wuzn't any brighter
than her sweet gray eyes.

She makes a beautiful woman, Maggie Allen duz; and she ort to, to
correspond with her husband, for my boy, Thomas Jefferson, is a young
man of a thousand, and it is admitted that he is by all the
Jonesvillians--nearly every villian of 'em admits it.

Tirzah Ann and the babe wuz to the depot to see us off, and she said
that she should come on jest as soon as she got through with her
preperations.

But I felt dubersome about her comin' very soon, for she took out her
knittin' work (we had to wait quite a good while for the cars), and I
see that she hadn't got the first one only to the instep.

It is slow knittin'--shells are dretful slow anyway--and she wuz too
proud sperited to have 'em plain clam-shell pattern, which are bigger
and coarser; she had to have 'em oyster-shell pattern, in ridges.

Wall, as I say, I felt dubersome, but I spoke up cheerful on the
outside--

"If you git your stockin's done, Tirzah Ann, you must be sure and come."

And she said she would.

The way she said it wuz: "One, two, three, four, yes, mother; five, six,
seven, I will."

She had to count every shell from top to toe of 'em, which made it hard
and wearin' both for her and them she wuz conversin' with.

Why, they do say--it come to me straight, too--that Whitfield got that
wore out with them oyster-shell stockin's that he won't look at a oyster
sence--he used to be devoted to 'em, raw or cooked; but they say that
you can't git him to look at one sence the stockin' episode, specially
scolloped ones.

No, he sez "that he has had enough oysters for a lifetime."

Poor fellow! I pity him. I know what them actions of hern is; hain't I
suffered from the one she took 'em from?

But to resoom, and continue on.

Miss Gowdey come to the depot to see me off, and so did Miss Bobbet and
the Widder Pooler.

Miss Gowdey wuz a-comin' to the World's Fair as soon as she made her
rag-carpet for her summer kitchen; she said "she wouldn't go off and
leave her work ondone, and she hadn't got more'n half of the rags cut,
and she hadn't colored butnut yet, nor copperas; she would not leave her
house a-sufferin' and her rags oncut."

I thought she looked sort o' reprovin' at me, for she knew that I had a
carpet begun.

But I spoke up, and sez, "Truly rags will be always here with us, and
most likely butnut and copperas; but the World's Fair comes but once in
a lifetime, and I believe in embracin'