e the passengers was skeered, and one man says, 'Search him and
see if he's got any weapons on him,' and the conductor come runnin'
up, and old man Mose says, 'I haven't got any weapons, conductor, and
I'm not drunk nor crazy, but I've been down in Texas for a year and a
half, and I'm jest happy over gittin' back home.' And the conductor
says: 'Well, that's excuse enough for anything. Holler as loud as you
please; you sha'n't be put off the train.'
"The old man said he could 'a' stood it if there'd been any knobs or
hills or big trees. But he said that prairie land nearly run him
crazy, especially in the evenin'. He said he'd watch the sun goin'
down like a ball o' fire away off across that level prairie, and he'd
think about how the sunset looked in Kentucky, with old Pilot Knob and
Prewitt's Knob loomin' up on the horizon, and he'd drop his head in
his hands and cry like a baby.
"And talkin' about sunsets, child, reminds me of a picture in
Henrietta's parlor. There never was anything like the inside o'
Henrietta's home. Her and Archibald went all over Europe when they was
first married, and everywhere they went they gethered up pictures and
marble images and such things, and whichever way you'd turn there was
somethin' to look at that you never'd seen before. And when you've
been livin' all your life in a house like this old farmhouse o' mine,
it gives you a curious sort o' feelin' to be set down all at once in a
place like Henrietta's. Why, for two or three days I hardly knew the
name of anything I was eatin' or drinkin' or lookin' at or walkin' on
or settin' on, and when I try to ricollect the different rooms, I git
'em all mixed up. But there's one thing that's jest as clear as day in
my mind, and that is the picture I'm tellin' you about. The name of it
was 'The Angelus.' Now ain't that a pretty name?--'The Angelus.' Why,
it sounds jest like music. The minute I come across it, I stopped
still in front of it and looked and looked and looked. And says I,
'Child, this picture makes me feel like sayin' my prayers.' And
Henrietta laughed, and says she, 'Grandma, that's jest what the people
in the picture are doin'.' And she said that over yonder in France, in
some o' the places out in the country, places pretty much like our
Goshen neighborhood, I reckon, they was in the habit o' ringin' the
church bells at sundown, and when people heard the bells, they'd stop
whatever they was doin' and say their prayers. And she t
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