Olympus," or "from the Lost Atlantis." "Europe" was evidently a name
to conjure with, a country of mystery and romance unspeakable. I had
seen many things from many lands beyond the sea, but a quilt pattern
from Europe! Here at last was something new under the sun. In what
shop of London or Paris were quilt patterns kept on sale for the
American tourist?
"You see," said Aunt Jane, "Henrietta married a mighty rich man, and
jest as good as he's rich, too, and they went to Europe on their
bridal trip. When she come home she brought me the prettiest shawl you
ever saw. She made me stand up and shut my eyes, and she put it on my
shoulders and made me look in the lookin'-glass, and then she says,
'I brought you a new quilt pattern, too, grandma, and I want you to
piece one quilt by it and leave it to me when you die.' And then she
told me about goin' to a town over yonder they call Florence, and how
she went into a big church that was built hundreds o' years before I
was born. And she said the floor was made o' little pieces o' colored
stone, all laid together in a pattern, and they called it mosaic. And
says I, 'Honey, has it got anything to do with Moses and his law?' You
know the Commandments was called the Mosaic Law, and was all on tables
o' stone. And Henrietta jest laughed, and says she: 'No, grandma; I
don't believe it has. But,' says she, 'the minute I stepped on that
pavement I thought about you, and I drew this pattern off on a piece
o' paper and brought it all the way to Kentucky for you to make a
quilt by.' Henrietta bought the worsted for me, for she said it had to
be jest the colors o' that pavement over yonder, and I made it that
very winter."
Aunt Jane was regarding the quilt with worshipful eyes, and it really
was an effective combination of color and form.
"Many a time while I was piecin' that," she said, "I thought about
the man that laid the pavement in that old church, and wondered what
his name was, and how he looked, and what he'd think if he knew there
was a old woman down here in Kentucky usin' his patterns to make a
bedquilt."
It was indeed a far cry from the Florentine artisan of centuries ago
to this humble worker in calico and worsted, but between the two
stretched a cord of sympathy that made them one--the eternal
aspiration after beauty.
"Honey," said Aunt Jane, suddenly, "did I ever show you my premiums?"
And then, with pleasant excitement in her manner, she arose, fumbled
in her deep pocket for an ancient bunch of keys, and unlocked a
cupboard on one side of the fireplace. One by one she drew them out,
unrolled the soft yellow tissue-paper that enfolded them, and ranged
them in a stately line on the old cherry center-table--nineteen
sterling silver cups and goblets. "Abram took some of 'em on his fine
stock, and I took some of 'em on my quilts and salt-risin' bread and
cakes," she said, impressively.
To the artist his medals, to the soldier his cross of the Legion of
Honor, and to Aunt Jane her silver cups. All the triumph of a humble
life was symbolized in these shining things. They were simple and
genuine as the days in which they were made. A few of them boasted a
beaded edge or a golden lining, but no engraving or embossing marred
their silver purity. On the bottom of each was the stamp: "John B.
Akin, Danville, Ky." There they stood,
"Filled to the brim with precious memories,"--
memories of the time when she and Abram had worked together in field
or garden or home, and the County Fair brought to all a yearly
opportunity to stand on the height of achievement and know somewhat
the taste of Fame's enchanted cup.
"There's one for every child and every grandchild," she said, quietly,
as she began wrapping them in the silky paper, and storing them
carefully away in the cupboard, there to rest until the day when
children and grandchildren would claim their own, and the treasures of
the dead would come forth from the darkness to stand as heirlooms on
fashionable sideboards and damask-covered tables.
"Did you ever think, child," she said, presently, "how much piecin' a
quilt's like livin' a life? And as for sermons, why, they ain't no
better sermon to me than a patchwork quilt, and the doctrines is right
there a heap plainer'n they are in the catechism. Many a time I've set
and listened to Parson Page preachin' about predestination and
free-will, and I've said to myself, 'Well, I ain't never been through
Centre College up at Danville, but if I could jest git up in the
pulpit with one of my quilts, I could make it a heap plainer to folks
than parson's makin' it with all his big words.' You see, you start
out with jest so much caliker; you don't go to the store and pick it
out and buy it, but the neighbors will give you a piece here and a
piece there, and you'll have a piece left every time you cut out a
dress, and you take jest what happens to come. And that's like
predestination. But when it comes to the cuttin' out, why, you're free
to choose your own pattern. You can give the same kind o' pieces to
two persons, and one'll make a 'nine-patch' and one'll make a
'wild-goose chase,' and there'll be two quilts made out o' the same
kind o' pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that is jest
the way with livin'. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut 'em
out and put 'em together pretty much to suit ourselves, and there's a
heap more in the cuttin' out and the sewin' than there is in the
caliker. The same sort o' things comes into all lives, jest as the
Apostle says, 'There hath no trouble taken you but is common to all
men.'
