her face, Maria, you'd 'a' thought that she was
walkin' in a graveyard and every flower-bed was a grave; and once, when
she stooped down and broke off a piece of ambrosia and smelt it, I could
see there was tears in her eyes. Well, Maria, they were jest as crazy
about old-fashioned flowers as they were about old-fashioned furniture.
I pulled a big bunch o' damask roses for both of 'em, and they said they
wanted roots of all the old flowers,--Mother's hundred-leaf rose and the
Maiden's Blush and the cinnamon rose, and all the spring flowers and
even the tansy and sage. The lady said they could buy all these things,
but that she believed the flowers you got out of old-fashioned gyardens
like mine smelled sweeter and bloomed better than anything you'd buy.
And she's goin' to give me a lot of new-fashioned flowers to freshen up
my old gyarden, and with new furniture in my house and new flowers in my
gyarden, why, I feel like I'm takin' a new start in life. Why, actually,
Maria, I've been jest as tired of the old flowers as I've been of the
old beds and tables,--the same old crocuses and buttercups and hyacinths
and chrysanthemums comin' up every spring in the same old place, in the
same old beds, and the same old weeds to be pulled up every year.

"Maybe you think it's wicked in me, Maria, to feel the way I do about
old things. Mother always thought so, and I remember once hearin' her
tell the minister that Samantha was jest like the Athenians in the
Bible, always runnin' after some new thing; and she was always sighin'
and sayin': 'Samantha, you have no reverence in your nature.' And
finally, one day, I said to her: 'Mother, I've got jest as much
reverence as you have. The difference between us is that you reverence
old things, and I reverence new ones.'

"But I mustn't forget to tell you about the old cradle, Maria. That
cradle was Mother's special idol. It was a little, heavy, wooden thing,
so black with age that you couldn't tell what kind o' wood it was made
out of, and Mother said the first Stearnses that ever come to this
country brought that cradle with 'em in the ship they sailed in. Well,
that little old cradle was sittin' way back in the garret on top o' the
old oak bed-clothes chest that Grandmother Stearns packed her quilts in,
when she moved from Connecticut and come to Ohio. And the young girl
spied that cradle, and says she: 'Oh! What a darling cradle!' And then
she stopped and blushed as red as a rose, and