the fire she had just kindled.

"Yes, child," she said, answering my thought, "it's a sad, sad sight;
I've watched it for a lifetime and I'm clean tired of it,--seein' 'em
go out in the mornin' straight and strong and handsome as a Kentucky
man ought to be, and comin' home at night with hardly strength enough
to handle their reins, and less sense than the horse that's carryin'
'em. I trust that man'll reach home safe, for somewhere up the road
there's a woman waitin' for him. She's cooked a hot supper for him and
the biscuits are in the pan, and she's put the coffee on the back o'
the stove to keep it from boilin' too long, and the meat's in the
dish in front o' the stove, and she's lookin' out o' the window and
goin' to the gate every few minutes, strainin' her eyes and her ears
lookin' down the road and listenin' for the sound of a horse's feet.
And maybe there's a baby asleep in the cradle, and another child
waitin' for Father; and when he comes, the child'll run from him, and
his wife'll cry her eyes out, and nobody in that house'll feel like
eatin' any supper to-night. Well, may the Lord give that woman grace
to be as patient with her husband as Milly Amos was with Sam, and
maybe she'll reap the same reward."

"Was Sam Amos a drunkard?" I asked in surprise.

"Well, no," said Aunt Jane, judicially, "Sam wasn't, to say, a
drunkard. A drunkard, according to my notion, is a man that's born
with whiskey in his veins. He's elected and predestined to drink, you
might say, and he ain't to be blamed when he does drink. Sam wasn't
that sort of a man; but once in his life it looked mightily like he
was goin' to be a drunkard. Sam come of a sober family, and there
wasn't any manner of reason for him to take to drink, but Dr.
Pendleton used to say there was a wild streak in nearly every person,
and sooner or later it was bound to break out in one way or another.
It was the wild streak in Brother Wilson, I reckon, that sent him into
the army before he went to preachin', and the same wild streak put it
into Sam's mind to drink whiskey, when his father and grandfather
never touched it. How it started I don't know, but I reckon the coffee
house must 'a' been the beginnin' of it. I can ricollect well the time
when that was opened in town. They had a sort of a debatin' society in
that day,--Lyceum, they called it, but Sam Amos called it the Jawin'
Club. Dr. Brigham and Judge Grace and Judge Elrod and Colonel Walker
and all the bi