follow them,' but that ain't so. They go, and
maybe they do rest, but their works stay right here, unless they're
the sort that don't outlast the usin'. Now, some folks has money to
build monuments with--great, tall, marble pillars, with angels on top
of 'em, like you see in Cave Hill and them big city buryin'-grounds.
And some folks can build churches and schools and hospitals to keep
folks in mind of 'em, but all the work I've got to leave behind me is
jest these quilts, and sometimes, when I'm settin' here, workin' with
my caliker and gingham pieces, I'll finish off a block, and I laugh
and say to myself, 'Well, here's another stone for the monument.'

"I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a
curious sort of a monument--'bout as perishable as the sweepin' and
scrubbin' and mendin'. But if folks values things rightly, and knows
how to take care of 'em, there ain't many things that'll last longer'n
a quilt. Why, I've got a blue and white counterpane that my mother's
mother spun and wove, and there ain't a sign o' givin' out in it yet.
I'm goin' to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville,
Mary Frances' oldest child. She was down here last summer, and I was
lookin' over my things and packin' 'em away, and she happened to see
that counterpane, and says she, 'Grandma, I want you to will me
that.' And says I: 'What do you want with that old thing, honey? You
know you wouldn't sleep under such a counterpane as that.' And says
she, 'No, but I'd hang it up over my parlor door for a--"

"Portiere?" I suggested, as Aunt Jane hesitated for the unaccustomed
word.

"That's it, child. Somehow I can't ricollect these new-fangled words,
any more'n I can understand these new-fangled ways. Who'd ever 'a'
thought that folks'd go to stringin' up bed-coverin's in their doors?
And says I to Janie, 'You can hang your great-grandmother's
counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but,' says I,
'don't you ever make a door-curtain out o' one o' my quilts.' But la!
the way things turn around, if I was to come back fifty years from
now, like as not I'd find 'em usin' my quilts for window-curtains or
door-mats."

We both laughed, and there rose in my mind a picture of a
twentieth-century house decorated with Aunt Jane's "nine-patches" and
"rising suns." How could the dear old woman know that the same
esthetic sense that had drawn from their obscurity the white and blue
counterpanes of colonial d