nd were friends of ours and would come to Rufe's every week and we would all do funny things? Well, I couldn't write abo

in the country, for there's not a single loving soul left to write about, Aunt Laura

it is worth five thousand dollars a year. Mrs. Young sings vocal. I wish she didn't, especially in a parlor. If anybody is singing or reciting a speech on a platform and flowers and electric lights it thrills you and you really enjoy it; but if they

great many little glass cases that you stick bugs and butterflies in if you can catch them, a picture of the Apostle Hosea, with his head all wrapped up like an old lady with the neuralgia, which they both said they could not live without, and a punching-bag, which they punched a great deal in the city, not having any baby to amuse themselves with, which was a good thing for the baby I reckon. So mother sent them over a great many things and Professor Young said she was

e when I saw Professor Young coming around the house with a pretty shirt open at the neck that he admires and two great big dominecker roosters up in his ar

as greatly perspiring, but he couldn't do it for the roosters, "my wife and I are in a quandary. We ar

es watermelons, and without a sign of manners she never even trie

ckollect all that

d for my favorite book since I was eleven years old; and the roosters continued to squawk. I got down then and asked Professor Young if he wouldn't come into the house, but he said no and asked his question to mammy

s "painless death" it must be something about preaching. Then in a minute, when she saw that he w

looking at them as proud as a little b

e are

embered my manners, that she began to laugh, wh

Whut do you want

l all in a minute that it made me just wish that Cinderella's fairy godmother would com

die a natural death if you leave them alone; and they're so big that you might fry

s handkerchief, I thought maybe to cry on, he look

the poor man told her, "but I-er, thought ma

out of the back door, and when they heard the tale of the roosters they both invited him to come right in and have breakfast with us, and said

avine instead of in the horrid city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys. They said they must have me go along for the woods wouldn't really be woodsy without me, as I was the genius loci. I didn't know at first what t

ething just here," so we'd have to stand still on our legs, it often being too snaky to sit down, while she sang. One time she thought up part of a song without a speck of tune to it, and it was in a language across the ocean. All I could make out was

unch box to put them in. When we got back we found it all covered with ants, but we were so hungry we thought we'd brushed them all off, though in the cake we found we hadn't. If a person hasn't ever eaten an ant, my diary, there a

our feet bare, with our thoughts on our childhood days, and never once stopping to remember that we didn't have a thing to wipe them on. Nobody said so m

ld be a novelist. Now, this is the only subject they ever fall out about, for he's always wanting to be something that he is not. Last winter when he met Doctor Gordon at Rufe's he decided he wanted to be a doctor, for he said they could always make a living, no matter where they were, while a poor college professor had to stay wherever he had a chair to sit in. So he went to a store where you buy rubber arms and legs a

buy anything to begin this novel-writing business with. He proudly told her no, for his "Mother Nature had endowed him with a complete equipment," and he thumped his forehead bet

ld have to empty the lunch box for, nor be careful not to pull off their

he farthest pasture where he could see her then and draw her out to see what was in her! This sounded terrible to me, knowing that he used some sickly smelling stuf

long "socialistic lines" or a "romance in a simple bucolic setting." That "bucolic" reminded me of Bertha's little innocent baby, and I wished I was at home nursing it even if it did cry, rather than be out sun-rising with such a peculiar man. He said it would be a "pastoral

r to our house early to ask mother if you singed a picked chicken over a blaze or what, and if she didn't think Thoreau was an idiot. Mother said yes, you did, if it had pin feathers on it, and she didn't know much about Thoreau, but she preferred men that paid taxes a

t of his life if he wanted to, boarding over at Mrs. Hedges' where he could see Emma Belle morning, noon and night, instead of only in the morning. He said why, he was utterly surprised for she hadn't mentioned such a thing to him before, but she told him he hadn't spent enough time with her lately even to know whether or not she still retained the power of speech. He said right quick,

anyway where there was a bath-tub, but she told him he was very foolish to think about leaving such a cool, "Arcadian" spot; their friends would all laugh at them for coming back so soon. She said she had merely mentioned going

n says doctoring is a hard life, and Rufe says that editing is a hard life, but, my diary, between y