Eliza Calvert Hall

“ To find our treasure of love greater than we had dared to dream—what rarer joy has earth? And when the poor derelict soul clung to his wife and found in her a help sufficient for his needs, his was a rapture not less profound than that of the poet-husband when he opened the sonnets in which a woman's soul had poured itself, counting the ways and measuring the depth and the height of her wifely love. ”

“ Is the daisy on Mars Hill any fairer than the daisy that opens its petals on any meadow of the New World? And if historic associations are the aim of your wanderings, turn the pages of some old school history, or send your memory on a backward pilgrimage to the olden days, and a country road may carry you into a past as glorious as that which lies along the Appian Way. ”

“ Alas, the sad, sad story, beginning with love and spring and youth, and ending beside an open grave under wintry skies! Aunt Jane was wiping her glasses, and my tears were flowing fast.
"Death has mighty few terrors when it comes at the right time, honey," said Aunt Jane tremulously. "You know the Bible says 'We all do fade as a leaf; and when a person's lived out his app'inted time, three score years and ten, or maybe four score, why, his death is jest like the fallin' of a leaf. ”

“ No wonder we have patience to tread the ice-bound path through the winter when we know that things like this lie at the end. A delicate, reverent wind arose, the long, rich tassels of bloom yielded themselves to its touch and swayed to and fro like majesty acknowledging homage, while, bolder than the wind, a mob of democratic bees hummed nonchalantly in the august presence and gathered honey as if a wistaria were no more than a country clover field. ”

“ There is more than light and more than heat in their radiance. But as I watched the flames leap with exultant roar into the gloom of the old chimney, my heart was with the lonely man homeward bound, his sorrowful, helpless figure a silhouette against the sunset sky, and Aunt Jane, too, looked with absent eyes at the fire she had just kindled. ”

“ Near the house was a spring to whose waters came the Indian and the deer before the foot of the pioneer had touched Kentucky soil. Rising from sources too deep to be affected by the weather of earth, no drouth ever checks its flow, no flood increases it, and here I knelt and drank to the memory of a day that is not dead nor can ever die. ”

“ On crowded streets and in towns one must talk; but out of doors in the country there is a Voice continually speaking in a language as old as the song of the morning stars, and if the soul hears that, human words are not needed. ”

“ Centuries ago, a Hebrew, standing on one of the mountain peaks of old age, saw in a vision the little lives and the little deeds of men outlined against a background of the "eternal years of God." He put the vision into words, and because they held a universal thought, a burden of the soul in every age and clime, those words have outlasted kingdoms and dynasties. ”

“ It looks like if a man's money's good enough to go into the church walls, the man's name's good enough to stay on the church rolls.' And the rest of the session, they agreed with the old judge. But Brother Wilson, he jumped up and says he, 'A man that sees things that way has a conscience that needs enlightening.' Says he, 'Money itself is neither good nor evil. ”

“ Don't let Miles send me there.' And the doctor says, 'Don't you be afraid of that. Miles will never send you to an asylum while I'm alive to protect you. But you must tell me what it is you want. There's some little thing,' says he, 'that'll make you well, and you know what it is better than I do.' Well, Hannah held back like a child that's afraid of a whippin', but finally she says, 'You know that pasture at the back o' the house. ”

“ She loved the country, and nature had kindly given her the power to love one thing without hating its antithesis. But, apart from Aunt Jane's company, going to town had no attraction for me, to whom a town is only one of those necessary evils whose sum total we call civilization. ”

“ After Nelly had been unharnessed and fed, I sat down on the porch to watch the passing of day. Ah! surely it is worth while to go to town now and then just for the pleasure of getting back to the country, to its purer air, its solitude, its blessed stillness. I lifted up my eyes unto the hills and let the sunset and the twilight hold me in their spells till Aunt Jane's voice called me in with a warning of the danger that lurks in falling dew ”

“ There are perfumes as evanescent as the dreams of youth, and others as persistent as the memories of childhood. Go into the fields in February, gather the dead penny-royal that has stood through the rains and snows of a long winter, and you will find in its dry stems and shriveled leaves the same gracious scent the green plant has in June. ”

“ Aunt Jane hesitated a moment looking towards a certain flower-bed where tulips and hyacinths stood half-smothered in a drift of dead leaves. The morning hours were passing and the garden needed the work of her hands, but my clasp was firm and the call of the past was still sounding in her heart.
"I meant jest what I said, honey," she answered, settling herself again on the old garden seat. "There's such a thing as a man lovin' a woman too well to marry her, and that's the way it was with the doctor. You might think, maybe, Dr. Pendleton come of plain folks, bein' jest a country doctor. ”

“ And once in awhile it's a good thing to stop work and look up at the sky. Parson Page used to say that every sunrise and moonrise and sunset was a message from heaven sayin' 'Look up! Look up! for earth is not your home.' Hannah said lookin' up at the sky was like lookin' into deep water, and sometimes she'd feel as if her soul had left her body and she didn't know whether she was still on this earth or whether she'd died and gone to heaven; and she believed if folks would lay off from work once a year and rest under the trees the way she did, they'd live to be as old as Methuselah. ”

“ I reckon Kentuckians are the biggest fools in the world over their 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. ”

