Until he makes more firm the father sages,
Restoring custom from the earliest ages
With prudent sayings, golden as the sun.
Lord, show us safe, august, established ways,
Fill us with yesterdays.
THE OLD LADY AT THE TOP OF THE HILL
It was a bland afternoon. I had been crossing a green valley in North Carolina. Every man I passed had that languid leanness slanderously attributed to the hookworm by folk who have no temperament. Yet some bee of industry must have stung these fellows into intermittent effort this morning, yesterday, last week or last year.
Here were reasonably good barns. Here were fences, and good fences at that. Here were mysterious crops, neither cotton nor corn. One man was not ploughing with a mule. No, sir. He was ploughing with a sort of horse....
At last I mounted the northern rim of the circle of steep hills that kept the place as separate from the rest of the world as a Chinese wall. I met her on the crest. She advanced slowly, looking on the ground, leaning at the hips as do the very aged, but not grotesquely. Her primly made dress and sunbonnet were dull dark blue. With her walking-stick she meditatively knocked the little stones from her path. The staff had a T-shaped head. It was the cane Old Mother Hubbard carries in the toy book.
And now she looked up and said with a pleasant start, “Why, good evening, young stranger.”