epsakes like.
They came to mother first, and after mother's death they came to me,
and I had 'em round in bureau drawers and bandboxes and trunks, and
they was in the way when I was cleaning house or making changes of
arrangements, and I won't say that such as was fabrics wasn't
attracting moths. But I couldn't think of no way to remedy it. Till
suddenly--let's see, 'twas eleven weeks ago last Tuesday--the idea
came to me, and I grouped 'em together, like you see 'em here--this
tribute."

Her yardstick touched the basket lovingly, as she went on: "That
banana, on the extreme left, contains my grandfather's gold-bowed
spectacles, jest as he used to wear 'em. Gran'pa grew terrible deaf
when he got to be an old man, and so he never heard a team coming up
behind him one day when mother'd sent him down to the store for a loaf
of bread. Miss Jenkins, them glasses was on his nose just as lifelike
when they brought him in to us! My mother's wedding ring is in that
greengage plum next to the banana, and aunt Sophia Babcock's is in
that damson, a little below to the right.

"You see that peach? Pretty lifelike, I call it--well, there ain't
anything in it yet, but my great-uncle Bradly's shirtstuds are in the
Bartlett pear, just beyond, and that orange contains a Honiton lace
collar that my mother wore the day she was married.

"And this Baldwin apple"--her voice grew intimate--"has in it some
little relics of my own uncle Aaron Roscoe. He was a good man, and he
felt the call early, and he journeyed to heathen lands to carry the
glad tidings, and we never heard from him again--till quite recent,
when these little relics was sent back.

"Do you remember my brother Willy? Gracious, no! What was I thinking
of? Of course you don't--your aunt Mary'd remember him, though. He was
my youngest brother, and a great hand for all sorts of frolic and fun.
Well, it's more'n thirty years ago, but it seems just yesterday that
he fell in the mill pond. Sister Coretta was with him, and she'd let
him get out of her sight--which she hadn't ought to--but, childlike,
she'd got to playing with the shavings, and sticking 'em over her
ears, and when she sensed things Willy wa'n't nowhere to be found.
They drawed off the water, and there he was, poor little thing, and
they brought him home and laid him on the kitchen table, and then
mother and I, we went through his pockets to see what there was, and
there we found a bag of marbles, just as he'd had '