I have been thinking a good deal about old maids lately--one has time to think about all manner of subjects when one is lying down most of the day. Mrs. Fielden is of opinion that an old maid may have an exaggerated sense of humour. To my mind her danger may be that she is always rather pathetically satisfied with everything. She prefers the front seat of a carriage and the back seat of a dog-cart, and the leg of a chicken and a tiny bedroom. Doubtless this is a form of self-respect. This suitability of tastes on the part of an old maid enables her to say, as she does with almost suspicious frequency, that she gets dreadfully spoiled wherever she goes. Adaptability to environment is the first law of existence, and yet there may have been times, even in the life of an old maid, when she has yearned for the wing of a chicken.
The little room into which Miss Lydia ushered me was plainly furnished, but Miss Lydia says that she is always getting something pretty given to her to add to her treasures. Her room is, indeed, rather suggestive of a stationer's shop window, where a card with "Fancy goods in great variety" is placed. It would not be unkind to hint of some of the articles on the table and on the wall-brackets that they must have been purchased more as a kindly remembrance at Christmas-time or on birthdays than from any apparent usefulness to the recipient. There are three twine-cases from which the scissors have long since been abstracted by unknown dishonest persons; and there are four ornamental thermometers, each showing its own fixed and unalterable idea respecting the temperature of the room. A large number of unframed sketches which children have given her are fastened to the wall by pins, or hung on tacks whose uncertain hold bespeaks a feminine hand on the hammer. There are several calendars, and there is quite an uncountable collection of photograph frames, which fall over unless they are propped against something. Most of the photographs are old and faded, and they are nearly all of babies. Babies clothed and unclothed; babies with bare feet and little nightshirts on; babies sucking their thumbs; babies lying prone on fur carriage-rugs; babies riding on their mammas' backs, or sitting on their mammas' knees; babies crowing or crying. No one who has a baby ever fails to send this maiden lady a photograph of it.