"and I kinder wish I lived in a block or a flat like your ma.
You see, Minnie teaches in the public school and she's away all day,
and she don't like to have me make company of the hired girl,
though she's a real nice girl. And there ain't nothing for me
to do, and I feel like I wasn't no use any more in the world.
I remember that's what our old minister in Ohio said once.
He was a real nice old man; and they HAD thought everything
of him in the parish; but he got old and his sermons were long;
and so they got a young man for assistant; and they made HIM
a _pastor americus_, they called it--some sort of Latin.
Folks did say the young feller was stuck up and snubbed
the old man; anyhow, he never preached after young Lisbon come;
and only made the first prayers. But when the old folks would
ask him to preach some of the old sermons they had liked, he only
would say, 'No, friends, I know more about my sermons, now.'
He didn't live very long, and I always kinder fancied being
a AMERICUS killed him. And some days I git to feeling like I
was a kinder AMERICUS myself."

"That ain't fair to your children," said Tilly; "you ought to let
them know how you feel. Then they'd act different."

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know. You see, miss, they're so sure
they know better'n me. Say, Mrs. Louder, be you going to visit
relatives in Baxter?"

"No, ma'am, I'm going to take care of a sick lady," said Jane,
"it's kinder queer. Her name's Ferguson, her ----"

"For the land's sake!" screamed Mrs. Higbee, "why, that's