"The same trouble'll come into two people's lives, and one'll take it
and make one thing out of it, and the other'll make somethin' entirely
different. There was Mary Harris and Mandy Crawford. They both lost
their husbands the same year; and Mandy set down and cried and worried
and wondered what on earth she was goin' to do, and the farm went to
wrack and the children turned out bad, and she had to live with her
son-in-law in her old age. But Mary, she got up and went to work, and
made everybody about her work, too; and she managed the farm better'n
it ever had been managed before, and the boys all come up steady,
hard-workin' men, and there wasn't a woman in the county better fixed
up than Mary Harris. Things is predestined to come to us, honey, but
we're jest as free as air to make what we please out of 'em. And when
it comes to puttin' the pieces together, there's another time when
we're free. You don't trust to luck for the caliker to put your quilt
together with; you go to the store and pick it out yourself, any
color you like. There's folks that always looks on the bright side and
makes the best of everything, and that's like puttin' your quilt
together with blue or pink or white or some other pretty color; and
there's folks that never see anything but the dark side, and always
lookin' for trouble, and treasurin' it up after they git it, and
they're puttin' their lives together with black, jest like you would
put a quilt together with some dark, ugly color. You can spoil the
prettiest quilt pieces that ever was made jest by puttin' 'em together
with the wrong color, and the best sort o' life is miserable if you
don't look at things right and think about 'em right.
"Then there's another thing. I've seen folks piece and piece, but when
it come to puttin' the blocks together and quiltin' and linin' it,
they'd give out; and that's like folks that do a little here and a
little there, but their lives ain't of much use after all, any more'n
a lot o' loose pieces o' patchwork. And then while you're livin' your
life, it looks pretty much like a jumble o' quilt pieces before
they're put together; but when you git through with it, or pretty nigh
through, as I am now, you'll see the use and the purpose of everything
in it. Everything'll be in its right place jest like the squares in
this 'four-patch,' and one piece may be pretty and another one ugly,
but it all looks right when you see it finished and joined together."
Did I say that every pattern was represented? No, there was one
notable omission. Not a single "crazy quilt" was there in the
collection. I called Aunt Jane's attention to this lack.
"Child," she said, "I used to say there wasn't anything I couldn't do
if I made up my mind to it. But I hadn't seen a 'crazy quilt' then.
The first one I ever seen was up at Danville at Mary Frances', and
Henrietta says, 'Now, grandma, you've got to make a crazy quilt;
you've made every other sort that ever was heard of.' And she brought
me the pieces and showed me how to baste 'em on the square, and said
she'd work the fancy stitches around 'em for me. Well, I set there all
the mornin' tryin' to fix up that square, and the more I tried, the
uglier and crookeder the thing looked. And finally I says: 'Here,
child, take your pieces. If I was to make this the way you want me to,
they'd be a crazy quilt and a crazy woman, too.'"
Aunt Jane was laying the folded quilts in neat piles here and there
about the room. There was a look of unspeakable satisfaction on her
face--the look of the creator who sees his completed work and
pronounces it good.
"I've been a hard worker all my life," she said, seating herself and
folding her hands restfully, "but 'most all my work has been the kind
that 'perishes with the usin',' as the Bible says. That's the
discouragin' thing about a woman's work. Milly Amos used to say that
if a woman was to see all the dishes that she had to wash before she
died, piled up before her in one pile, she'd lie down and die right
then and there. I've always had the name o' bein' a good housekeeper,
but when I'm dead and gone there ain't anybody goin' to think o' the
floors I've swept, and the tables I've scrubbed, and the old clothes
I've patched, and the stockin's I've darned. Abram might 'a'
remembered it, but he ain't here. But when one o' my grandchildren or
great-grandchildren sees one o' these quilts, they'll think about Aunt
Jane, and, wherever I am then, I'll know I ain't forgotten.
