s to take a
wisp of your hair and wrap it as tightly around a tin spoon, or a
match stem, as you can twist it; that pulls your palate up. It is,
of course, absolutely necessary for you to have your palate up,
even though you scalp yourself in the process of making it stay up.
Emma generally had a couple of spoons and two or three matches in
what was left of her wool. She could screw her mouth up until it
looked like a nozzle, and she could shoot her eyes out like a
crab's. She was so big that most folks were afraid of her. But as
she stood there beaming at Peter with the book in his hand, the
loveliest lady in the land couldn't have looked better or kinder.

Peter laid the Collection of Poetic Gems on the table, and blinked
at Emma Campbell. Then, because he was only a boy, and because
nothing so pleasant as this had happened to him for a long, long
time--not since his mother died--he put his head down on the
green-covered book and cried as only a boy can cry when he lets go.

Emma Campbell seemed to grow about nine feet tall. "Peter," said
she, in a terrifying voice, "I axes you not to lemme see you cryin'
like dat! When I sees Miss Maria's chile cryin', jes' 'cause a ole
nigger woman gives 'im a book, I wants to go out an' bust dis town
wide open wid a ax!"

When he had time to examine his Collection of Poetic Gems, Peter was
overjoyed. The paper was poor, the cuts atrocious, the binding a
poisonous green, but many of the Gems were of purest ray serene
despite their wretched setting. Old-fashioned stuff, most of it, but
woven on the loom of immortality. Peter, of course, had Simms's "War
Poems of the South." He knew much of Father Ryan by heart. He, as
well as another, could wave his brown stick of an arm and bid
somebody "Take that banner down, 'tis tattered." He had been brought
up on the story of the glory of the men who wore the gray, and for
him the sword of Robert Lee would never dim nor tarnish. But these
things were different. They talked to something deep down in him,
that was neither Yankee nor Southerner, but larger and better than
both. When Peter read these poems he felt the hair of his scalp
prickle, and his heart almost burst with a rapture that was agony.

But one can't exist on a collection of gems in a vile binding.
Shirts and shoes wear out, and trousers must be replaced when
they're too far gone to stand another stitch. Peter was too small to
do any responsible work, and he was getting too big