y that was sleeping in the
Greenwood at the foot of the hill, or in some grave over at Providence
or Hillsboro or Bolivar, and who was grandmother or great-grandmother to
a hundred or more of the guests. I had wondered why Jane had been poring
over that old autograph manuscript receipt book in my desk for days, and
as she paid these modern resurrecting compliments to the long gone
cooks, tears and laughed literally deluged the table.

And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the domestic
woman-history of the valley, Jane showed in the most insidious way
possible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which had
been woven the woof of the whole history of their part of the Nation,
political, financial, and religious. I never heard anything like it in
all my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused,
tense, farmer faces, I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the
Harpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirlwind on the
woman-question that might attempt to come in on us over the Ridge from
the outside world. They saw her point and were hard hit. When "Votes for
Women" gets to coming down Providence Road the farmers will hitch up a
wagon and take mother and the children with a well-packed lunch basket
to meet it half way. This is a prophecy!

Then, after Jane sat down, I don't believe such a speechifying ever was
before as resounded out over the river, even in the time of Old Hickory.
Everybody had something to say and got to his feet to say it well, even
if some of them did brandish a turkey wing or a Iamb rib to emphasize
their points.

And the women were the funniest things I ever beheld, as we were treated
to one maiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plump
matrons anywhere from thirty to sixty. They had never done it before,
but liked it after they had tried.

Mother Mayberry from Providence, who is the grand old woman of the whole
valley, having established her claim to the title thirty years ago by
taking up her dead doctor husband's practice and "riding saddlebags to
suffering ever since," as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising
from her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,--who had
been so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly do
his dinner justice,--and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voice
with her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl's.

"Children," she said, aft