"I reckon everybody wants to leave somethin' behind that'll last after
they're dead and gone. It don't look like it's worth while to live
unless you can do that. The Bible says folks 'rest from their labors,
and their works do follow them,' but that ain't so. They go, and
maybe they do rest, but their works stay right here, unless they're
the sort that don't outlast the usin'. Now, some folks has money to
build monuments with--great, tall, marble pillars, with angels on top
of 'em, like you see in Cave Hill and them big city buryin'-grounds.
And some folks can build churches and schools and hospitals to keep
folks in mind of 'em, but all the work I've got to leave behind me is
jest these quilts, and sometimes, when I'm settin' here, workin' with
my caliker and gingham pieces, I'll finish off a block, and I laugh
and say to myself, 'Well, here's another stone for the monument.'
"I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a
curious sort of a monument--'bout as perishable as the sweepin' and
scrubbin' and mendin'. But if folks values things rightly, and knows
how to take care of 'em, there ain't many things that'll last longer'n
a quilt. Why, I've got a blue and white counterpane that my mother's
mother spun and wove, and there ain't a sign o' givin' out in it yet.
I'm goin' to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville,
Mary Frances' oldest child. She was down here last summer, and I was
lookin' over my things and packin' 'em away, and she happened to see
that counterpane, and says she, 'Grandma, I want you to will me
that.' And says I: 'What do you want with that old thing, honey? You
know you wouldn't sleep under such a counterpane as that.' And says
she, 'No, but I'd hang it up over my parlor door for a--"
"Portiere?" I suggested, as Aunt Jane hesitated for the unaccustomed
word.
"That's it, child. Somehow I can't ricollect these new-fangled words,
any more'n I can understand these new-fangled ways. Who'd ever 'a'
thought that folks'd go to stringin' up bed-coverin's in their doors?
And says I to Janie, 'You can hang your great-grandmother's
counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but,' says I,
'don't you ever make a door-curtain out o' one o' my quilts.' But la!
the way things turn around, if I was to come back fifty years from
now, like as not I'd find 'em usin' my quilts for window-curtains or
door-mats."
We both laughed, and there rose in my mind a picture of a
twentieth-century house decorated with Aunt Jane's "nine-patches" and
"rising suns." How could the dear old woman know that the same
esthetic sense that had drawn from their obscurity the white and blue
counterpanes of colonial days would forever protect her loved quilts
from such a desecration as she feared? As she lifted a pair of quilts
from a chair near by, I caught sight of a pure white spread in
striking contrast with the many-hued patchwork.
"Where did you get that Marseilles spread, Aunt Jane?" I asked,
pointing to it. Aunt Jane lifted it and laid it on my lap without a
word. Evidently she thought that here was something that could speak
for itself. It was two layers of snowy cotton cloth thinly lined with
cotton, and elaborately quilted into a perfect imitation of a
Marseilles counterpane. The pattern was a tracery of roses, buds, and
leaves, very much conventionalized, but still recognizable for the
things they were. The stitches were fairylike, and altogether it might
have covered the bed of a queen.
"I made every stitch o' that spread the year before me and Abram was
married," she said. "I put it on my bed when we went to housekeepin';
it was on the bed when Abram died, and when I die I want 'em to cover
me with it." There was a life-history in the simple words. I thought
of Desdemona and her bridal sheets, and I did not offer to help Aunt
Jane as she folded this quilt.
"I reckon you think," she resumed presently, "that I'm a mean, stingy
old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o' hoardin'
it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin' folks waitin' for 'em
till I die. But, honey, it ain't all selfishness. I'd give away my
best dress or my best bonnet or an acre o' ground to anybody that
needed 'em more'n I did; but these quilts--Why, it looks like my whole
life was sewed up in 'em, and I ain't goin' to part with 'em while
life lasts."
There was a ring of passionate eagerness in the old voice, and she
fell to putting away her treasures as if the suggestion of losing them
had made her fearful of their safety.
I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been
patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old woman's words had
wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and
worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history,
biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life,
love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for
his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality.
No wonder the wrinkled fingers smoothed them as reverently as we
handle the garments of the dead.
