d
plowman, a miser who worships his gold?... But ... the
emotion that lived and died in an old-fashioned country
parlor shall as mightily stir our heart, shall as unerringly
find its way to the deepest sources of life as the majestic
passion that ruled the life of a king and shed its
triumphant luster from the dazzling height of a
throne."--_Maeterlinck_.

* * * * *

I

SALLY ANN'S EXPERIENCE

[Illustration: ]

"Come right in and set down. I was jest wishin' I had somebody to talk
to. Take that chair right by the door so's you can get the breeze."

And Aunt Jane beamed at me over her silver-rimmed spectacles and
hitched her own chair a little to one side, in order to give me the
full benefit of the wind that was blowing softly through the
white-curtained window, and carrying into the room the heavenliest
odors from a field of clover that lay in full bloom just across the
road. For it was June in Kentucky, and clover and blue-grass were
running sweet riot over the face of the earth.

Aunt Jane and her room together always carried me back to a dead and
gone generation. There was a rag carpet on the floor, of the
"hit-or-miss" pattern; the chairs were ancient Shaker rockers, some
with homely "shuck" bottoms, and each had a tidy of snowy thread or
crochet cotton fastened primly over the back. The high bed and bureau
and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far,
far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and
Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore
a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a
capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other
"handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled
throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap
was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly
affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern
old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and
was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble
with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was
as clear and joyous as a young girl's.

"Yes, I'm a-piecin' quilts again," she said, snipping away at the bits
of calico in her lap. "I did say I was done with that sort o' work;
but this mornin' I was rummagi