In the brush

by Hamilton W. Pierson

From this place the old man took me to his own house. As we went up to the door, his wife stood with her back to us, washing dishes, and he rapped at the door. She turned her head so as to see us both, but did not move her body or say a word. He then said:

"Old woman, see here!" (pointing to me), "here is a man that has come to get your Bible."

Looking at me a moment, she responded:

"You talk too much," and resumed her work.

We then entered the house, and he informed his wife and daughter who I was and that I was to preach that night. After I had talked with them a while, it was proposed that I should again read and explain the Bible to them. At his son's house, as they had all been so wicked, I had read, among other portions, the account of the persecutions and the conversion of the Apostle Paul, and given them a simple sketch of his subsequent history, and then pointed out the parts of the "little book" that this man who had been so wicked had been inspired to write. This story was almost if not entirely new to them, and they were greatly interested in it. When the family were seated, and I was about to read to them, the old man said to me:

"Can't you read that again that you read up at Jake's? That about—that—that—that what do you call him?"

"Paul," said I.

"Yes, Paul, Saul, Paul. Read that about Paul. If that don't hit the nail on the head better than anything I ever heard afore!"

I, of course, consented, and went over the story again for the benefit of his family, and the facts seemed to lose none of their interest to the old man by their repetition. Having spent all the time desirable in reading and praying with this family, there were still a few hours before the preaching service began. Shall I introduce my readers more fully to this home in the Brush, and tell them how this time was passed? The house contained but a single room. The daughter of whom I have spoken was about eighteen or twenty years old, tall and large, wore a butternut-colored woolsey dress that she had probably spun and woven, and was barefooted. I had not been long in the house before she retired from their only room, in which I sat, and in honor of my arrival reappeared in another dress. I do not know where she made her toilet, only that it was the same ample and magnificent dressing-room first used by Mother Eve. The material of the dress in which she appeared was old-fashioned cheap curtain calico, with waving stripes some two or three inches wide running its entire length. Preferring perfect freedom and the comfort of the cooling breezes to considerations that would have been influential with most of my lady readers, in thus making her toilet she had chosen to remain stockingless and shoeless. A massive head of dark-brown hair, cut squarely off and pushed behind her ears, hung loosely down her neck.

When the dishes were washed and all the after-dinner work accomplished, and she was prepared to sit down and enjoy the conversation, she took from the rude mantle-tree above the fireplace a cob-pipe, and filled it with home-grown and home-cured tobacco from an abundant supply in a large pocket in her dress. Lighting her pipe, she took a seat at the right of her father, while I occupied a chair on his left. Soon large columns of smoke began to rise and roll away above her head as gracefully as I have ever seen them float around the head of the most fashionable smoker with the most costly meerschaum. Bending her right arm so that she could clasp the long stem of her pipe with her forefinger, she rested the elbow in the palm of her left hand. Then, placing her right limb across her left knee, she swung the pendent foot slowly, as if in meditative mood, and yielded herself to the full enjoyment of her pipe and our conversation. Her name I should have said was Barbara. She was of a quiet, taciturn disposition, and rarely said anything, except as she was appealed to on some matter by her proud and happy father.