her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She
was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took
sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to
live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a
picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a
bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and
looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had
two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front,
and two more reaching up towards the moon--and the idea was to see which
pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I
was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept
this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her
birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a
little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice
sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery,
seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste
obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.
It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name
of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad
hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad
hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not
these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach
troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul
did from this cold world fly By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was
gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck
said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to
stop to think. He said