“ But,' says he, 'when the spirit of the Lord breathes over this valley of dry bones, I expect to see the dead arise, and we'll build a house of the Lord amongst the habitations of the living.' And bless your life, he went to work and got up a revival that lasted three months, and spread to all the churches—the Babtist and the Methodist and the Christian—till every sinner in town was either converted or at the mourners' bench. ”

“ I asked.
"There's one place in this town where all us country folks goes first," said Aunt Jane oracularly, "and that's the old drug-store on the corner yonder. Let the mare alone, and she'll go right there without guidin'." ”

“ It's hard enough, child, to lay the dead in the ground when the sun's shinin' and the earth's warm and there's plenty of sweet flowers and green sod to cover the grave with. But when it comes to cuttin' a grave in the snow and the ice and layin' away the body of a child that's bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, or maybe a husband or a wife that's nearer and dearer yet, why, there's no words, I reckon, that can tell what a trial that is. ”

“ We've got to come up out of that old graveyard, and build a church in town that'll stand as a monument to this generation of Presbyterians long after their bodies have gone back to the old graveyard and moldered into dust ”

“ The soul of man is eternal, and this world can never content it. I've seen the abiding-place o' the soul,' he'd say, 'and I'm like a homesick child.' Mother said nobody appeared to understand the old man, and his wife'd be so fretted and outdone with him that she'd say that [46] if a person went into a trance, they might as well stay in it, for Job hadn't been any use to the world since he come out of his.
"Well, when the revival was over, and all the converts had been received into the church, Brother Wilson called a meetin' o' the session and says he, 'There's two things to be done now. ”

“ There's jest one person I put my confidence in, and that's Almighty God.' Says she, 'If a man's crippled in both feet, and the front door and the back door's locked, and I've got both my eyes on him, I may make out to trust him a minute or two, but that's about all.' Says she, 'Of course a woman ought to trust her husband; but that don't mean that she's got to shut her eyes and her ears and throw away her common sense.' Says she, 'Emmeline don't know as much about you as your father knows about that old roan mare he bought day before yesterday. A man's jest like a horse,' says she ”

“ I can't help believin' that I have more pleasure out o' my old-fashioned gyarden than she has out o' her fine new one. Flowers that somebody else plants and 'tends to are jest like children that somebody else nurses and raises. I raise my flowers like I raised my children, and I reckon that that's why I love 'em so. It's a curious thing, child, the hold that flowers and trees has on human bein's. You can move into a house and set up your furniture and live there twenty years, and as long as you don't do any plantin', you won't mind changin' your house any more'n you'd mind changin' your dress. ”

“ A momentary splendor lit the room as the gray moss and lichens caught fire and the swift flames ran from one end of the log to the other and then died out, while the smoke from the kindling wood rose in the huge chimney.
"There's never a New-year's eve that I don't think o' that watch-meetin'," Aunt Jane continued, "and I set here and laugh to myself over the times we used to have in the old Goshen church. Jest hand me my knittin', child, and I'll tell you about that meetin'. It's jest as easy to talk as it is to think." ”

“ There ain't any bitterness in the tears that's shed over old folks' coffins, but when I think o' Miss Amaryllis dyin' the way she did, before she'd lived her life and had the happiness she ought to 'a' had, I feel like questionin' the ways o' Providence. And then, again, I think maybe she had as [103] much happiness in that one year as most folks has in a lifetime. It ain't often a man loves a woman so much that he can't live without her, but that's the way Hamilton Schuyler loved Miss Amaryllis, and that's the main reason why I ricollect her so well after all these years. ”

“ The old man come in, his hands and his lips tremblin', and says he, 'Daughter, put your things together as quick as you can, I've come to take you back home.' Says he, 'I'm no advocate of married folks separatin', but,' says he, 'when Sam took you from your father's house he promised to be good and kind to you, but he's broke his promise, and you've got no call to stay with him any longer.' And Milly said before she could answer him, Sam raised up his head from the table and says he, 'That's right! That's right! I'm not fit to be trusted with a wife and children. ”

“ It's a time that comes to all of us, honey, and when it does come, we generally find that we've got grace to give up the things we've been wantin' so long; and that's the way it was with Miss Dorothy and the doctor. To see them two, after they'd passed their youth, walkin' together and ridin' together and comin' into church and settin' side by side in the same pew, singin' out o' the same hymn book,—why it was the prettiest sight in the world. Mighty few old married couples ever looked as happy as Miss Dorothy [203] and the doctor, old maid and old bachelor as they were. ”

“ It's money, money, money, every which way you turn. But in the olden time the way they built a church was like the way the Israelites built the tabernacle. You ricollect the Bible says, 'Every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, brought an offering to the Lord.' The rich men brought gold and silver, and the rulers brought onyx stones and oil and incense, and the poor men brought wood for the tabernacle and goats' skins and rams' skins, and the women they spun and wove and made purple and scyarlet cloth and fine linen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a man's brought home dead drunk, child, it ain't every woman that'll thank God he's alive.
"Well, they had some trouble rousin' Sam, but at last they got him to the house and took off his coat and shoes and laid him on the bed, and when Abram started to go Milly says, 'But where's Sam's mare?' And Abram says, 'When Sam comes to himself to-morrow, you send him over to my house and I'll put him on the track of his mare.' So the next mornin' about eleven o'clock here was Sam lookin' about as reckless and miserable as a man ever gits to look, and says he, 'I've come for my mare, Uncle Abram ”