me my a-b-c’s.  For she said, ’With your head-piece, Aunt Dally, it hain’t too late for you to die a scholar yet; you got to git l’arning.’  And, women, I got it.  I knowed all my letters and were quite a piece in the primer before I left, and Evy here she aims to finish my education and have me reading Scriptur’ come summer.  Yes, it all seemed too good and fair to be true, and I lived in a daze.  I come to myself sufficient’, though, to have the little gal write John to hire a wagon and bring Marthy and all the young uns to the railroad for to meet me, and see the world and the cyars; and also, realizing I were going to git back my faculty and workingness, and not being able to make the doctor take ary cent for his doings,—­he said it were the least the Blue Grass could do for the mountains,—­I tuck what money I had left and bought me some fine store clothes for to match my teeth and my innard feelings.  ’Peared like I could n’t noway feel at home in them sorry gyarments I had wore in sorry days.

“But it were not till I sot in the railroad cyars ag’in, and the level country had crinkled up into hills, and the hills had riz up into mountains, all a-blazin’ out majestical’ in the joy of yaller and scarlet and green and crimson, that I raley got my sight and knowed I had it.  Yes, the Blue Grass is fine and pretty and smooth and heavenly fair; but the mountains is my nateral and everlastin’ element.  They gethered round me at my birth; they bowed down their proud heads to listen at my first weak cry; they cradled me on their broad knees; they suckled me at their hard but ginerous breasts.  Whether snow-kivered, or brown, or green, or many-colored, they never failed to speak great, silent words to me whensoever I lifted up my eyes to ’em; they still holds in their friendly embrace all that is dear to me, living or dead; and, women, if I don’t see ’em in heaven, I ’ll be lonesome and homesick thar.

“Yes, when I laid eyes on them well-beloved forms, I knowed for sure I had my sight.  And the folks in the cyar they knowed it, too.  I am in gineral one to keep things locked and pinned down inside me; but for once I let go all holts and turnt a-loose.  Then and thar I bu’sted out into shouts of joy and songs of praise; I magnified the Lord and all His works; I testified of my salvation from blindness of body and sperrit; I hollered till natur’ went plumb back on me and I could n’t fetch nary ’nother breath.

“Then when I stepped off the train, thar was the living human faces of my own blood, John and Marthy, and the eight young uns whose countenances I had never beheld.  And as I gazed, women, more scales drapped from my long-blind eyes.  In the face of John here, the boy I had allus abused for no-git-up and shiftless, I beheld loving-kindness and onselfishness writ large and fair; looking on little Evy, I seed love divine in her tender eyes, and light raying out from her yaller hair and from the other seven smaller