THE other day ex-Congressman Richer’s lawyer brought a man out to look at the farm. They driv into the gate, out through the bars back of the barn, across fust one field then another, the lawyer a pintin and layin it off, the feller a lookin and noddin his head.
Arter a while they come back and come up into the yard, the lawyer still a pintin, the feller still a lookin and noddin. I heerd the lawyer say:
“We want you to clear this all up. Clear away these bushes, and sow the yard down in lawn grass.”
As soon as I heerd that word “bushes,” I thought all of a suddint of poor “little Jane’s white rose-bush.”
I felt faint like—smothered—and a tear came a rollin down my cheek and dropped on the floor before I could git my apron to my eyes, and they kept a comin, no matter how hard I wiped.
When I use to read and hear of “sheriff sales” I dident take time to think what an awful thing it is to have the only place one knows on airth as “home” sold away from you. But now, when I know of what it is, I think of all the tears and sobs and heartaches and sich that has been a goin on around us, and we dident know anything about it.
Sometimes I find myself stoppin and standin still and lookin up in the sky and sayin:
“O Lord, is there no other way to do? Is there no way to save the women and children and hard-workin men from bein turned out of their homes, where they have lived and loved and been born?”
And every time I think I can hear a whisperin voice, jist a little piece away from me, a sayin:
“Yes, by reducin interest.”