She favored rib and otter; I kinder leaned toward herrin’-bone and butnut.

We had had a agreeable talk all the way, though I couldn’t help seein’ she wuz too hard on butnut, and slightin’ in her remarks on herrin’-bone.

Anyway, she knew I wuz with her in the body; but as she ketched sight of the door that wuz a-goin’ to let her in where she could begin to do good, her mind jest soared right up, and she forgot everything and everybody, and she let that door slam right back and hit me on my right arm, and laid me up for over five weeks.

And I fell right back on Edna Garvin, and she is lame, and it knocked her over backwards onto Sally Ann Bobbetses little girl, and she fell flat down, and Miss Gowdey on top of her, and Miss Gowdey, bein’ a-walkin’ along lost in thought about the bedquilt, and thinkin’ how much battin’ we should need in it, and not lookin’ for a obstacle in her path, slipped right up and fell forwards.  Wall, a-tryin’ to save little Annie Gowdey from bein’ squashed right down, Miss Gowdey throwed herself sideways and strained her back.  She weighs two hundred, and is loose-jinted.

And she hain’t got over it to this day.  She insists on’t that she loosened her spine in the affair.

And I d’no but she did!

But the child wuz gin up to die.  So for weeks and weeks the Bobbetses and all of Sally Ann’s relations (she wuz a Henzy and wide connected in the Methodist meetin’-house) had to give up all their time a-hangin’ over that sick-bed.

And the Garvins wuz mad as hens, and they bein’ connected with most everybody in the Dorcuss Society—­and it wuzn’t over than above large—­why, take it with my bein’ laid up and the children havin’ to be home so much, Sister Blanker in that one slam jest about cleaned out the hull Methodist meetin’-house.

The quilt wuzn’t touched after that night, and the heathen lay cold all winter, for all I know.

I had all I could do to take care of my own arm, catnip and lobela alternately and a-follerin’ after each other I pursued for weeks and weeks, and the pain wuz fearful.

Sister Blanker wuz about the only one who come out hull, and she had plenty of time to set down and mourn over a lack of opportunities to do good, and to talk a sight about the lukewarmness of members of the meetin’-house in good works.  And there they wuz to home a-sufferin’, and it wuz her own self who had brung it all on.

You see, as I have said more formally, in our efforts to march forwards to do good it is highly neccessary to see that we hain’t a-tromplin’ on anybody; and in order to help sinners in Africa it hain’t neccessary to knock down Christians in New Jersey and Rhode Island, or to stomp onto professors in Maine.

Howsumever, that is some folkses ways.

Wall, I’d a been a-lookin’ at the panorama with one half of my mind and admirin’ the beauty round me with the other half.