Longer than I can remember, my father, who is an old man
now, has been in the habit of driving from his home seven
miles away to this goodly city in which I now live, every
Friday morning. I may well say goodly city, from the view
which presents itself as I look out from the window beneath
which I have placed my table for the writing of this story, for
my home is in the “hilly country” that overlooks the western
queen, whose gracious sovereignty I am proud to acknowledge,
and within whose dominions this hilly country of which I
spoke, lies.

I cannot choose but pause and survey the picture. The
Kentucky shore is all hidden with mist: I cannot see the
young cities whose sloping suburbs are washed by the Ohio
(river of beauty), save here and there the gleam of a white
wall, or the dense column of smoke that rises through the
silver mist from the hot furnaces where swart labor drives the
thrifty trades that speeds the march to refined elegance. I
cannot see the blue green nor the golden green of the oat and
wheat fields that lie beyond these infant cities, nor the dark
ridge of woods that folds its hem of shadows along their borders,
for all day yesterday fell one of those rains that would
seem to exhaust the cloudy cisterns of heaven, and the soaked

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earth this morning sends up its coal-smelling and unwholesome
fogs, obscuring the picture that would else present itself.

I can only guess where the garrison is, but could not even


“Hear the sound and almost tell,
The sullen cry of the sentinel,”
if the time of challenge were not past, though long before the
sunrise I woke to the music of the reveille, that comes floating
over the waters and through the crimson daybreak to chase
the dream from my pillow, morn after morn. Faintly I discern
the starry home of science crowning the summit of the mount
above me, and see more distinctly at its base the red bricks of
St. Philomena, and more plainly still the brown iron and glittering
brass of the uplifted spire, with the sorrowful beauty of
the cross over all; while midway between me and the white
shining of the cathedral tower, away toward the evening star,
I catch the dark outline of St. Xavier.

Beautiful! as I said, I cannot choose but pause and gaze.
And now, the mists are lifting more and more, and the sunshine
comes dropping down their sombre ground.

Growing on the view into familiar shapes, comes out point
after point of the landscape—towers and temples, and trees of
forests and orchards, and meadow-land—the marts of traffic
and the homes of men; and amongst these last there is one to
which I would particularly call the reader's attention. It is
very humble, to be sure, but its inmates, as you guess from the
cream-white walls, overrun with clematis and jasmine, and
the clambering stalks of roses, are not devoid of some simple
elegance of taste from which some inference of their characters
may be drawn, for the things we feel are exhibited in the
things which we do.

The white-pebbled walk leading from gate to doorway, is
edged with close miniature pyramids of box, and the

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smoothlyshaven sward is shadowed by various shrubs and flowers, and
the gold velvet of the dandelion shines wherever it will, from
she fence up close beneath the windows, sending up its bitter
fragrance out of dew, while sheaves of green phlox stand here
and there, that in their time July will top with crimson
flowers.

The windows are hung with snowy curtains, and in one
that fronts the sun, a bird-cage is hung, with an inmate as
wildly chattering as though its wings were free. A sky-blue
wreath of smoke is curling upward just now, pleasantly suggestive,
and drifting southward from the tall kitchen chimney,
and Jenny Mitchel, the young housewife, as I guess, is baking
pies. Nothing becomes her chubby hands so well as the
moulding of pastry, and her cheerful singing, if we were near
enough to hear it, would attest that nothing makes her more
happy. And well may she sing and be happy, for the rosy-faced
baby sits up in its white willow cradle, and crows back
to her lullaby; and by and by the onest husband will come
from healthful labor, and her handiwork in flour, and fruit,
and sugar, and spice, will be sure of due appreciation and
praise.

Nowhere from among the suburban gardens of this basin
rimmed with hills, peeps from beneath its sheltering trees a
cozier home. They are plain common-sense people who dwell
there, vexed with no vague yearnings for the far off and the
unattained—weighed down with no preponderance of sentiment
that is blind to all good that is not best, oppressed with
no misanthropic fancies about the hatred of the world which
they have never injured—nor yet affected with spasmodic
struggles as though their great enemy should not wholly baffle
them—No, no! dear reader, the great world cares nothing
about them—and what of it!

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Its indifference is not a stab in their bosom, the slow bleeding
of which can only be stifled in the grave!

Helph Randall, the sturdy blacksmith, whose forge is aglow
before the sunrise, and rosy-cheeked Jenny, his blue-eyed wife,
though she sometimes remembers the shamrock, and sighs,
have no such aching wounds concealed—on that I will stake
my gold pen, the only valuable I possess.

But were they always thus contented and happy?—aye, that's
the question. Did they cross that mysterious river whose
course never did run smooth, without trial and tribulation such
as most voyagers upon its bosom have met since the world
began; certainly since Jacob served seven years for Rachel
and was then put off with Leah, and obliged to serve other
seven for his first love? We shall see; and this brings me
back to the opening of my story, and to one of the many Fridays
on which my father comes to town. I am not sure but
that I msut turn another leaf and begin with Thursday—yes,
I have the time now. As bright an afternoon it was as ever
turned the green swaths into gray, or twinkled against the
shadows stretching eastward from the thick-rising haycocks.

