on the stage. Her reminiscences
here were chiefly social and local,
and more or less flavored with Perkins. We
got back as far as the Revolutionary epoch, or,
rather, her impressions of that epoch, when it
was still fresh in the public mind. And here
I came upon an incident, purely personal and
local, but, withal, so novel, weird, and uncanny,
that for a while I fear it quite displaced
George Washington in my mind, and tinged the
autumnal fields beyond with a red that was not
of the sumach. I do not remember to have
read of it in the books. I do not know that it
is entirely authentic. It was attested to me by
mother and daughter, as an uncontradicted tradition.

In the little field beyond, where the plough still
turns up musket-balls and cartridge-boxes, took
place one of those irregular skirmishes between
the militiamen and Knyphausen's strangglers,
that made the retreat historical. A Hessian
soldier, wounded in both legs and utterly helpless,
dragged himself to the cover of a hazelcopse,
and lay there hidden for two days. On
the third day, maddened by thirst, he managed
to creep to the rail-fence of an adjoining

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farmhouse, but found himself unable to mount it or
pass through. There was no one in the house
but a little girl of six or seven years. He called
to her, and in a faint voice asked for water.
She returned to the house, as if to comply with
his request, but, mounting a chair, took from
the chimney a heavily-loaded Queen Anne
musket, and, going to the door, took deliberate
aim at the helpless intruder, and fired. The
man fell back dead, without a groan. She replaced
the musket, and, returning to the fence,
covered the body with boughs and leaves, until
it was hidden. Two or three days after, she
related the occurrence in a careless, casual way,
and leading the way to the fence, with a piece
of bread and butter in her guileless little fingers,
pointed out the result of her simple, unsophisticated
effort. The Hessian was decently
buried, but I could not find out what became
of the little girl. Nobody seemed to remember.
I trust, that, in after-years, she was happily
married; that no Jersey Lovelace attempted
to trifle with a heart whose impulses were so
prompt, and whose purposes were so sincere.
They did not seem to know if she had married
or not. Yet it does not seem probable that
such simplicity of conception, frankness of expression,
and deftness of execution, were lost
to posterity, or that they failed, in their time

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and season, to give flavor to the domestic felicity
of the period. Beyond this, the story perhaps
has little value, except as an offset to the usual
anecdotes of Hessian atrocity.

They had their financial panics even in Jersey,
in the old days. She remembered when
Dr. White married your cousin Mary — or was
it Susan? — yes, it was Susan. She remembers
that your Uncle Harry brought in an armful
of bank-notes, — paper money, you know, — and
threw them in the corner, saying they were no
good to anybody. She remembered playing
with them, and giving them to your Aunt
Anna — no, child, it was your own mother,
bless your heart! Some of them was marked
as high as a hundred dollars. Everybody kept
gold and silver in a stocking, or in a “chaney”
vase, like that. You never used money to buy
any thing. When Josiah went to Springfield
to buy any thing, he took a cartload of things
with him to exchange. That yaller picture-frame
was paid for in greenings. But then
people knew jest what they had. They didn't
fritter their substance away in unchristian
trifles, like your father, Eliza Jane, who doesn't
know that there is a God who will smite him
hip and thigh; for vengeance is mine, and those
that believe in me. But here, singularly enough,
the inferior maxillaries gave out, and her jaw

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dropped. (I noticed that her giddy daughter
of eighty-five was sitting near her; but I do
not pretend to connect this fact with the
arrested flow of personal disclosure.) Howbeit,
when she recovered her speech again,
it appeared that she was complaining of the
weather.

The seasons had changed very much since
your father went to sea. The winters used to
be terrible in those days. When she went over
to Springfield, in June, she saw the snow still
on Watson's Ridge. There were whole days
when you couldn't git over to William Henry's,
their next neighbor, a quarter of a mile away.
It was that drefful winter that the Spanish
sailor was found. You don't remember the
Spanish sailor, Eliza Jane — it was before your
time. There was a little personal skirmishing
here, which I feared, at first, might end in a
suspension of maxillary functions, and the loss
of the story; but here it is. Ah, me! it is a
pure white winter idyl: how shall I sing it this
bright, gay autumnal day?

It was a terrible night, that winter's night,
when she and the century were young together.
The sun was lost at three o'clock: the snowy
night came down like a white sheet, that flapped
around the house, beat at the windows with
its edges, and at last wrapped it in a close

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embrace. In the middle of the night, they
thought they heard above the wind a voice
crying, “Christus, Christus!” in a foreign
tongue. They opened the door, — no easy task
in the north wind that pressed its strong
shoulders against it, — but nothing was to be
seen but the drifting snow. The next morning
dawned on fences hidden, and a landscape
changed and obliterated with drift. During
the day, they again heard the cry of “Christus!”
this time faint and hidden, like a child's
voice. They searched in vain: the drifted snow
hid its secret. On the third day they broke a
path to the fence, and then they heard the cry
distinctly. Digging down, they found the body
of a man, — a Spanish sailor, dark and bearded,
with ear-rings in his ears. As they stood gazing
down at his cold and pulseless figure, the
cry of “Christus!” again rose upon the wintry
air; and they turned and fled in superstitious
terror to the house. And then one of the children,
bolder than the rest, knelt down, and
opened the dead man's rough pea-jacket, and
found — what think you? — a little blue-and-green
parrot, nestling against his breast. It
was the bird that had echoed mechanically the
last despairing cry of the life that was given to
save it. It was the bird, that ever after, amid
outlandish oaths and wilder sailor-songs, that I

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fear often shocked the pure ears of its gentle
mistress, and brought scandal into the Jerseys,
still retained that one weird and mournful cry.

The sun meanwhile was sinking behind the
steadfast range beyond, and I could not help
feeling that I must depart with my wants unsatisfied.
I had brought away no historic fragment:
I absolutely knew little or nothing new
regarding George Washington. I had been
addressed variously by the names of different
members of the family who were dead and forgotten;
I had stood for an hour in the past:
yet I had not added to my historical knowledge,
nor the practical benefit of your readers. I
spoke once more of Washington, and she replied
with a reminiscence of Perkins.

Stand forth, O Josiah W. Perkins of Basking
Ridge, N.J. Thou wast of little account in
thy life, I warrant; thou didst not even feel
the greatness of thy day and time; thou didst
criticise thy superiors; thou wast small and
narrow in thy ways; thy very name and grave
are unknown and uncared for: but thou wast
once kind to a woman who survived thee, and,
lo! thy name is again spoken of men, and for a
moment lifted up above thy betters.