and childhood there. We sat and talked that night after the
chores were done. Uncle Bird was grayer, and his eyes did
not see so well, but he was still jovial. We talked of the acres
bought,--one hundred and twenty-five,--of the new guest-
chamber added, of Martha's marrying. Then we talked of
death: Fanny and Fred were gone; a shadow hung over the
other daughter, and when it lifted she was to go to Nashville
to school. At last we spoke of the neighbors, and as night fell,
Uncle Bird told me how, on a night like that, 'Thenie came
wandering back to her home over yonder, to escape the blows
of her husband. And next morning she died in the home that
her little bow-legged brother, working and saving, had bought
for their widowed mother.

My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and
Life and Death. How shall man measure Progress there where
the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall
balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the
lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love
and strife and failure,--is it the twilight of nightfall or the
flush of some faint-dawning day?

Thus sadly musing, I rode to Nashville in the Jim Crow
car.