e me; ain't helpin' me any; 'pears
like he-all ain't goin' to come no mo'!"

"If you have a husband, why don't you go to him and let him care for
you?"

She was silent, turning her wedding-ringless hand over and over on her
lap: the flies came buzzing in around us, and in the near distance
Excelsior buzzed, the loudest, most insistent creature on this part of
the earth.

"Seems like a woman ought to help a man--some," she murmured. Downstairs
Mrs. Jones sums her up in a few words.

"She-all suttinly ain't no _'Mrs'_ in the world! Calls herself
_'White.'_" (The intonation is not to be mistaken.) "Pore thing's
dyin'--knows it, tew! Come hyar to die, I reckon. She'll die right up
thar in that baed, tew. Doctor don't come no mo'. Know she cayn't pay
him nothin'. You-all come hyar to grandmaw, Letty!"

The child around whom the threads of existence are weaving fabric more
intricate than any woof or warp of the great mills goes confidingly to
the old woman, who lifts her tenderly into her arms. With every word she
speaks this aged creature draws her own picture. To these types no pen
save Tolstoi's could do justice. Mine can do no more than display them
by faithfully transcribing their simple dialect-speech.

"I am sixty-four years old, an' played out. Worked too hyard. Worked
every day since I was a child, and when I wasn't workin' had the fevar.
Come from the hills las' month. When his wife dyde, the son he come an'
fetched me cross the river to help him."

How has she lived so long and so well, with life "so hyard on her"?

"I loved my husban', yes, ma'am, I regularly loved him; reckon no woman
didn't ever love a man mo', and he loved me, tew, jest ez much. Seems
tho' God couldn't bayr to see us-all so happy--couldn't las'; he dyde."

Mrs. Jones' figure is a case of bones covered with a brown
substance--you could scarcely call it skin; a weather-beaten, tanned
hide; nothing more. This human statue, ever responsive to the eternal
moulding, year after year has been worked upon by the titan instrument,
Labour: struggle, disease, want. But this hill woman has known love. It
has transfigured her, illumined her. This poor deformed body is a torch
only for an immortal flame. I know now why it seems good to be near her,
why her eyes are inspired.... I rise to leave her and she comes forward
to me, puts out her hand first, then puts both thin, old arms about me
and kisses me.

In speaking of the settlement, it borders o