I went an' selected this buggy
myself.

It is sort o' fancy, maybe, for the country, but I knew he'd like it
fancy--at his age. I got it good an' high, so's it could straddle stumps
good. They's so many tree-stumps in our woods, an' I know Sonny ain't
a-goin' to drive nowhere _but_ in the woods so long ez they's a livin'
thin' to scurry away at his approach, or a flower left in bloom, or a
last year's bird's nest to gether. An' the little Sweetheart, why, she's
got so thet she's ez anxious to fetch home things to study over ez he
is.

Yas; I think it is, ez you say, a fus'-class little buggy.

Sonny ain't never did nothin' half-ways,--not even mischief,--an'
I ain't a-goin' in, at this stage o' his raisin', to stint him.

List'n at me sayin' "raisin'" ag'in, after all Miss Phoebe has preached
to me about it! She claims thet folks has to be fetched up,--or "brung
up" I believe she calls it,--an' I don't doubt she knows.

She allows thet pigs is raised, an' potaters, an' even chickens; an' she
said, one day, thet ef I insisted on "raisin'" child'en, she'd _raise a
row_. She's a quick hand to turn a joke, Miss Phoebe is.

Nobody thet ever lived in Simpkinsville would claim thet rows couldn't
be raised, I'm shore, after all the fuss thet's been made over puttin'
daytime candles in our 'piscopal church. Funny how folks'll fuss about
sech a little thing when, ef they'd stop to think, they's so many mo'
important subjec's thet they could git up diffe'nces of opinion on.

I didn't see no partic'lar use in lightin' the candles myself, bein' ez
we didn't need 'em to see by, an' shorely the good Lord thet can speak
out a sun any time he needs a extry taper couldn't be said to take no
pleasure in a Simpkinsville home-dipped candle. But the way I look at
it, seem like ef some wants em, why not?

Th' ain't nothin' mo' innercent than a lighted candle,--kep' away up on
the wall out o' the draft, the way they are in church,--an' so, when it
come to votin' on it, why, I count peace an' good-will so far ahead o'
taller thet I voted thet I was good for ez many candles ez any other man
would give. An' quick ez I said them words, why, Enoch Johnson up an'
doubled his number. It tickled me to see him do it, too.

Enoch hates me thess because he's got a stupid boy--like ez ef that was
any o' my fault. His Sam failed to pass at the preliminar' examination,
an' wasn't allowed to try for a diplomy in public; an' Enoch an' his
wife, why