own State. Sam Amos used to say if you'd set a born-and-bred
Kentuckian down in the Gyarden of Eden he'd begin to brag about his
farm over in the blue-grass; and you jest ride from here to Lexin'ton
about the first o' June, what Abram used to call 'clover and
blue-grass time,' and if you are a Kentuckian, you'll thank God, and
if you ain't a Kentuckian, you'll wish you was.
"There's a heap of good to be got out of travelin', honey. One thing
is, I won't have to go back thirty or forty years to find somethin' to
talk about when you come to see me. Even if I hadn't seen Henrietta or
Henrietta's home, the things I saw on the way from here to Lexin'ton
will keep me talkin' the rest o' my days and make me happier jest to
think of 'em. Such farms and hills and trees and orchards, and such
level corn-fields, oat-fields and pretty rollin' land in between 'em I
know can't be seen anywhere but in Kentucky.
"I couldn't help thinkin' of old man Mose Elrod. His farm j'ined the
Amos farm, and a better piece o' land you couldn't 'a' found; but he
had a cousin down in Texas, and the cousin kept writin' to him about
the soil o' Texas and the climate o' Texas and the money there was to
be made there, till finally old man Mose got the Texas fever and sold
out and moved down in the neighborhood o' San Antonio. Every now and
then he'd write home, and from what he said we judged he was
prosperin' and feelin' contented in his new home; but in about a year
and a half here he come, walkin' in and takin' the neighbors by
surprise. He went all over the neighborhood shakin' hands and tellin'
folks how glad he was to be back again. Says he, 'I've been homesick
night and day for eighteen months, and all the money in Texas couldn't
keep me away from Kentucky any longer.'
"He said he set up all night on the cyars so's the conductor would
tell him when he got on Kentucky soil, and the nearer he got home the
happier he got, and when the brakeman hollered, 'Muldraughs Hill!' he
jumped up, threw up his hat, and hollered, 'Glory! Hallelujah!' Of
course the passengers was skeered, and one man says, 'Search him and
see if he's got any weapons on him,' and the conductor come runnin'
up, and old man Mose says, 'I haven't got any weapons, conductor, and
I'm not drunk nor crazy, but I've been down in Texas for a year and a
half, and I'm jest happy over gittin' back home.' And the conductor
says: 'Well, that's excuse enough for anything. Holler as loud as you
please; you sha'n't be put off the train.'
"The old man said he could 'a' stood it if there'd been any knobs or
hills or big trees. But he said that prairie land nearly run him
crazy, especially in the evenin'. He said he'd watch the sun goin'
down like a ball o' fire away off across that level prairie, and he'd
think about how the sunset looked in Kentucky, with old Pilot Knob and
Prewitt's Knob loomin' up on the horizon, and he'd drop his head in
his hands and cry like a baby.
"And talkin' about sunsets, child, reminds me of a picture in
Henrietta's parlor. There never was anything like the inside o'
Henrietta's home. Her and Archibald went all over Europe when they was
first married, and everywhere they went they gethered up pictures and
marble images and such things, and whichever way you'd turn there was
somethin' to look at that you never'd seen before. And when you've
been livin' all your life in a house like this old farmhouse o' mine,
it gives you a curious sort o' feelin' to be set down all at once in a
place like Henrietta's. Why, for two or three days I hardly knew the
name of anything I was eatin' or drinkin' or lookin' at or walkin' on
or settin' on, and when I try to ricollect the different rooms, I git
'em all mixed up. But there's one thing that's jest as clear as day in
my mind, and that is the picture I'm tellin' you about. The name of it
was 'The Angelus.' Now ain't that a pretty name?--'The Angelus.' Why,
it sounds jest like music. The minute I come across it, I stopped
still in front of it and looked and looked and looked. And says I,
'Child, this picture makes me feel like sayin' my prayers.' And
Henrietta laughed, and says she, 'Grandma, that's jest what the people
in the picture are doin'.' And she said that over yonder in France, in
some o' the places out in the country, places pretty much like our
Goshen neighborhood, I reckon, they was in the habit o' ringin' the
church bells at sundown, and when people heard the bells, they'd stop
whatever they was doin' and say their prayers. And she told me all
about the man that painted 'The Angelus,' how poor he was, and how
folks laughed at his pictures, and wouldn't buy 'em because he painted
things jest as they was, plain and natural. She said her picture was a
copy of the one he painted, and when she saw how much I liked it, she
says, 'Grandma, I'm goin' to get you a copy of "The Angelus,"' and I
says, 'No, child, I ain't one o' the kind that has to have a picture
o' the folks and the things they love. I've got that picture right in
my old brain, and all I have to do to see it is jest to shut my eyes
and it'll come--the sunset and the field and the two people prayin'
and the bell,--I'll hear that, too, ringin' jest like the old bell
that used to ring in Goshen church.' Every day I'd go into the parlor
at Henrietta's about the time the sun'd be goin' down, and I'd look
first at the sunset in the sky and then at the sunset in the picture,
and I couldn't tell which was the prettiest.
