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shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuck-

ered out. They wouldn't took any money for her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of

something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat

made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down

on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor

interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a couple of big

wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On a table in the middle

of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges

and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and

prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces

had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was, underneath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oil-cloth, with a red and blue

spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way

from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books too, piled up perfectly

exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures.

One was "Pilgrim's Progress, "about a man that left his family it didn't say why.

I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but

tough. Another was "Friendship's Offering," full of beautiful stuff and poetry;

but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another

was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body

was sick or dead. There was a Hymn Book, and a lot of other books. And

there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too -- not bagged down in

the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls -- mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes,

and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration." There

was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead

made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from

any pictures I ever see before; blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a

woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the arm-pits, with bulges like a

cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with

a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee

black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her

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