day for some word, that never came.

Poor little Mary Ann was drowned in the bayou, where she was trying to
get water-lilies. She had wanted a white dress all her life and so,
when she was dead, they took down the white cross-bar curtains and
Mother made the little shroud by the light of a tallow dip. But, being
made by hand, it took all the next day, too, so that they buried her by
moonlight down back of the orchard under the big elm where the children
had always had their swing. And they lined and covered her grave with
big, fragrant water-lilies. As they lowered the poor little home-made
coffin into the grave the mockingbirds began to sing and they sang all
that dewy, moonlight night. Then little Mandy's wedding to Judge
Carter's son Jim was described. She wore a "cream-colored poplin with a
red rose throwed up in it," and the lace that was on Grandma's wedding
dress. There were bowers of sweet Southern roses and honeysuckle and
wistaria. Don't you know she was a dainty bride?

At last it came out that he had not heard from home since he left it.
"Don't you ever write?" I asked. "No, I am not an eddicated man,
although I started to school. Yes'm, I started along of the rest, but
they told me it was a Yankee teacher and I was 'fraid, so when I got
most to the schoolhouse I hid in the bushes with my spelling-book, so
that is all the learning I ever got. But my mother was an eddicated
woman, yes'm, she could both read and write. I have the Bible she give
me yit. Yes'm, you jist wait and I'll show you." After some rummaging
in a box he came back with a small leather-bound Bible with print so
small it was hard to read. After turning to the record of births and
deaths he handed it to me, his wrinkled old face shining with pride as
he said, "There, my mother wrote that with her own hand." I took the
book and after a little deciphered that "Zebulon Pike Parker was born