Early in July it was, when the bitter of the apples began to
grow sweetish, and their sunny sides a little russet; when the
chickens ceased from peeping and their following of the
mother hen, and began to scratch hollows in garden beds, and
to fly suddenly on to fences or in trees, and to crow and
cackle with unpractised throats, as though they were well
used to it, and cared not who heard them, for which unmannearly
habits their heads were now and then “brought to the
block.” Blackberries were ripening in the hedges, and the
soft silk swaying beneath the tassels of the corn

Such was the season, and the time just after dinner, that
Mrs. Wetherbe came to pass the afternoon, and, as she said,

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“kill two birds with one stone,” by securing a passage to the
city on the morrow in my father's carriage. For many are
the old ladies, and young ones too, who avail themselves of a
like privilege.

Of course it was a pleasure to us to accommodate her, and
not the less, perhaps, that it was a favor she had never asked,
and was never likely to ask again.

A plain old lady she was, whom to look at was to know—
good and simple-hearted as a child. She had been born and
bred in the country, and was thoroughly a country woman—
certainly her high, squeaky calf-skin shoes had never trodden
off the grass of her own door-yard more than once or twice
before; for a friendly tea-drinking with a neighbor was to her
a state occasion of not oftener than biennial occurrence. And
on the day I speak of she seemed to feel a good deal mortified
that she should spend two consecutive days like a gad-about,
in view of which she felt bound in all self-respect to offer
many apologies.

In the first place, she had not for six years been to visit her
niece, Mrs. Emeline Randall, who came to her house more or
less every summer, and really felt slighted and grieved that
her visits were never returned. So Mrs. Randall expressed
herself, and so Mrs. Wetherbe thought, honest old lady as she
was, and therefore she felt as though she must go and see
Emeline, notwithstanding she would just as soon, she said, put
her head in a hornet's nest any time as go to town, for she
regarded its gayeties and fashion (and all city people, in her
opinion, were gay and fashionable), as avenues leading direct
to the kingdom of Satan. Therefore it would have been, as I
conceive, quite doubtful whether for the mere pleasure of
visiting Emeline, Mrs. Wetherbe would have entered city
limits.

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She wanted some cap stuff and some home-made linen, if
such a thing were to be procured in these degenerate days,
though if she only had the flax she could spin and weave it
herself, old as she was, and would not be caught running about
town to buy it, for, if she did say it herself, she was worth
more than half the girls now to work, and no one who saw
how fast her brown withered fingers flew round the stocking
she was knitting, would have doubted it at all.

“Nothing is fit for the harvest-field but home-spun linen,” said
Mrs. Wetherbe, “and if Wetherbe don't have it he'll be nigh
about sick, and I may jeste as well go fust as last, for he won't
hear to my spinning, sense I am sixty odd; he says he don't
like the boozz of the wheel, but to me ther's no nicer music.”

The last trowsers of her own making were worn out, and
along for several days past her good man had then been
obliged to wear cloth ones, which fact was reel scandless in
the estimation of our visitor, and in this view it certainly was
time she should bestir herself as she proposed.

Moreover, she had one or two errands that especially induced
her to go to town. A black calico dress she wanted
and must have, inasmuch as she had worn the old one five
years, and now wanted to cut it up and put it in a quilt, for
she had always intended it to jine some patchwork she had
on hand a long time, and now she was going to do it, and
make a quilting party and have the work all done at once. I,
of course, received then and there the earliest invitation.

This was years ago, my reader, and the fashion of such
parties has long since passed away, but in due time I will tell
you about this, as you may never have an opportunity of personal
observation and participation.

Perhaps you may have seen persons, if not, I have, who
seem to feel called on from some obligatory feeling I do not

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understand, to offer continual apologies for whatever they do
or propose to do. And after the announcement of the proposed
frolic, she talked a long chapter of whys and wherefores
after this wise.

William Helphenstein Randall, Emeline's oldest son, had
been living at her house three or four years, and he had teased
month in and month out to have a wood-chopping and quilting
some afternoon, and a regular play party in the evening, and
he had done so many good turns for her and him that it
seemed as if a body could hardly get round it without seeming
reel disobleegin', and though she didn't approve much of such
worldly frolics, she thought for once she would humor Helph,
and then, too, they would get wood prepared for winter, and
more or less quilting done, “for though on pleasure she was
time, she was of frugal mind.”

I remarked that I was under the impression that Mr. Randall
was a man of fortune, and asked if Helph was out of college
so early: “Bless your heart, no,” said Mrs. Wetherbe, “he
was never in a university more'n I be this minute; his father
is as rich as Creseus, but his children got all their larnin' in
free schools, pretty much; Helph hasn't been to school this
ten years a'most, I guess—let me see, he was in a blacksmith's
shop sartainly two or three years before he cum to my house,
and he isn't but nineteen now, so he must have been tuck from
school airly—the long and short on't is,” said the old lady,
making her knitting-needles fly again, “Emeline, poor gal, has
got a man that is reel clost, and the last time I was there I
a'most thought he begrutched me my vittals, and I was keerful
to take butter and garden-sass and so on, enough to airn all
I got.” And the good lady really dropped her work, so exasperated
was she, for though economical and saving in all ways, she
was not meanly stingy. She had chanced to glide into a

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communicative mood by no means habitual to her; and the
perspiration stood in drops on her forehead, and her little black
eyes winked with great rapidity for a minute ere she added,
“and that ain't the worst on't neither, he is often in drink, and
sich times he gits the Old Clooty in him as big as a yearlin'
heifer!”