drug-store corner with me and Abram
when the music begun playin' 'way down by the depot, and all the boys
and young folks broke and run down Main Street to meet the band-wagon,
and Sam said he didn't believe they could run any faster if they was to
hear the cry, 'Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!'

"The procession reached clean from the depot to the Presbyterian church
corner, and it was worth comin' to town jest to see the horses that
pulled the chariots, some of 'em as white as milk and some coal black
and holdin' their heads so high, and steppin' like fine ladies and
lookin' so proud and so gentle, too, and so different from the horses
that we drove to our own wagons and plows that you wouldn't know they
was any kin to each other. Why, that night when I shut my eyes to go to
sleep I could see the big gold chariot and the white horses, and all
night long they went steppin' through my dreams.

"Well, after the procession'd gone by, we went over in the courthouse
yard and eat our dinner under the old locust trees, and then we went
down toward the river where the tents was spread. There's some shows,
honey, where there's more on the bills than there is under the tent.
I've heard Sam Amos say that, and there was one show that he used to
say was so blame bad it was right good. But Mr. Barnum's show was the
kind where there was more under the tent than there was on the bills,
and the sights us country folks saw that day give us somethin' to talk
about for a long time to come. But jest as the animal show was about
over, and people begun leavin', a big storm come up. I thought I heard
the thunder rollin' while me and Abram and the children was lookin' at
the fat woman, but of course we couldn't go home till we'd seen
everything, and the first thing we knew the wind was blowin' a
hurricane, and it got under the tent and lifted some o' the pegs out o'
the ground, and somebody hollered out that the tent was about to fall
down, and such a scatteration you never did see. We got out o' that tent
a good deal quicker'n we got in, and started for town as fast as we
could go, carryin' little children and draggin' 'em along by the hand;
and the rain begun pourin' down, and everybody was wet to the skin
before they could git to the drug store or the dry goods store or any
place where folks'd take us in.

"I ricollect Silas Petty said he reckoned it was a judgment on us church
members for goin' to worldly amusements, and Abram said that c