Funny, doctor, how seein' him and little Mary Elizabeth together brings
back my own youth to me--an' wife's.

From the first day we was married to the day we laid her away under the
poplars, the first thing I done on enterin' the house was to wonder
where she was an' go an' find her. An' quick ez I'd git her located,
why, I'd feel sort o' rested, an' know things was all right.

Heap of his ma's ways I seem to see in Sonny since she's went.

An' what do you think, doc'? He's took to kissin' me nights and mornin's
since she's passed away, an' I couldn't tell you how it seems to comfort
me.

Maybe that sounds strange to you in a grown-up man, but it don't come no
ways strange to me--not from Sonny. Now he's started it, seems like ez
ef I'd 've missed it if he hadn't.

Ez I look back, they ain't no lovin' way thet a boy could have thet
ain't seemed to come nachel to him--not a one. An' his little wife, Mary
Elizabeth, why, they never was a sweeter daughter on earth.

An' ef I do say it ez shouldn't, their weddin' was the purtiest thet has
ever took place in this county--in my ricollection, which goes back
distinc' for over sixty year.

Everybody loves little Mary Elizabeth, an' th' aint a man, woman, or
child in the place but doted on Sonny, even befo' he turned into a
book-writer. But, of co'se, all the great honors they laid on him--the
weddin' supper an' dance in the Simpkins's barn, the dec'rations o'
the church that embraced so many things he's lectured about an' all
that--why they was all meant to show fo'th how everybody took pride in
him, ez a author o' printed books.

You see he has give' twelve lectures in the academy each term for the
last three years, after studyin' them three winters in New York, each
year's lectures different, but all relatin' to our own forests an' their
dumb population. That's what he calls 'em. Th' ain't a boy thet has
attended the academy, sence he's took the nachel history to teach,
but'll tell you thess what kind o' inhabitants to look for on any
particular tree. Nearly every boy in the county's got a cabinet--an'
most of 'em have carpentered 'em theirselves, though I taught 'em how to
do that after the pattern Sonny got me to make his by--an' you'll find
all sorts o' specimens of what they designate ez "summer an' winter
resorts" in pieces of bark an' cobweb an' ol' twisted tree-leaves in
every one of 'em.

The boys thet dec'rated the barn for the dance say thet they ain't