THE LITTLE WHITE ROSE-BUSH.
WHEN Ike Miller brought Jobe’s paper, the _Advercate_, to us day before
yisterday, the fust thing my eyes fell on was:
“SHERIFF’S SALE.—Isaac Vinting, plaintiff, _vs._ Jobe Gaskins,
defendant.”
I tried to look away from it, but, all I could do, I couldent git my
eyes off from them lines. I turned the paper over, but it jist seemed to
me that I could see them words all over that paper.
I never had anything make me feel so queer in all my life. My head
seemed to be goin round and round, and I couldent see anything but
“Sheriff Sale”—“Vinting—Gaskins—Gaskins—Vinting—Sheriff Sale.”
“Sheriff Sale.” I had seen them same two words hundreds of times before,
but they never looked like they did that day.
I was all alone at home, and I thought I would never live to see another
livin bein—I felt so queer.
Well, I laid that paper down and went out in the yard. Arter a while I
begin to feel better, though nothin seemed to look like it use to—nor
dont to this day.
When I got out in the yard I could see the trees, and bushes, and
fences, and the house, and the big road, and the little stream down over
the bank; but they looked so queer. Though I had lived by and among them
for years, they dident look like they did when I use to think they would
be around me and near me when I should die. No, they now looked like
somebody else’s trees and bushes and fence and road and sich.
[Illustration: Little Jane.]
I felt as though I was not at my own home, but intrudin on other
people’s property, “trespassin,” as them court-house lawyers calls it.
That “sheriff sale” in that paper had changed the looks of things.
I went over to the little white rose-bush—the bush my little Jane
planted the day she was four years old—the one she had watched and
called hers till she was taken from me two years arter.
I thought, as I stood there by that little bush, planted by her little
hands, that I could nearly see her little form a squattin down and her
little dimpled fingers pattin the dirt around the roots of that little
bush. I remembered how she plucked the first rose and come a runnin to
me with it, sayin:
“Mamma, mamma, my bush raised this. How pritty!”
[Illustration: “I COULD NEARLY SEE HER LITTLE DIMPLED FINGERS PATTIN THE
AIRTH AROUND THE ROOTS OF THAT LITTLE BUSH.”]
I thought how, every spring, Jobe would pull the weeds and leaves from
around it, and how a many a time I saw him wipin his eyes as he stood by
our baby’s rose-bush. And as I was thinkin this I thought that before
long somebody else would own this ground and that bush, and we could not
take care of it any more for our little girl that is gone. I wondered if
anybody would stand there arter we are turned out and weep for the child
that planted it. I wondered why it was that the law could tear people
away from everything they love. I wondered why there couldent be some
way fixed to make it easier for people to git homes and pay for them. I
wondered why interest was never less than six per cent., and sometimes
more. I wondered why people who paid interest had sich a hard way of
gittin along, while the people who got interest got along so easy.
[Illustration: “‘Mamma, ... how pritty!’”]
And as I stood there by our baby’s rose-bush I thought of all the
interest Jobe has paid on this place, of the taxes he has paid year in
and year out, and I got to figurin, and I found he had paid for the farm
nearly twice over.
And then I thought of that dream I had nearly a year ago, when I dreamt
that Jobe could borrow money of the county treasury at only two per
cent. And I kept on a figurin, and I found that if interest had only
been two per cent. since we bought this farm, the difference between the
interest we have paid and what we would have had to pay at two per cent.
would have let us out. We would have had our farm nearly paid for, and
we could have stayed here and taken care of baby’s little rose-bush and
carried the roses to her little grave each year as long as we lived.
But interest haint two per cent., and we must leave the little bush,
leave the trees, leave the flowers, leave all and go. Oh! that nearly
chokes me. Where shall we go? Who will take care of baby’s grave? I cant
rite any more. I feel so queer.
[Illustration]