"Uncle Jim Matthews used to say that every church bell said, 'Get up,
get up, and go to church!' And in them days people minded the church
bell. But nowadays it looks like the only bells folks pays any
attention to is the breakfast-bell and the dinner-bell and the
supper-bell. And I've been thinkin', honey, what a blessed thing it
would be, if, all over the world, folks could hear a bell ringin' at
sundown and callin' on everybody to stop their work or their pleasure
and fold their hands for a minute and pray. Why, the prayers would go
up to heaven like the birds flyin' home to their nests, and jest think
how many wrong things would be stopped. If a murderer was liftin' his
hand, that bell would be like a voice from the sky, sayin', 'Thou
shalt not kill.' If a husband and wife was quarrelin', and they heard
the Angelus, and stopped to pray, why, maybe, after they'd prayed
they'd kiss and make up. Yes, child, the Angelus would do a heap o'
good. But if anybody's once looked at the picture, they won't need the
bell. I know I'll never see the sun settin' behind them knobs over
yonder that I won't think o' that picture, and whatever I'm doin' I'll
have to stop and fold my hands and bow my head, the same as I used to
do when Parson Page'd stand up in the old Goshen church and say, 'Let
us pray.'
"Here's a picture o' Henrietta's house, child. I knew I couldn't tell
folks about it so's they'd have any idea o' what it was, so I brought
this picture." And she handed me a photograph of one of those modern
palaces which, under the spells of the two master magicians, Art and
Wealth, are springing up on the soil of the New South to replace the
worn-out mansions of ante-bellum days.
"When I looked at Henrietta's house," continued Aunt Jane, "I thought
o' what Uncle Billy Bascom used to say. Uncle Billy's the kind that
can't enjoy this world for thinkin' about the next one. He's spent
his life preparin' for death, and it looks like it hurts him to see
anybody gittin' any pleasure out o' the things o' this world. Every
time any o' the Goshen folks'd put up a house that was a little bit
better than what Uncle Billy'd been used to, he'd shake his head and
say, 'Yes, Lord; folks can make theirselves so comfortable here on
this earth that they won't have a thought about gittin' a clear title
to a mansion in the skies.'
"And that house o' Henrietta's was enough to make anybody forget about
their mansion in the skies. Henrietta's havin' her heaven now, and
she'll have it hereafter, and Archibald, too. For the 'cares o' the
world and the deceitfulness o' riches' hasn't choked any o' the good
seed that's been sown in their hearts. How many young folks do you
reckon would think o' comin' down here and takin' a old woman like me
home with 'em, and treatin' her like a queen, and showin' her all the
sights in a place like Lexin'ton?
"Archibald named 'em all over to me, and Henrietta says, 'Now where do
you want to go first, grandma?' And I says: 'I want to see Henry
Clay's house. Take me there first, and I don't care whether I see any
o' the rest o' the sights or not.' So the next day Henrietta took me
to Ashland, the place where Henry Clay had lived, and I saw the bed he
slept in and the table he wrote on and the inkstand and the pen he
used. And I says to myself, 'I'm in Henry Clay's home. Henry
Clay!--the man I used to hear my father talk about when I was a young
gyirl--the man that'd rather be in the right than to be President.'
And I ricollected the time Henry Clay spoke in town and father went to
hear him, and when he got back home, mother asked him what kind of a
man Henry Clay was. And father says, says he, 'Henry Clay ain't a
man'; and mother laughed (she was used to father's way o' talkin'),
and says she, 'Well, if he ain't a man, what is he?' And father
studied a minute, and then he says, 'Do you ricollect the tongues o'
fire that descended on the apostles on the day of Pentecost?' Says he,
'If one o' them tongues o' fire was put in the body of a man, that'd
be Henry Clay.' Says he, 'He stands up and runs his eye over the
crowd, and from that minute he's got every man there right in the
holler of his hand, and he does jest what he pleases with 'em; and if
he looks any particular man in the face, that man'll feel like he's in
the presence of his Maker.'
