When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors
and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On
the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and
there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at
the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her
himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a
note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded
ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was
also enclosed, without comment.