But the crones just repeat what the "priesthood" have taught,

The two old crones who had come to "lay out" the body crept about on tiptoe, their usual garrulity quenched by the sad and beautiful spectacle.

The two old crones sat with the body all night and all the next day.

Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, watching the slowly-revolving spit, with all the longing of an urchin; or, of an evening, listening to the crones and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times in England.

The crone withdrew her head and vanished.

When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken, run-down shoe.

He thought of his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from the old crone's condition.

[Fr.], sot; jobbernowl^, changeling, mooncalf, gobemouche^. dotard, driveler; old fogey, old woman, crock; crone, grandmother; cotquean^, henhussy^. incompetent (insanity) 503. greenhorn &c (dupe) 547; dunce &c (ignoramus) 493; lubber &c (bungler) 701; madman &c 504.

Nothing so familiar in these days, as for a young man to marry an old wife, as they say, for a piece of gold; asinum auro onustum; and though she be an old crone, and have never a tooth in her head, neither good conditions, nor a good face, a natural fool, but only rich, she shall have twenty young gallants to be suitors in an instant.

" "She that was erst a maid as fresh as May, Is now an old crone, time so steals away.

In the gutters, crones were eagerly rummaging among the dust heaps that awaited removal.

When her sweet charms were equally bestowed, And fairest of the sex with hopes imbued Of capturing men of wealth and lives of ease, When loveliness at public sale doth please The nobles of the land to wealth bestow Upon ill-favored sisters, maids of woe, Who claimed no beauty, nor had lovely charms; When crones and hags, and maids with uncouth forms, Secured a husbandman despite of fate, And love redeemed them from the arms of hate.

Thus fill the temple with sweet beauties, crones; The latest maids are the most timid ones.

In an instant, as he stood between the two old crones, with their drab faces and no outlook on life save that of the streets, now gloomy and empty, now full of sunshine and crowded traffic, the young man learned more of human conditions than he had ever been taught at school.

Do you remember, Estelle, the story we read together once, out of the "Casket" or "Gem," one of those old annuals, where a certain princess was sent to a desolate island, whose maids of honor were all old crones, once distinguished by their wonderful beauty?

Old crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin sides at their own and others' jokes.

A striking and novel approach; though my belief in it was hindered by the discovery that these untutored crones not only spoke but wrote an admirable, if slightly mannered, prose, akin to that of STEVENSON or, say, Sir ARTHUR himself.

Whole pages of his sketch-book are filled with squalid heads of shrivelled crones and ghastly old menwith idiots, goîtred cretins, criminals, and clowns.

The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years.

One was for wealth, another was for place; Crones, old and ugly, wish'd a better face: The widow's wish was oftentimes to wed; The wanton maids were all for sport a-bed.

Where the ancient crones who wrote: "Women rule through Beauty's sway"?

At your left is the ponderous mantelpiece, supported by two spiral stone pillars; and close to the door at the right was the bed in which the two crones had just stretched poor Philip Feltram, who lay as still as an uncoloured wax-work, with a heavy penny-piece on each eye, and a bandage under his jaw, making his mouth look stern.

Accordingly, a little platform about a foot in height, properly finished with a moulding around the edge, was substituted for the worn and blackened pickets; and it was touching to witness the mournful satisfaction with which two or three old crones would come regularly every evening at sunset, to sit and gossip over the ashes of their departed relatives.

"The crime of witchcraft is indeed a heinous one, if so be that it can be provennot by the compelled confession of crazed and tortured crones, but by the clear light of reason.

One of these old crones, a hideous, withered, wrinkled piece of womanhood, said that she had worked as long as her strength had lasted, and that then she had still been worth her keep, for, said she, 'Missus, tho' we no able to work, we make little niggers for massa.'