"Says he, 'We can't go back on that word.'
"And then he turns around to Mother and says he, 'Deborah, what do you think about it?' I can see Mother now. She'd been fryin' some meat, and she turned around with the fork in her hand and looked at Father a minute before she answered him, and says she, 'What's the use in askin' me what I think? I'm nothin' but a woman, and what a woman thinks is of mighty little importance.' Says she, 'You men have got this thing in your own hands, and us women, we'll have to put up with whatever comes.'
"I'll never forgit the day Father come from town with the speech that Crittenden made at Lexin'ton right after Fort Sumter'd been taken. It was April, and jest such a day as this, the flowers all comin' up and the sky blue and the bees hummin' around the water maples, and it didn't look as if there could be such a thing as a war comin'. I was at Mother's that day helpin' her take a quilt out o' the frame. Father come in, and old Uncle Haley Pearson, my great-uncle, with him, and they set down on the porch and Father read the speech out loud, stoppin' every now and then to explain somethin' to Uncle Haley, and when he got through Uncle Haley says: 'Well, as near as I can make it out, Crittenden wants us to stand still betwixt the North and the South and try to make 'em keep the peace; and if we can't do that, we're to get on the fence and stay there and watch the fight.' And Father says, 'Yes, that appears to be about the meanin' o' what I've been readin'.' Says he, 'Maybe I don't rightly understand it all, there's so many big words in it, but that's about what I make out of it.'
"Uncle Haley was leanin' over with both hands on his cane, and he shook his head right slow and says he, 'It appears to me that Crittenden ain't as well acquainted with Kentuckians as he might be, and him a Kentuckian and a Senator too.' Says he, 'There ain't a man, or a woman or a child or a yeller dog in Kentucky but what's on one side or the other, and you might as well put two game roosters in the same pen and tell 'em not to fight as to start up a war betwixt the North and the South and tell Kentucky to keep out of it.'
"And Uncle Haley was right about it. The legislature met the very next month and they said jest what Crittenden said, that Kentucky mustn't take sides. But when it come to the p'int o' goin' to the war or stayin' at home and lookin' on, out o' every hundred Kentucky men old enough to go to the war ninety of 'em went on one side or the other. That's the way Kentucky stays out of a fight, honey. I've heard Father say that the war cost Kentucky thirty thousand lives. But that's jest the soldiers; and if you go to countin' the lives that was lost in any war you can't stop with the soldiers. There's my mother; she never saw a battle-field, but the war killed her the same as it did my two brothers."
Here Aunt Jane removed her glasses and leaned back in her chair. By these signs I knew there was to be a digression in the course of the story.
"I wish I could make you see jest what kind of a woman Mother was," she said thoughtfully. "Every generation's different appearin' from the one that comes before it and the one that comes after it. I'm my mother's own child. Folks used to say I had Mother's eyes and Mother's hair, but I'm a mighty different woman from Mother. And my daughters are jest as different from me, and as for my granddaughters, why, you wouldn't know they was any kin to me. I'm a plain old woman and my granddaughters are fine ladies. My grandmother, you know, was the old pioneer stock, and Mother was her oldest child, and she was somethin' like the pioneer women herself. I ricollect when I was at that meetin' of clubs in Lexin'ton, the time I went to see Henrietta, one lady got up and said that a woman ought to be somethin' besides a mother. I reckon that's right for this day and generation, but if you'll go back to my mother's day and my grandmother's day, you'll find that if a woman was a mother then, she didn't have time to be anything else. Bringin' a family o' children into the world and takin' care of 'em, cookin' for 'em, sewin' for 'em and spinnin' and weavin' the cloth for their clothes—that's the way Mother did. She was jest a mother, but that was enough. You know that Bible text, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.' I always think o' that text when I think o' the old-time mothers; they had to give up their lives for their children.
"Mother's name was Deborah, and I always thought that name suited her. She was taller and stronger than the common run o' women, and Father used to laugh and say he believed she was half sister o' the Deborah in the Bible, the one that judged Israel, and that was 'A mother in Israel.' Father always looked up to Mother and asked her advice about things, and, as for us children, Mother's word was our law. She ruled us and judged us like the Deborah in the Bible, but I can look back now and see that there never was any love greater than my mother's love for her children. Of course a mother, if she's the right kind of a mother, will love all her children jest because they're hers. But then, over and above that sort o' love, she'll love each one on account o' somethin' that it is or somethin' that it does, and that way every child has a different sort o' love, and maybe one child'll have a little bit more love than the rest. We always accused Mother of bein' partial to my two brothers, Jonathan and David, and Mother never denied it. She'd laugh and say, 'Well, what if I am? The rest of you ain't mistreated, are you?' And when I ricollect how brother David and brother Jonathan looked and what kind o' men they were, I can't blame Mother for bein' a little prouder and a little fonder o' them than she was o' the rest of us. Mother always called 'em her twins, because there was jest a little over a year betwixt 'em and mighty little difference in their size. David was the oldest, and Mother named him for her father; and when Jonathan was born she said, 'Now, I've got a Jonathan for my David. And,' says she, 'Maybe they'll be good boys and love each other like David and Jonathan did.' You ricollect what the Bible says: 'The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David; and Jonathan loved him as his own soul,' and when Jonathan was killed you ricollect how David said, 'Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman.'
"And sure enough, child, that's the way it was with my two brothers. Their souls appeared to be knit together, and they loved each other with a love 'passin' the love of woman.'
"The rest of us children used to fall out now and then, like children will, even when they love each other, but David and Jonathan—why, there never was a cross word or hard feelin' between 'em, and it was the prettiest sight in the world to see them two boys walkin' together holdin' each other's hands and laughin' and talkin' like sweethearts. I ricollect once they was sittin' on a bench readin' out o' the same book, and Mother looked at 'em awhile, and says she to Father, 'Do you reckon there's anything in this world that can ever come betwixt David and Jonathan?' And Father he laughed, and says he, 'Yes, there's one thing that can come betwixt any two men God ever made.' And Mother says, 'What is it?' And Father laughed again—he always liked to tease Mother—and says he, 'Why, a woman, of course.' Says he, 'Jest let them two boys fall in love with the same woman and that'll put a stop to all this David and Jonathan business.'