but the war killed her the same as it did my two
brothers."

Here Aunt Jane removed her glasses and leaned back in her chair. By
these signs I knew there was to be a digression in the course of the
story.

"I wish I could make you see jest what kind of a woman Mother was,"
she said thoughtfully. "Every generation's different appearin' from
the one that comes before it and the one that comes after it. I'm my
mother's own child. Folks used to say I had Mother's eyes and Mother's
hair, but I'm a mighty different woman from Mother. And my daughters
are jest as different from me, and as for my granddaughters, why, you
wouldn't know they was any kin to me. I'm a plain old woman and my
granddaughters are fine ladies. My grandmother, you know, was the old
pioneer stock, and Mother was her oldest child, and she was somethin'
like the pioneer women herself. I ricollect when I was at that meetin'
of clubs in Lexin'ton, the time I went to see Henrietta, one lady got
up and said that a woman ought to be somethin' besides a mother. I
reckon that's right for this day and generation, but if you'll go back
to my mother's day and my grandmother's day, you'll find that if a
woman was a mother then, she didn't have time to be anything else.
Bringin' a family o' children into the world and takin' care of 'em,
cookin' for 'em, sewin' for 'em and spinnin' and weavin' the cloth for
their clothes--that's the way Mother did. She was jest a mother, but
that was enough. You know that Bible text, 'Greater love hath no man
than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.' I always think
o' that text when I think o' the old-time mothers; they had to give up
their lives for their children.

"Mother's name was Deborah, and I always thought that name suited her.
She was taller and stronger than the common run o' women, and Father
used to laugh and say he believed she was half sister o' the Deborah
in the Bible, the one that judged Israel, and that was 'A mother in
Israel.' Father always looked up to Mother and asked her advice about
things, and, as for us children, Mother's word was our law. She ruled
us and judged us like the Deborah in the Bible, but I can look back
now and see that there never was any love greater than my mother's
love for her children. Of course a mother, if she's the right kind of
a mother, will love all her children jest because they're hers. But
then, over and above that sort o' love, she'll love each one on
account o' so