An’ ef I do say it ez shouldn’t, their weddin’ was the purtiest thet has ever took place in this county—­in my ricollection, which goes back distinc’ for over sixty year.

Everybody loves little Mary Elizabeth, an’ th’ aint a man, woman, or child in the place but doted on Sonny, even befo’ he turned into a book-writer.  But, of co’se, all the great honors they laid on him—­the weddin’ supper an’ dance in the Simpkins’s barn, the dec’rations o’ the church that embraced so many things he’s lectured about an’ all that—­why they was all meant to show fo’th how everybody took pride in him, ez a author o’ printed books.

You see he has give’ twelve lectures in the academy each term for the last three years, after studyin’ them three winters in New York, each year’s lectures different, but all relatin’ to our own forests an’ their dumb population.  That’s what he calls ’em.  Th’ ain’t a boy thet has attended the academy, sence he’s took the nachel history to teach, but’ll tell you thess what kind o’ inhabitants to look for on any particular tree.  Nearly every boy in the county’s got a cabinet—­an’ most of ’em have carpentered ’em theirselves, though I taught ’em how to do that after the pattern Sonny got me to make his by—­an’ you’ll find all sorts o’ specimens of what they designate ez “summer an’ winter resorts” in pieces of bark an’ cobweb an’ ol’ twisted tree-leaves in every one of ’em.

The boys thet dec’rated the barn for the dance say thet they ain’t a tree Sonny ever lectured about but was represented in the ornaments tacked up ag’inst the wall, an’ they wasn’t a space big ez yo’ hand, ez you know, doctor, thet wasn’t covered with some sort o’ evergreen or berry-branch, or somethin’.

An’ have you heerd what the ol’ nigger Proph’ says?  Of co’se he’s all unhinged in the top story ez anybody would be thet lived in the woods an’ e’t sca’cely anything but herbs an’ berries.  But, anyhow, he’s got a sort o’ gift o’ prophecy an’ insight, ez we all know.

Well, Proph’, he sez that while the weddin’ march was bein’ played in the church the night o’ Sonny’s weddin’ thet he couldn’t hear his own ears for the racket among all the live things in the woods.  An’ he says thet they wasn’t a frog, or a cricket, or katydid, or nothin’, but up an’ played on its little instrument, an’ thet every note they sounded fitted into the church music—­even to the mockin’-bird an’ the screech-owl.

Of co’se, I don’t say it’s so, but the ol’ nigger swears to it, an’ ef you dispute it with him an’ ask him how it come thet nobody else didn’t hear it, why he says that’s because them thet live in houses an’ eat flesh ain’t got the love o’ Grod in their hearts, an’ can’t expect to hear the songs of the songless an’ speech of the speechless.

That’s a toler’ble high-falutin figgur o’ speech for a nigger, but it’s thess the way he expresses it.

You know he’s been seen holdin’ conversation with dumb brutes, more ’n once-t—­in broad daylight.