5. Abner Dawes will reach here this evening on the Six fifty-nine, for a brief sojourn.
6. Abner Dawes arrived last evening and is quartered at the Opera House hotel.
Some we hadn’t thought of turned up last minute, and had to tell folks who they were and then—my, what a welcome! Every few minutes, all day long, we’d hear a little shouting, and see a little crowd, and we’d all rush over, and there’d be somebody just got there, and everybody’d be calling ’em old names, and shaking hands with the children and kissing the grand-children. It was a real day. It’d be a day I’d like to talk about even if nothing else had happened but the day being just the day.
Mis’ Sykes and I were in Eppleby’s booth, and in back of it the children was all trimmed and ready to begin their march, when I heard an unusual disturbance just outside. I looked, and I saw Lisbeth, that Eppleby had asked to come and help tend his booth that night, and she was just getting there, with Chris trotting alongside of her. But they weren’t making the disturbance. Most of that was Eppleby, shaking both the hands of a big, smooth-boned, brown-skinned man that was shouting at his lungs’ top:
“Eppleby Bebbleby
Wooden-leg,
Lost his knife
Playing mumblety-peg.”
with all the gusto of a psalm. And Eppleby was shouting back at him something about
“Abner Dawes he comes to late
The wood was split and things was great.”
And it was Abner actually come and getting himself welcomed by Eppleby just like one of us. And Abner begun remembering us all and calling us by name.
Abner was one of them men that makes you know what men were meant to be like. His face was ruddy and wrinkled—but oh, it was deep and bright, and his eyes looked out like his soul was saying to your soul: “See me. I’m you. Oh, come on, let’s find out about living. How does anybody ever talk about anything else?” That was Abner. You couldn’t be with him without looking closer at the nature of being alive. And you saw that life is a different thing—a different thing from what most of us think. And some day we’ll find out what.