Many epigrammatic sayings come back to me, and one is too good to be
omitted, An old woman was fiercely criticising a neighbor and ended in
this way: "Folks that pretend to be somebody, and don't act like nobody,
ain't anybody!"

Another woman reminded me of Mrs. Partington. She told blood-curdling
tales of the positive reappearance of departed spirits, and when I said,
"Do you really believe all this?" she replied, "Indeed, I do, and yet
I'm not an imaginary woman!" Her dog was provoked into a conflict with
my setters, and she exclaimed: "Why, I never saw him so completely
ennervated."

Then the dear old lady who said she was a free thinker and wasn't
ashamed of it; guessed she knew as much as the minister 'bout this world
or the next; liked nothing better than to set down Sunday afternoons
after she'd fed her hens and read Ingersoll. "What books of his have
you?" I asked.

She handed me a small paper-bound volume which did not look like any of
"Bob's" productions. It was a Guide Book through Picturesque Vermont by
Ernest Ingersoll!

And I must not omit the queer sayings of a simple-hearted hired man on a
friend's farm.

Oh, for a photo of him as I saw him one cold, rainy morning tending
Jason Kibby's dozen cows. He had on a rubber coat and cap, but his
trouser legs were rolled above the knee and he was barefoot, "Hannibal,"
I shouted, "you'll take cold with your feet in that wet grass!"