Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885

by Various

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Loper, tasting some of it on the end of her knife: "'pears to me I put a leetle too much sage in it. But the gravy you made, Mirandy, that couldn't be better. Didn't you see how the men kept askin' for it to be passed? And they've et up all the summer squash and all the cream-pie. Taste some of these plum preserves, Mis' Brown, and don't let me forget to send some to your little girls: I remember how well they like 'em. This cake is real light and good, but I was afraid it would fall. This float would 'a' been better if I'd had a little lemon flavor to put in it. But I guess, on the whole, the dinner went off middlin' well." Then, seeing Elvira and Maggie sitting on the opposite side of the table, some deeper thoughts were stirred in her motherly heart, and she began to talk of the daughter she had lost years before: "If Lucy had lived, she'd 'a' been seventeen this spring,—just your age; and you remind me of her sometimes. She always had such red cheeks, and was never sick a day till she was taken down with the diphtheria."

For a while the affairs of the present were forgotten, as the old and never-wholly-healed wound was opened afresh and she dwelt upon her bereavement; but soon the round of work must be taken up, the dishes must be washed, the victuals set away, and supper for the threshers must be planned and prepared. It was best so. "Time, the healer, and work, the consoler," enable us to bear many things which in the first keen freshness of grief seem unbearable.

The threshers thought they would be done by six o'clock, so they decided not to stop for supper at five, as was the custom, but wait for their evening meal till the work of the day was completed. Elvira started home before this time, and good Mrs. Loper not only filled her own little basket, but made her take a larger one packed with remains of the feast.

There were three weeks more of her school, and during that time she saw young Farmer Worth several times. Twice she met him in the road, and once he stopped at the school-house to bring her Wilson's book on birds, which he had promised to lend her. But the day before school closed he came and helped Jack Sapp and some other boys make a platform in the woods, on which the children could speak their declamations and sing their songs, and on the afternoon of the last day of school was present in the crowd of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends assembled on that important and, to the children, most exciting occasion. There were declamations from the third and fourth readers,—"How big was Alexander, Pa?" and "He never smiled again," and "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"—and Maggie Loper held the audience spell-bound by an entirely new one, which Elvira had selected and copied for her out of a book of poems,—"The Dream of Eugene Aram." Then there were songs, and dialogues, and two compositions, one on "Rats" and one on "Planting Corn," which had been produced by their respective authors after much wear of brain fibre and much blotting of writing-paper. Last of all, Elvira read one of Longfellow's poems, after which she said that the exercises of the school were over, but that remarks from visitors would be gladly received. Then one of the trustees arose, and said that education was a great blessing, that he hoped the children of the present day would appreciate their advantages and grow up to be useful men and women, adding that all the schooling he had received was three winter terms in a log school-house, one entire end of which was occupied by the fireplace, and which had no glass windows, the light being admitted through holes cut in the logs and covered with greased foolscap-paper. No other remarks being offered, the audience was dismissed, and the children began in an excited hurry to collect their possessions, and bid their teacher good-by as if for a life-long parting. Some of them even shed tears, and this occasioned the cynical remark from a by-stander, "Them Mays children needn't to take on so: the school-ma'am will have to call at their house often enough before she gits her money."

Soon the spot was deserted, and the squirrels came down from the trees to retake possession of their old haunts, to scamper across the platform, to sniff at the fallen rose-petals of the bouquets, and to nibble the crumbs of cake and bread dropped from the lunch-baskets.

The next outing for the people of Buck Creek neighborhood was the county fair, which occurred in September. They went in spring-wagons, in farm-wagons, in buggies, and on horseback, starting early in the morning, and taking an ample supply of provisions for themselves as well as feed for their horses.

The sunshine poured down hot upon them, and there was much dust, but they were happy. There were crowds of people from all the surrounding country; there were displays of vegetables, fruit, honey, butter, in tents and sheds,—in short, all the products of a farming region; there were cakes, loaves of bread, glasses of jelly, and jars of pickles and preserves, made by farmers' wives; and in the department allotted to needle-work there were quilts of various patterns and various claims to public notice: one had three thousand five hundred and forty-four pieces in it, and was made by a great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone, the pioneer; another was pieced by an old lady of eighty-one without the aid of glasses. Among the live-stock were fat cattle and prancing three-year-old colts, with red or blue ribbons fastened to their manes, indicating that they had received the first or second prize, and fat hogs; there were various breeds of poultry in coops, and before each stall or pen or coop stood a group of spectators, admiring, commenting, or asking questions of the owner; there were agricultural machines and implements, and patent pumps for stock-yards, and improved cross-cut saws, each strongly recommended to the public by a glib-tongued agent. Then there were stands for the sale of ice-cream, lemonade, and peanuts and candy; and no rural beau felt that he had done the polite thing unless he took his girl up to the counter and treated her. When he had strolled all over the ground with her, and perhaps taken her into one or two side-shows, where there were negro minstrels or the Wild Australian Children, he went and sat in a buggy with her, and they talked, and waited for the horse-race, or balloon-ascension, or wire-walking, which was the especial attraction of the afternoon.

"Why, who's that with Tom Worth?" asked one Buck Creek belle of her escort as they were thus sitting together. "I didn't know that he was goin' with anybody?"

"I didn't, either," was the response; then, after a little pause, "I'll swan, it's Miss Hill, the school-ma'am. Who'd 'a' thought they would be here together? I didn't know they were acquainted."

And this remark was echoed by other Buck Creek people as they saw the couple walking together. But there is a law of affinity by which people are drawn together as lovers or as friends, which is like some of the hidden forces of nature: we cannot see their operation, we can only see their results. Some one has made the paradoxical remark that we are acquainted with our friends before we ever see them; meaning that our tastes for the same pursuits or subjects, traits of character that harmonize, views that coincide, have been ripening apart, and, when at last we meet, that is sufficient; it does not require a long acquaintanceship to reveal one to the other.