cience. I did my work faithful;
and then, when I might 'a' set and held my hands, I'd make a block or
two o' patchwork, and before long I'd have enough to put together in a
quilt. I went to piecin' as soon as I was old enough to hold a needle
and a piece o' cloth, and one o' the first things I can remember was
settin' on the back door-step sewin' my quilt pieces, and mother
praisin' my stitches. Nowadays folks don't have to sew unless they
want to, but when I was a child there warn't any sewin'-machines, and
it was about as needful for folks to know how to sew as it was for 'em
to know how to eat; and every child that was well raised could hem and
run and backstitch and gether and overhand by the time she was nine
years old. Why, I'd pieced four quilts by the time I was nineteen
years old, and when me and Abram set up housekeepin' I had bedclothes
enough for three beds.

"I've had a heap o' comfort all my life makin' quilts, and now in my
old age I wouldn't take a fortune for 'em. Set down here, child, where
you can see out o' the winder and smell the lilacs, and we'll look at
'em all. You see, some folks has albums to put folks' pictures in to
remember 'em by, and some folks has a book and writes down the things
that happen every day so they won't forgit 'em; but, honey, these
quilts is my albums and my di'ries, and whenever the weather's bad and
I can't git out to see folks, I jest spread out my quilts and look at
'em and study over 'em, and it's jest like goin' back fifty or sixty
years and livin' my life over agin.

"There ain't nothin' like a piece o' caliker for bringin' back old
times, child, unless it's a flower or a bunch o' thyme or a piece o'
pennyroy'l--anything that smells sweet. Why, I can go out yonder in
the yard and gether a bunch o' that purple lilac and jest shut my eyes
and see faces I ain't seen for fifty years, and somethin' goes through
me like a flash o' lightnin', and it seems like I'm young agin jest
for that minute."

Aunt Jane's hands were stroking lovingly a "nine-patch" that resembled
the coat of many colors.

"Now this quilt, honey," she said, "I made out o' the pieces o' my
children's clothes, their little dresses and waists and aprons. Some
of 'em's dead, and some of 'em's grown and married and a long way off
from me, further off than the ones that's dead, I sometimes think. But
when I set down and look at this quilt and think over the pieces, it
seems like they all come back, and I