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If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen,

there ain't no telling what she could a done by-and-by. Buck said she

could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think.

He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to

rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one,

and go ahead. She warn't particular, she could write about anything you

choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. Every time a man

died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her

"tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors

said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker -- the under-

taker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a

rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever

the same, after that; she never complained, but she kind of pined away

and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up

to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-

book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I

had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and

warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry

about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that

there warn't nobody to make some about her, now she was gone; so I tried

to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go,

somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice and all the things fixed

in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody

ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there

was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible

there, mostly. ssssssssss

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on

the windows: white, with pictures painted on them, of castles with vines all

down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old

piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as

to hear the young ladies sing, "The Last Link is Broken" and play "The Battle

of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had

carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside.??

ssssssssss

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