up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks;
and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing
wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing
a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and
underneath the picture it said “And Art Thou
Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas.” These was
all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn’t somehow
seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a
little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody
was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot
more of these pictures to do, and a body could see
by what she had done what they had lost. But
I reckoned that with 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:
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.
