My son, Thomas Jefferson, and his wife, Maggie, have got a little daughter, it wuz very pleasin’ to Josiah and me, and weighed over nine pounds. It is now most ten months old, and is, with the exception of my other grandchildren, the most beautiful child that wuz ever seen in Jonesville, some foolish folks would think I wuz prejudiced in its favor, but it is the prevailin’ opinion all over Jonesville, it has been talked to Thomas Jefferson and Maggie and Josiah and me repeatedly, so we have got to believe it, for what we know ourselves and the neighbors know to be a fact must be so.
Its name is Snow, after the little one that went home and left them. You know Maggie’s name wuz Snow, she is Maggie Snow that wuz, and I wuz in favor of the child bein’ named after her, in fact, as it may be remembered, I named the child, it wuz left to me.
“Mother,” sez Thomas J., the first time I went there after the first little Snow came and I see the baby layin’ on Maggie’s arm:
“Mother,” sez he, and, though there wuz a smile on his lips, there wuz tears in his voice as he said it, “nobody else shall name my little girl but you.”
“No,” spoke out my daughter, Maggie, smilin’ sweet from her pillow, “you must name it, Mother.”
The children like me, nobody can dispute that, not even my worst enemy, if I had one, but then nobody would believe him, anyway, for he would be a perfect liar. But, as I wuz sayin’, I looked down on ’em, Maggie’s face looked white and sweet out of the muslins and laces round her, the bed wuz white as snow, and so wuz she, and the baby wuz white. And Maggie’s soul wuz white, I knew, white as snow, and so wuz Thomas Jefferson’s, his morals are sound, extremely sound and light colored, and the baby’s, God bless it! I knew wuz like the newly driven snow fallin’ down onto the peaceful earth that blessed day, and so, sez I kinder soft:
“We’ll call the baby Snow.”
And I bent down and kissed Maggie, and Thomas Jefferson kissed us both, and the thing wuz done, their little girl wuz named Snow. And I said, “Try to bring her up so’s the name will be appropriate to her.”
And they both on ’em said they would, and they did. Oh, what a beautiful child that wuz, but it melted away like its namesake in a April day, drawn up to its native heaven by the warm sun of God’s love, and when this baby come to fill its place I wanted it called Snow, and they all did, and that’s its name, she is a very beautiful child, and they are bringin’ her up beautiful. Her behavior for a child ten months of age is the most exemplary I ever see (with the exception of my other grandchildren), it is a perfect pattern to other children to see that child behave.