WHEN I was a very young man nothing used to surprise me more than the existence of a very old one-one of those patriarchs who, instead of linking the generations 'each with each,' include two or three in their protracted span; a habit which runs in families, as in the case of the old gentleman of our own time whose grandsire (once or twice 'removed,' it is true, but not nearly so often as 'by rights' he should have been) gathered the arrows upon Flodden Field. Such persons seemed to me little inferior in interest to ghosts (whom indeed in appearance they greatly resembled), and I was wont to listen to their experiences of the past with the same rapt attention, (unalloyed by the alarm), that I should have paid to a denizen of another world. There are, it seems to me, very few old persons about now, absolutely none (there used to be plenty) three or four times my age; and this, perhaps, renders the memory (for she did die at last) of my great-aunt Margaret a thing so rare and precious to me.