"Father never got over Clay not bein' President; and whenever
anybody'd talk about it, he'd shake his head and say, 'There's
somethin' wrong with the times when a man like Henry Clay can't git
the Presidency.'
"Now, here I am, child, 'way back in Henry Clay's time, when I set out
to tell you about my visit to Henrietta's. That wanderin' o' the mind
is a pretty good sign of old age, I reckon, but I 'most always manage
to ricollect where I started from and where I'm goin' to.
"Well, as soon as I got to feelin' at home Henrietta says, 'Now,
grandma, I'm goin' to give you a reception and introduce you to my
friends.' And I says: 'Honey, you'd better not do that. You know I'm
jest a old-fashioned woman, and maybe I wouldn't know how to behave at
a reception.' And Henrietta laughed, and says she, 'All in the world
you have to do, grandma, is to shake hands with the people and be glad
to see 'em.'
"And, sure enough, it was jest that way. Everybody was smilin' and
sayin' they was glad to see me, and that reception was pretty much
like shakin' hands with your neighbors after prayer-meetin' and
church, only there was more of 'em.
"I started to wear my black alpaca to the reception, but Henrietta
says, 'No, grandma, I've had a dress made especially for you.' Jest
wait a minute, honey, and I'll get that dress."
And when she appeared a moment later her face wore the radiant look of
a girl who displays her first party costume, or a bride her
wedding-gown. Over her arm hung the reception gown of soft, black
China silk, with plain full skirt and shirred waist. There were
ruffles of point lace in the full sleeves, and she held up the
point-lace cap and fichu that completed the costume.
"To think o' me wearin' such clothes," said Aunt Jane exultingly. "And
the curious part of it was, child, that I hadn't had these things on
five minutes, till I felt like they belonged to me, and it seemed as
if I'd been wearin' lace and silk all my life. And Henrietta stood off
and looked at me, and says she, 'Grandma, you look exactly like a
family portrait.' And when Archibald come home after the reception, he
says, says he, 'We ought to have grandma's picture painted in that
dress.' And Henrietta says, 'Yes; and I want another picture of
grandma in her old purple calico dress and gingham apron, settin' in
that old high-back rockin'-chair with one of her patchwork quilts over
her lap.' Says she, 'That's the way I remember seein' grandma when I
was a little gyirl, and that's the way _I_ want her picture taken.'"
She paused to shake out the lustrous silk and spread the fichu over it
that I might see the delicate pattern of the lace.
"I started to leave this dress at Henrietta's," she observed, "for I
knew I wouldn't have use for such clothes as these down here on the
farm, but Henrietta folded 'em up and put 'em in my trunk, and she
said I had to wear 'em every Sunday evenin' and sit out on the porch
and think about her and Archibald. And then, child, when I die they
can bury me in this dress." And her cheerful smile told me that if
death had held any terrors for Aunt Jane, those terrors would be
largely assuaged by the thought of going to her long rest in point
lace and silk. Nigh on to eighty years, "but yet a woman!"
"Now what was the next thing I went to? Oh, yes! the Brownin' Club.
Two or three days after the reception, Henrietta says to me, 'Grandma,
the Brownin' Club meets with me this evenin', and I want you to put on
your silk dress and come down to the parlor and listen to our papers.'
And she told me who Brownin' was, and said she was goin' to read a
paper on his home life.
"Well, I thought to myself that there wasn't much hope o' me
understandin' anything I'd hear at that Brownin' Club, but of course I
was glad to dress up again in my silk dress and my lace, and to please
Henrietta I went down into the parlor and listened to the readin'.
First, a young lady read a paper about the 'Message of Brownin'.' She
said every poet had a message to give to the world jest like the
prophets in Old-Testament times, and I gethered from her paper that
Brownin' was a man that always looked on the bright side and believed
that things was goin' to come right in the end; and towards the last
she read some mighty pretty verses. I wish I could ricollect 'em all.
It was somethin' about the spring o' the year and the mornin' and the
dew like pearls and the birds flyin'. The words was jest like a
picture of a spring mornin', and the last of it was, 'God's in his
heaven--all's right with the world!' That's jest as true as anything
in the Bible, and it sounds like it might 'a' come out o' the Bible,
don't it, child?
