ays would forever protect her loved quilts
from such a desecration as she feared? As she lifted a pair of quilts
from a chair near by, I caught sight of a pure white spread in
striking contrast with the many-hued patchwork.

"Where did you get that Marseilles spread, Aunt Jane?" I asked,
pointing to it. Aunt Jane lifted it and laid it on my lap without a
word. Evidently she thought that here was something that could speak
for itself. It was two layers of snowy cotton cloth thinly lined with
cotton, and elaborately quilted into a perfect imitation of a
Marseilles counterpane. The pattern was a tracery of roses, buds, and
leaves, very much conventionalized, but still recognizable for the
things they were. The stitches were fairylike, and altogether it might
have covered the bed of a queen.

"I made every stitch o' that spread the year before me and Abram was
married," she said. "I put it on my bed when we went to housekeepin';
it was on the bed when Abram died, and when I die I want 'em to cover
me with it." There was a life-history in the simple words. I thought
of Desdemona and her bridal sheets, and I did not offer to help Aunt
Jane as she folded this quilt.

"I reckon you think," she resumed presently, "that I'm a mean, stingy
old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o' hoardin'
it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin' folks waitin' for 'em
till I die. But, honey, it ain't all selfishness. I'd give away my
best dress or my best bonnet or an acre o' ground to anybody that
needed 'em more'n I did; but these quilts--Why, it looks like my whole
life was sewed up in 'em, and I ain't goin' to part with 'em while
life lasts."

There was a ring of passionate eagerness in the old voice, and she
fell to putting away her treasures as if the suggestion of losing them
had made her fearful of their safety.

I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been
patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old woman's words had
wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and
worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history,
biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life,
love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for
his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality.

No wonder the wrinkled fingers smoothed them as reverently as we
handle the garments of the dead.

IV

"SWEET DAY OF REST"

[Illustratio