IV
"SWEET DAY OF REST"
[Illustration]
I walked slowly down the "big road" that Sunday afternoon--slowly, as
befitted the scene and the season; for who would hurry over the path
that summer has prepared for the feet of earth's tired pilgrims? It
was the middle of June, and Nature lay a vision of beauty in her
vesture of flowers, leaves, and blossoming grasses. The sandy road was
a pleasant walking-place; and if one tired of that, the short, thick
grass on either side held a fairy path fragrant with pennyroyal, that
most virtuous of herbs. A tall hedge of Osage orange bordered each
side of the road, shading the traveler from the heat of the sun, and
furnishing a nesting-place for numberless small birds that twittered
and chirped their joy in life and love and June. Occasionally a gap in
the foliage revealed the placid beauty of corn, oats, and clover,
stretching in broad expanse to the distant purple woods, with here and
there a field of the cloth of gold--the fast-ripening wheat that
waited the hand of the mower. Not only is it the traveler's manifest
duty to walk slowly in the midst of such surroundings, but he will do
well if now and then he sits down and dreams.
As I made the turn in the road and drew near Aunt Jane's house, I
heard her voice, a high, sweet, quavering treble, like the notes of an
ancient harpsichord. She was singing a hymn that suited the day and
the hour:
"Welcome, sweet day of rest,
That saw the Lord arise,
Welcome to this reviving breast,
And these rejoicing eyes."
Mingling with the song I could hear the creak of her old
splint-bottomed chair as she rocked gently to and fro. Song and creak
ceased at once when she caught sight of me, and before I had opened
the gate she was hospitably placing another chair on the porch and
smiling a welcome.
"Come in, child, and set down," she exclaimed, moving the rocker so
that I might have a good view of the bit of landscape that she knew I
loved to look at.
"Pennyroy'l! Now, child, how did you know I love to smell that?" She
crushed the bunch in her withered hands, buried her face in it and sat
for a moment with closed eyes. "Lord! Lord!" she exclaimed, with
deep-drawn breath, "if I could jest tell how that makes me feel! I
been smellin' pennyroy'l all my life, and now, when I get hold of a
piece of it, sometimes it makes me feel like a little child, and then
again it brings up the time when I was a gyirl, and if I was to keep
on settin' here and rubbin' this pennyroy'l in my hands, I believe my
whole life'd come back to me. Honey-suckles and pinks and roses ain't
any sweeter to me. Me and old Uncle Harvey Dean was jest alike about
pennyroy'l. Many a time I've seen Uncle Harvey searchin' around in the
fence corners in the early part o' May to see if the pennyroy'l was up
yet, and in pennyroy'l time you never saw the old man that he didn't
have a bunch of it somewheres about him. Aunt Maria Dean used to say
there was dried pennyroy'l in every pocket of his coat, and he used to
put a big bunch of it on his piller at night. Sundays it looked like
Uncle Harvey couldn't enjoy the preachin' and the singin' unless he
had a sprig of it in his hand, and I ricollect once seein' him git up
durin' the first prayer and tiptoe out o' church and come back with a
handful o' pennyroy'l that he'd gethered across the road, and he'd set
and smell it and look as pleased as a child with a piece o' candy."
"Piercing sweet" the breath of the crushed wayside herb rose on the
air. I had a distinct vision of Uncle Harvey Dean, and wondered if the
fields of asphodel might not yield him some small harvest of his
much-loved earthly plant, or if he might not be drawn earthward in
"pennyroy'l time."
"I was jest settin' here restin'," resumed Aunt Jane, "and thinkin'
about Milly Amos. I reckon you heard me singin' fit to scare the crows
as you come along. We used to call that Milly Amos' hymn, and I never
can hear it without thinkin' o' Milly."
"Why was it Milly Amos' hymn?" I asked.
Aunt Jane laughed blithely.
"La, child!" she said, "don't you ever git tired o' my yarns? Here it
is Sunday, and you tryin' to git me started talkin'; and when I git
started you know there ain't any tellin' when I'll stop. Come on and
le's look at the gyarden; that's more fittin' for Sunday evenin' than
tellin' yarns."
So together we went into the garden and marveled happily over the
growth of the tasseling corn, the extraordinarily long runners on the
young strawberry plants, the size of the green tomatoes, and all the
rest of the miracles that sunshine and rain had wrought since my last
visit.
