But I jest repeated this line of poetry to my pardner. Says I:
“Poetry, Josiah, will somehow express the feelin’s of the soul better than you can express them yourself.” And says I, “Josiah, as for Elder Judas Wart and Kellup, I say with the poet, good riddance to bad rubbidge.”
“Wall,” says Josiah, with a sort of a dreamy look,—that man loves poetry, though he seldom quotes it—“don’t you s’pose, Samantha, that you have got about enough berries for supper, for I am gettin’ hungry as a bear.”
“Yes,” says I, “because I have got stewed peaches and cold chicken and everything else good for supper besides them. But,” says I, lookin’ sort o’ longin’ly at some berries that was a hangin’ over the water, “there is a few extra big and ripe ones that do look too good to leave.”
“Wall,” says he, sweetly (for his mean sense I told him what we was goin’ to have for supper had looked perfectly beautiful), “you set down and rest, Samantha, and I will pick ’em for you.”
And so he took my little tin pail, and with a happy frame bent down to pick ’em. And I, bein’ tired, sot down, and looked into the water. And I see that everything was reflected in it. The trees, the nodding red sumac feathers, my Josiah and me, gay golden-rod and wild blue china-oysters, the berry bushes, the thorny stalks and the ripe fruit, fresh posys, and withered leaves; all imaged there in the water; and the water was a runnin’ swift.
And out on the end of a slender bush that hung over the water, a bird swayed and swung to and fro, and sung out a dretful sort of a sweet song, yet sad like. Some as if it was practicin’ over a farewell song to its home, its happy nest, before it sailed away south in search of a balmier climate.
So the bird sailed back and forth on that slender twig, over the deep waters, a singin’ about a happier country, sweet and sad, sweet and low. And my pardner picked the ripe berries, and I sot there peaceful and serene (though some sweaty), a thinkin’ how, over all that was pictured on the changing face of the waters, the changeless blue heavens was reflected, shining down over all, the old and the new, the mournful and the sorrowful; over all, and beneath all. That thought was perfectly beautiful to me, and dretful comfortin’. And I sot there a thinkin’ of that, and a thinkin’ how swift the water was a runnin’ towards the sea.
THE END.