"Then another lady read some o' Brownin's poetry, 'Pary--' somethin'
or other."
"Paracelsus," I suggested.
"That's it," said Aunt Jane, "but I ain't a bit wiser than I was
before, for I never did find out whether that was the name of a man or
a woman or a town or a river or what. I set and listened, and every
now and then it'd seem like there was somethin' that I could
understand, but before I could lay hold of it here'd come a lot o' big
words that I never heard tell of before, and, I declare to goodness,
my old brains got tired tryin' to git some sense out o' that poetry.
Why, it was jest like tryin' to read at night by the light o' the
fire. The fire'll blaze up, and you'll see everything plain for a
minute, and then it'll die down, and there you are in the dark again.
"Well, when the lady got through readin' the poetry, she said she was
goin' to read her interpretation of it. I ricollected how Joseph
interpreted Pharaoh's dream and Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's
dream, and I says to myself, 'Now, I'll find out all about it.' But
bless your life, child, the poetry was hard enough to understand, but
the interpretation was a heap harder; and I says to myself, 'Brownin's
poetry never was intended for a old woman like me.' And I jest leaned
back in my chair and looked at the hats and the bonnets the ladies
had on. Pretty clothes always was one o' my weak points, and will be
till I die, I reckon. When I was a child father used to question us
children about the sermon when we got home from church. I never could
tell much about it, except the text, and I ricollect hearin' mother
say to him one Sunday, 'If Jane could jest remember as much about the
sermon as she remembers about the hats and bonnets, we could have her
ordained to preach.'
"There was one hat I saw at the Brownin' Club that I'll ricollect as
long as I ricollect 'The Angelus.' It was made out o' white lace and
trimmed with pink roses that made me think o' the roses in my
weddin'-bonnet, only they was buds and these was full-blown ones, so
full-blown that it looked like they was ready to shatter and fall if
the wind blew on 'em, and so natural you could almost smell 'em. I
declare, that hat made me wish I was a young gyirl again.
"Then Henrietta read her paper, and it was jest as pretty a story as
ever I listened to; about him fallin' in love with that sick woman
that hadn't walked a step for years, and how he married her against
her father's will, and took her 'way off to Florence, the same place
where Henrietta and Archibald went when they was in Europe, and where
Henrietta got that quilt pattern for me. And she told how kind he was
to her, and how he'd git up in the mornin' and gether roses and put
'em by her bed so they'd be the first things she'd look at when she
opened her eyes. And thinks I to myself, 'Most men wants a woman that
can cook for 'em and sew for 'em and clean up after 'em, and Brownin'
must 'a' been a mighty good man to marry a woman that couldn't do
anything for him but jest love him.' Somehow I can't git the thought
o' Brownin' out o' my head. He must 'a' been mighty different from the
common run o' men, and his life don't need interpretin' like his
poetry does.
"Maybe you wonder, honey, how a old woman like me could enjoy bein' at
a Brownin' Club, and I reckon I was as much out o' place as mother's
old spinnin'-wheel that Henrietta had in one corner of her parlor
along with all that fine furniture and the fine things she'd brought
from Europe. But, then, I couldn't feel a bit bad, for there set
Henrietta, my child's child; she had everything I hadn't had, and I
jest laughed to myself, and thinks I, 'I'm livin' again in my children
and my grandchildren, and I ain't missed a thing.'"
Aunt Jane paused for breath and leaned back in her chair, smiling and
smoothing down her gingham apron. I waited in silence, for I knew that
the near memories of her visit to her beloved grandchild were as vivid
and interesting to her as the far memories of girlhood and young
womanhood, and the tide of recollections would soon flow again.
"Well, the next thing we went to was a big meetin' of women from all
sorts o' clubs. When Henrietta told me what it was, I says to myself,
'Now, I'll see if what Uncle Billy Bascom told me is the truth or
not.' Uncle Billy'd been sent up to the legislature twice from our
district, and when I heard he'd been elected the second time, I
couldn't help thinkin' about what Sam Amos used to say, that when
folks got tired seein' a man around and wanted to git shed of him a
while, they always sent him to the legislature. That's about the way
it was with Uncle Billy.
