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Tales of a Traveller/by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (Complete Works of Washington Irving)
Tales of a Traveller/by Geoffrey Crayon Gent - Complete Works of Washington Irving Author:Washington Irving Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ADVENTURE OF MY AUNT. My aunt was a lady of large frame, strong mind, and great resolution: she was what might be termed a very manly woman. My uncle was ... more »a thin, puny, little man, very meek and acquiescent, and no match for my aunt. It was observed that he dwindled and dwindled gradually away, from the day of his marriage. His wife's powerful mind was too much for him ; it wore him out. My aunt, however, took all possible care of him; had half the doctors in town to prescribe for him; made him take all their prescriptions, and dosed him with physic enough to cure a whole hospital. All was in vain. My uncle grew worse and worse the more dosing and nursing he underwent, until in the endhe added another to the long list of matrimonial victims who have been killed with kindness. " And was it his ghost that appeared to her ?" asked the inquisitive gentleman, who had questioned the former story-teller. " You shall hear," replied the narrator. My aunt took on mightily for the death of her poor dear husband. Perhaps she felt some compunction at having given him so much physic, and nursed him into his grave. At any rate, she did all that a widow could do to honour his memory. She spared no expense in either the quantity or quality of her mourning weeds; she wore a miniature of him about her neck as large as a little sundial; and she had a full length portrait of him always hanging in her bed-chamber. All the world extolled her conduct to the skies; and it was determined that a woman who behaved so well to the memory of one husband deserved soon to get another. It was not long after this that she went to take up her residence in an old country seat in Derbyshire, which had long been in the care ofmerely a steward and housekeeper. She took most of her servants with her, inten...« less