, and heard everything there was to be heard every time I went to
one. But now, when I git to callin' 'em up, it appears to me that the
best part of it all, and the part I ricollect the plainest, was jest
the goin' there and the comin' back home.

"Abram knew I liked to stay till everything was over, and he'd git
somebody to water and feed the stock, and then I never had any hot
suppers to git while the fair lasted; so there wasn't anything to
hurry me and Abram. I ricollect Maria Petty come up one day about
five o'clock, jest as we was lookin' at the last race, and says she,
'I'm about to drop, Jane; but I believe I'd ruther stay here and sleep
on the floor o' the amp'itheater than to go home and cook a hot
supper.' And I says, 'Don't cook a hot supper, then.' And says she,
'Why, Silas wouldn't eat a piece o' cold bread at home to save his
life or mine either.'

"There's a heap o' women to be pitied, child," said Aunt Jane,
dropping a handful of shelled beans into my pan with a cheerful
clatter, "but, of all things, deliver me from livin' with a man that
has to have hot bread three times a day. Milly Amos used to say that
when she died she wanted a hot biscuit carved on her tombstone; and
that if it wasn't for hot biscuits, there'd be a mighty small crop of
widowers. Sam, you see, was another man that couldn't eat cold bread.
But Sam had a right to his hot biscuits; for if Milly didn't feel like
goin' into the kitchen, Sam'd go out and mix up his biscuits and bake
'em himself. Sam's soda biscuits was as good as mine; and when it come
to beaten biscuits, why nobody could equal Sam. Milly'd make up the
dough as stiff as she could handle it, and Sam'd beat it till it was
soft enough to roll out; and such biscuits I never expect to eat
again--white and light as snow inside, and crisp as a cracker
outside. Folks nowadays makes beaten biscuits by machinery, but they
don't taste like the old-fashioned kind that was beat by hand.

"And talkin' about biscuits, child, reminds me of the cookin' I used
to do for the fairs. I don't reckon many women likes to remember the
cookin' they've done. When folks git to rememberin', it looks like the
only thing they want to call up is the pleasure they've had, the
picnics and the weddin's and the tea-parties. But somehow the work
I've done in my day is jest as precious to me as the play I've had. I
hear young folks complainin' about havin' to work so hard, and I say
to 'em, 'Child, when y