I've died every year
sence I can remember." "Don't it hurt?" says the boy. "No, it don't,"
says the posy; "it's real nice. You see, you get kind o' tired a-holdin'
up your head straight and lookin' peart and wide awake, and tired o' the
sun shinin' so hot, and the winds blowin' you to pieces, and the bees
a-takin' your honey. So it's nice to feel sleepy and kind o' hang your
head down, and get sleepier and sleepier, and then find you're droppin'
off. Then you wake up jest 't the nicest time o' year, and come up and
look 'round, and--why, I like to die, I do." But someways that didn't
help Reuben much as you'd think. "I ain't a posy," he think to himself,
"and mebbe I wouldn't come up."

Well, another time he was settin' on a stone in the lower pastur',
cryin' again, and he heerd another cur'us little voice. 'T wa'n't like
the posy's voice, but 'twas a little, wooly, soft, fuzzy voice, and he
see 't was a caterpillar a-talkin' to him. And the caterpillar says, in
his fuzzy little voice, he says, "What you cryin' for, Reuben?" And the
boy, he says, "I'm powerful scaret o' dyin', that's why," he says. And
that fuzzy caterpillar he laughed. "Dyin'!" he says. "I'm lottin' on
dyin' myself. All my fam'ly," he says, "die every once in a while, and
when they wake up they're jest splendid,--got wings, and fly about, and
live on honey and things. Why, I wouldn't miss it for anything!" he
says. "I'm lottin' on it." But somehow that didn't chirk up Reuben much.
"I ain't a caterpillar," he says, "and mebbe I wouldn't wake up at
all."

Well, there was lots o' other things talked to that boy, and tried to
help him,--trees and posies and grass and crawlin' things, that was
allers a-dyin' and livin', and livin' and dyin'. Reuben thought it
didn't help him any, but I guess it did a little mite, for he couldn't
help thinkin' o' what they every one on 'em said. But he was scaret all
the same.

And one summer he begun to fail up faster and faster, and he got so
tired he couldn't hardly hold his head up, but he was scaret all the
same. And one day he was layin' on the bed, and lookin' out o' the east
winder, and the sun kep' a-shinin' in his eyes till he shet 'em up, and
he fell asleep. He had a real good nap, and when he woke up he went out
to take a walk.

And he begun to think o' what the posies and trees and creaturs had said
about dyin', and how they laughed at his bein' scaret at it, and he says
to himself, "Why, someways I don't f