ABSTRACT
Aunt Patty Stow is sixty-seven years old; not quite as spry as a girl of sixteen, but a great deal tougher-she has seen tough times in her day. She can do as good a day’s work as any woman within twenty miles of her, and as for walking, she can beat a regiment. General Taylor’s army on the march moved about fifteen miles a day, but Aunt Patty, on a pinch, could walk twenty. She has been spending the summer with her niece in New York; for Aunt Patty has nieces, abundance of them, though she has no children; she never had any. Aunt Patty never was married, and, for the last thirty years, whenever the question has been asked her, why she did not get married, her invariable reply has been, “she would not have the best man that ever trod shoe-leather.” Aunt Patty has been spending the summer in New York, but she does n’t live there; not she! she would as soon live on the top of the Rocky Moun tains. If you ask her where she does live, she always answers,
“On Susquehanna’s side, fair Wyoming.”