"Me and Uncle Billy has always been good friends, and after he got
back home he come around to see me, and when we'd shook hands and
inquired about each other's health, he looked me right in the face and
says he, 'Jane, I've been to Sodom and Gomorrah.' And says I, 'Uncle
Billy, that's about the hardest thing ever I heard said about a
Kentucky legislature, and I've heard some pretty hard things in my
day and time.' And says he: 'No, Jane; you misunderstand me. I ain't
referrin' to the legislature; the legislature's all right.' Says he:
'We set sixty days and drawed our pay regular, and we passed pretty
nigh a hundred bills, and might 'a' passed that many more if we'd kept
on settin'; but as the constitution don't permit us to set longer,
why, of course, we had to adjourn and come on home, leavin' a good
deal o' business unfinished. No,' says he, 'it ain't the legislature
I'm talkin' about, it's the women, the women.' Says he: 'There was a
time when it was some pleasure for a man to go up to the legislature.
Us men, we'd git together and resolute, and debate, and pass our
bills, and everything'd go off as smooth as satin. Now and then we
might git a disturbin' sort of a letter from some o' the home folks
about somethin' we'd been doin' that didn't suit 'em, a dog-tax or
somethin' o' that sort, but they'd be too fur to worry us much. But,'
says he, 'the way the women has got to carryin' on, if it wasn't for
the pay and the honor o' the thing, I'd ruther stay right here on my
farm than to go up yonder to Frankfort and rastle with a lot o' women
that's strayed so far from the foot-steps o' their mothers and
grandmothers that nothin' but a miracle could bring 'em back.' Says
he: 'We could hardly pass a bill in any peace whatsoever, for them
women. If we set out to give a little money to the State College, why,
here'd come a delegation o' women from Lexin'ton wantin' to know
whether the gyirls would git their share of it.' Says he: 'There ain't
a right or a privilege goin' that they don't want to cut it half in
two, and give the littlest half to us men and keep the biggest half
for the women; some of 'em even goes so far as to say that women ought
to vote. And,' says he, 'they've got to clubbin' together, and what
one woman can't think of, the others can; and there was hardly a man
in the legislature that wasn't pestered with havin' to look after some
sort o' bill that'd been hatched up in one o' these here clubs. I got
so outdone with 'em,' says he, 'that whenever a bill'd' come up, I'd
say to whoever was settin' by me, "Has the women got anything to do
with it?" And if they had, I'd vote against it, and if they hadn't,
I'd vote for it. One o' their bills,' says he, 'sounded mighty
reasonable, the "forestry bill," they called it, but it never come
up.' Says he, 'We had a little redistricting to do for the benefit o'
the party, and made a few new offices jest to please the people, and
betwixt this and that,' says he, 'we didn't git round to the forestry
bill.' Says he, 'I might 'a' supported that, if it had come up, but
then I don't know but what after all it'd 'a' been a dangerous sort o'
thing.' Says he: 'The more you give a woman the more she wants. We
give women their property rights, and now they're wantin' to vote and
to manage the schools and the 'sylums and pretty near everything else.
And,' says he, 'if we was to pass that there forestry bill, like as
not the first thing you know, a man'd have to git a permit from some
o' these women's clubs before he could chop a piece o' kindlin'-wood
in his own back yard.'
"And then the old man went on to tell how he went up to Lexin'ton
after the legislature was over, and that was what he meant by goin' to
Sodom and Gomorrah. Says he, 'There's women up there, Jane, that don't
know a water-bucket from a churn, and if you was to show 'em a
potater-patch in full bloom, they'd think it was some sort of a
flower-gyarden.' Says he, 'The clubs was more numerous than the
children, and it looks to me like the race is dyin' out, dyin' out,
Jane; and maybe it's jest as well,' says he, 'for there ain't any
women nowadays like the old-time ones, for instance, my mother and
grandmother,' says he."
Aunt Jane broke off with a laugh. "I knew as soon as he started out
that he was comin' to his mother and grandmother. Uncle Billy couldn't
talk twenty minutes with anybody without tellin' 'em how his mother
had fifteen children, and cooked and sewed and washed and ironed for
'em all, and how his grandmother was one o' the women that carried
water at Bryan's Station, and how she fought a wildcat one night on
the Wilderness Road when her husband was away killin' some game for
their supper.
"Well, I went to this club meetin', I can't ricollect jest what
Henrietta called it, but it seems they had got together to tell about
all the work they'd done in the past year, and plan out their next
year's work.