The first man and the first woman were gardeners, and there is
something wrong in any descendant of theirs who does not love a
garden. He is lacking in a primal instinct. But Aunt Jane was in this
respect a true daughter of Eve, a faithful co-worker with the
sunshine, the winds, the rain, and all other forces of nature.
"What do you reckon folks'd do," she inquired, "if it wasn't for
plantin'-time and growin'-time and harvest-time? I've heard folks say
they was tired o' livin', but as long as there's a gyarden to be
planted and looked after there's somethin' to live for. And unless
there's gyardens in heaven I'm pretty certain I ain't goin' to be
satisfied there."
But the charms of the garden could not divert me from the main theme,
and when we were seated again on the front porch I returned to Milly
Amos and her hymn.
"You know," I said, "that there isn't any more harm in talking about a
thing on Sunday than there is in thinking about it." And Aunt Jane
yielded to the force of my logic.
"I reckon you've heard me tell many a time about our choir," she
began, smoothing out her black silk apron with fingers that evidently
felt the need of knitting or some other form of familiar work. "John
Petty was the bass, Sam Crawford the tenor, my Jane was the alto, and
Milly Amos sung soprano. I reckon Milly might 'a' been called the
leader of the choir; she was the sort o' woman that generally leads
wherever she happens to be, and she had the strongest, finest voice in
the whole congregation. All the parts appeared to depend on her, and
it seemed like her voice jest carried the rest o' the voices along
like one big river that takes up all the little rivers and carries 'em
down to the ocean. I used to think about the difference between her
voice and Miss Penelope's. Milly's was jest as clear and true as Miss
Penelope's, and four or five times as strong, but I'd ruther hear one
note o' Miss Penelope's than a whole song o' Milly's. Milly's was jest
a voice, and Miss Penelope's was a voice and somethin' else besides,
but what that somethin' was I never could say. However, Milly was the
very one for a choir; she kind o' kept 'em all together and led 'em
along, and we was mighty proud of our choir in them days. We always
had a voluntary after we got our new organ, and I used to look forward
to Sunday on account o' that voluntary. It used to sound so pretty to
hear 'em begin singin' when everything was still and solemn, and I can
never forgit the hymns they sung then--Sam and Milly and John and my
Jane.
"But there was one Sunday when Milly didn't sing. Her and Sam come in
late, and I knew the minute I set eyes on Milly that somethin' was the
matter. Generally she was smilin' and bowin' to people all around, but
this time she walked in and set the children down, and then set down
herself without even lookin' at anybody, to say nothin' o' smilin' or
speakin'. Well, when half-past ten come, my Jane began to play
'Welcome, sweet day of rest,' and all of 'em begun singin' except
Milly. She set there with her mouth tight shut, and let the bass and
tenor and alto have it all their own way. I thought maybe she was out
o' breath from comin' in late and in a hurry, and I looked for her to
jine in, but she jest set there, lookin' straight ahead of her; and
when Sam passed her a hymn-book, she took hold of it and shut it up
and let it drop in her lap. And there was the tenor and the bass and
the alto doin' their best, and everybody laughin', or tryin' to keep
from laughin'. I reckon if Uncle Jim Matthews had 'a' been there, he'd
'a' took Milly's place and helped 'em out, but Uncle Jim'd been in his
grave more'n two years. Sam looked like he'd go through the floor, he
was so mortified, and he kept lookin' around at Milly as much as to
say, 'Why don't you sing? Please sing, Milly,' but Milly never opened
her mouth.
"I'd about concluded Milly must have the sore throat or somethin' like
that, but when the first hymn was give out, Milly started in and sung
as loud as anybody; and when the doxology come around, Milly was on
hand again, and everybody was settin' there wonderin' why on earth
Milly hadn't sung in the voluntary. When church was out, I heard Sam
invitin' Brother Hendricks to go home and take dinner with
him--Brother Hendricks'd preached for us that day--and they all drove
off together before I'd had time to speak to Milly.
"But that week, when the Mite Society met, Milly was there bright and
early; and when we'd all got fairly started with our sewin', and
everybody was in a good-humor, Sally Ann says, says she: 'Milly, I
want to know why you didn't sing in that voluntary Sunday. I reckon
everybody here wants to know,' says she, 'but nobody but me's got the
courage to ask you.'