I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The
Lawrences have gone,--father and son forever,--and the
other son lazily digs in the earth to live. A new young widow
rents out their cabin to fat Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist
preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever, though his cabin has
three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a bouncing woman,
and is ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There are babies
a-plenty, and one half-witted girl. Across the valley is a
house I did not know before, and there I found, rocking one
baby and expecting another, one of my schoolgirls, a daugh-
ter of Uncle Bird Dowell. She looked somewhat worried with
her new duties, but soon bristled into pride over her neat
cabin and the tale of her thrifty husband, and the horse and
cow, and the farm they were planning to buy.

My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress;
and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly. The crazy
foundation stones still marked the former site of my poor
little cabin, and not far away, on six weary boulders, perched
a jaunty board house, perhaps twenty by thirty feet, with
three windows and a door that locked. Some of the window-
glass was broken, and part of an old iron stove lay mourn-
fully under the house. I peeped through the window half
reverently, and found things that were more familiar. The
blackboard had grown by about two feet, and the seats were still
without backs. The county owns the lot now, I hear, and every
year there is a session of school. As I sat by the spring and
looked on the Old and the New I felt glad, very glad, and yet--

After two long drinks I started on. There was the great