after the reception, he
says, says he, 'We ought to have grandma's picture painted in that
dress.' And Henrietta says, 'Yes; and I want another picture of
grandma in her old purple calico dress and gingham apron, settin' in
that old high-back rockin'-chair with one of her patchwork quilts over
her lap.' Says she, 'That's the way I remember seein' grandma when I
was a little gyirl, and that's the way _I_ want her picture taken.'"

She paused to shake out the lustrous silk and spread the fichu over it
that I might see the delicate pattern of the lace.

"I started to leave this dress at Henrietta's," she observed, "for I
knew I wouldn't have use for such clothes as these down here on the
farm, but Henrietta folded 'em up and put 'em in my trunk, and she
said I had to wear 'em every Sunday evenin' and sit out on the porch
and think about her and Archibald. And then, child, when I die they
can bury me in this dress." And her cheerful smile told me that if
death had held any terrors for Aunt Jane, those terrors would be
largely assuaged by the thought of going to her long rest in point
lace and silk. Nigh on to eighty years, "but yet a woman!"

"Now what was the next thing I went to? Oh, yes! the Brownin' Club.
Two or three days after the reception, Henrietta says to me, 'Grandma,
the Brownin' Club meets with me this evenin', and I want you to put on
your silk dress and come down to the parlor and listen to our papers.'
And she told me who Brownin' was, and said she was goin' to read a
paper on his home life.

"Well, I thought to myself that there wasn't much hope o' me
understandin' anything I'd hear at that Brownin' Club, but of course I
was glad to dress up again in my silk dress and my lace, and to please
Henrietta I went down into the parlor and listened to the readin'.
First, a young lady read a paper about the 'Message of Brownin'.' She
said every poet had a message to give to the world jest like the
prophets in Old-Testament times, and I gethered from her paper that
Brownin' was a man that always looked on the bright side and believed
that things was goin' to come right in the end; and towards the last
she read some mighty pretty verses. I wish I could ricollect 'em all.
It was somethin' about the spring o' the year and the mornin' and the
dew like pearls and the birds flyin'. The words was jest like a
picture of a spring mornin', and the last of it was, 'God's in his
heaven--all's right with the world!' That's je