A calm enjoyment of a calm
existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump, placid face. Some
of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life.
Mrs. Vesey SAT through life. Sat in the house, early and late;
sat in the garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in passages; sat
(on a camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;
sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything,
before she answered Yes, or No, to the commonest question--always
with the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantly-
attentive turn of the head, the same snugly-comfortable position
of her hands and arms, under every possible change of domestic
circumstances. A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and
harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that
she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature
has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such
a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be
now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the
different processes that she is carrying on at the same time.
Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private
persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs.
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