Bible Joseph's
coat,--yellow green and brown, some as bright as God could paint the
colors, some soft, like they had been washed and washed.

Granddaddy thought it was beautiful too--although he called it "purty."
But he did not like the brown grass and fallen pine needles, and called
the marsh near the river an ugly mudflat; but _I_ thought it was
beautiful, for that oozy mud was deep purple (the reverend told me the
word), and the little pools of water were all gold. Those are the colors
that kings dress in, yet that old mudflat wore them, too.

Well, finally, when it began to grow dusk, we found a wild turkey bird
roosting on a tree limb and granddaddy said, 'Hush, I aims ter shoot hit
right thru ther head.' When you get it look where the bullet went.

Now perhaps you would like to hear about what I have been doing. Well, I
have been doing many things, but most of all I have been studying.

The minister, whose name is Reverend John Talmadge, came back to our
mountain when it began to get cold, for he is in not very good health
and can't go about much, although he sits out doors most of the time.

He is my very good friend, and I have found out a lot about him. One
thing is that he went to college like you did, and he knows a great deal
more than there is in all those books, even. So you see he can help me a
good deal. He is even going to teach me some Latin, _D. V._ I think that
God must have sent him to our mountain.

Every day I study the books you sent, first with him and then at home,
and I am getting along so nice that last week, when the teacher in our
little school was away, they let me be the teacher.

And who do you think was one of my pupils? It was Judd Amos. He has
bought some books and is learning, too. I reckon he does not want a girl
to be smarter than he is at book learning, which he says is nonsense for
girls. But I know that it is not nonsense. Why, I can travel in far-off
lands and see things that I did not even know _were_, by just reading
books, and the reverend has lent me some to read.

Then I am still making my baskets, and what do you think? The storeman
is buying all I can send him, and paying me more than he used to for
them! He says that city folks like to buy them for they smell so sweet
and like the woods. I am saving all my money and, with what I had, have
nearly $75 already, and, by next summer, will have over $100. Isn't that
wonderful? Granddaddy pays me 10 cents a week for k