can see 'em playin' around the
floors and goin' in and out, and hear 'em cryin' and laughin' and
callin' me jest like they used to do before they grew up to men and
women, and before there was any little graves o' mine out in the old
buryin'-ground over yonder."

Wonderful imagination of motherhood that can bring childhood back from
the dust of the grave and banish the wrinkles and gray hairs of age
with no other talisman than a scrap of faded calico!

The old woman's hands were moving tremulously over the surface of the
quilt as if they touched the golden curls of the little dream children
who had vanished from her hearth so many years ago. But there were no
tears either in her eyes or in her voice. I had long noticed that Aunt
Jane always smiled when she spoke of the people whom the world calls
"dead," or the things it calls "lost" or "past." These words seemed to
have for her higher and tenderer meanings than are placed on them by
the sorrowful heart of humanity.

But the moments were passing, and one could not dwell too long on any
quilt, however well beloved. Aunt Jane rose briskly, folded up the one
that lay across her knees, and whisked out another from the huge pile
in an old splint-bottomed chair.

"Here's a piece o' one o' Sally Ann's purple caliker dresses. Sally
Ann always thought a heap o' purple caliker. Here's one o' Milly Amos'
ginghams--that pink-and-white one. And that piece o' white with the
rosebuds in it, that's Miss Penelope's. She give it to me the summer
before she died. Bless her soul! That dress jest matched her face
exactly. Somehow her and her clothes always looked alike, and her
voice matched her face, too. One o' the things I'm lookin' forward
to, child, is seein' Miss Penelope agin and hearin' her sing. Voices
and faces is alike; there's some that you can't remember, and there's
some you can't forgit. I've seen a heap o' people and heard a heap o'
voices, but Miss Penelope's face was different from all the rest, and
so was her voice. Why, if she said 'Good mornin'' to you, you'd hear
that 'Good mornin' all day, and her singin'--I know there never was
anything like it in this world. My grandchildren all laugh at me for
thinkin' so much o' Miss Penelope's singin', but then they never heard
her, and I have: that's the difference. My grandchild Henrietta was
down here three or four years ago, and says she, 'Grandma, don't you
want to go up to Louisville with me and hear Patti sing?' And s