ds and rushes. Bright wild flowers bloom on
every side, the quail whistles on the pasture fence, and from his home
in the chimney corner the cricket tries to chirrup an echo to the
lonely bird's call. In this little prairie home we see a man holding
on his knee a little girl, who is telling him of her play as he smooths
her fair curls or strokes her tiny velvet hands; or perhaps she is
singing him one of her baby songs, or asking him strange questions of
the great wide world that is so new to her; or perhaps he binds the
wild flowers she has brought into a little nosegay for her new gingham
dress, or--but we see it all, and so, too, does the soldier, and so
does Nellie, and they hear the blackbird's twitter and the quail's
shrill call and the cricket's faint echo, and all about them is the
sweet, subtle, holy fragrance of memory.

And so at last, when Death came and the soldier fell asleep forever,
Nellie, his little girl, was holding his hands and whispering to him of
those days. Hers were the last words he heard, and by the peace that
rested on his face when he was dead you might have thought the soldier
was dreaming of a time when Nellie prattled on his knee and bade him
weave the wild flowers in her curls.

THE 'JININ' FARMS

You see Bill an' I wuz jest like brothers; wuz raised on 'jinin' farms:
he wuz _his_ folks' only child, an' _I_ wuz _my_ folks' only one. So,
nat'ril like, we growed up together, lovin' an' sympathizin' with each
other. What _I_ knowed, I told _Bill_, an' what _Bill_ knowed, _he_
told _me_, an' what neither on us knowed--why, that warn't wuth knowin'!

If I had n't got over my braggin' days, I 'd allow that, in our time,
Bill an' I wuz jest about the sparkin'est beaus in the township;
leastwise that's what the girls thought; but, to be honest about it,
there wuz only two uv them girls we courted, Bill an' I, _he_ courtin'
_one_ an' I t'other. You see we sung in the choir, an' as our good
luck would have it we got sot on the sopranner an' the alto, an'
bimeby--oh, well, after beauin' 'em round a spell--a year or so, for
that matter--we up an' married 'em, an' the old folks gin us the farms,
'jinin' farms, where we boys had lived all our lives. Lizzie, my wife,
had always been powerful friendly with Marthy, Bill's wife; them two
girls never met up but what they wuz huggin' an' kissin' an' carryin'
on, like girls does; for women ain't like men--they can't control
theirselves an' t