The Tinder-Box

ace and she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child,-but a man makes any kind of woman-affront into a lover's quarrel. T

he air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta and Nell and Jane being natural-born carpenter

e long tables to serve the barbecue dinner on, he said he

ow the Crag's team and wagon and Henrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman-impedimenta th

l the men in this crisis. It sounded sweet and cold as molasses dispenses itself to you in midwinter, and I could see it was a strain on Mamie and Caroline and

s in this civilized warfare. That's one reason I am such a go-between for Uncle Peter and the League, I am making votes for my man, so I consider i

t was why she went walking with him Sunday afternoon. Al

t and want the Five to consider it as almost sacred da

gon. Jane appointed Henrietta to sit and hold the slow old horses in case they should have got demoralized by the militant atmosphere pervading Glen

finger nails go with a rip every time she jerked a particularly tough old plank into subjection, and Aunt Augusta dispensed encouraging axioms about pioneer work as she banged along behind Jan

sting were the expressions that devastated Polk Hayes's and Lee Greenfield's faces

ections poised across the wheel of the wagon tugging at the middle of a heavy plank which Mrs. Dodd and I wer

he started to take the

was finally persuaded to go and leave us to our fate, and the expression on Lee's face as he looked up at torn, dirty, perspiring Caroline, with a smudge on her nose and blood on her hand from an abs

, but we built those tables, thereby disciplining masculine Gle

ing care of both the Kit and the Pup, laboriously assisted by panting Aunt Dilsie, because Jane explained to her so beautifully that she needed a lot of Henrietta's time, that Sallie acquiesced with good-natured bewilderment. Of course, Cousin Jasmine

undles for a letter from her son, which she thought said something about favoring woman's rights, and if it is like she

denly than I expect. I don't see any reason for people's not marrying immediately when they make up their minds, and my half of ours is made up strong enough to decidedly influence rapidity in his. But then I really don't believe that the Crag would care very much about the hi

public life, Nell?" I asked mildly. "Some of yo

up the courage to use, "I have forgot that I was ever influenced by his narrow-minded, primitive personalit

told me yet, and I am sure he doesn't realize it, that Jane had decided Folk's destiny. Nell is not twenty-one yet and she will find lots of men in the world that will be fully capable of

ts of suffering, to realize that a woman's destiny is anythin

ly, but I hope the time will never come when men get as hungry to see their women folks as said feminists get to see t

possible for the rally in the morning. She had walked to the gate with Polk at ten and hadn't come back until eleven, so, of course, she was ready to turn in. It was just foolish, primitive old convention that kept me from slipping on my slippers and dressing-gown-I've got the pretties

with one lobe of my brain and breathing wit

alls; and I don't stop at that. I feel sure that my tears are measured and my smiles are rejoiced over, and when I want a good day to come to me I ask for i

full of the wine of October. It came racing across the fields laden with harvest scents, blustering a bit now and then enough

along the edges of the rocks were strung with magenta berries and regiments of tall royal purple iron we

haughty that I trembled for the slaves under his command. His basket of "yarbs" was under the side of the rock in hoodoo-like shadows and the wagons of poor, innocent, sacrificed lambs and turkeys and sucking-pigs were backed up by the largest infernal pit. Petunia was already elbow deep in a cedar tub of c

e wetting up of the rally, because I don't believe we would have been equal to the situation with Aunt Augusta and Jane both prohibition enthusiasts, but it did so promote the sentiment of peace and good cheer during the day for us t

lad we had the foresight to provide other viands en

ey stretched out like the very garden of Eden itself, crossed by silver creeks, lined with broad roads and mantl

rs rising in my breast, as I saw the stream of wagons and carriages and buggies, wit

m. Jasper?" she turned and

with a trace of offense in his voice, as he stood over a half tub of butter mixing in his yarbs with mutterings that sounded like inc

tor-cars bringing the distinguished guests had even started from Bolivar. It was great to watch the farmers slap neighbors on the back, exchange news and toba

es behind their glasses, "is not only the bone and sinew but also the rich red blood in t

was a bit teary at their greetings. Big motherly women took me in their arms and younger ones laid their babies in my arms and laughed and cried over me, while every few minute

the crisis of the day. Jane is the reveille the Harpeth Valley has

tinguished Commission arrived a few minutes before noon, just as Jasper'

but Richard Hall himself? Good old big, strong dandy Dickie, how great it was to see him again, and if I had had my own heart in my breast it would have leaped with delight at the sight of him! But even the Crag's that I h

booming voice, as he took me by both shoulders

ight into his eyes as I always had, however, and something sent a keen pain through the exc

around Bolivar and Glendale, all over which are low-roofed old country houses which brood over families that cluster around the unit that one man and a woman make in their commonwealth. Nell's eyes were sweet

her spark-plug in her pocket,-only Richard calmly took it and put it in his,-t

aralyzed anybody but Aunt Augusta; and Mamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline and several more of the la

dition of Dickie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. What sav

I got my own eyes farther down into Cousin James's deep gray ones than I expected and it

he raised his glass and sm

e. He just dares me when he says it to me before other people. That reminds me, the harvest moon is full to-night and rises an hour later every evening from now on. I don't want to wait another

the five hundred people, who by that time were nice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had u

Chicago-that far away from the Harpeth Valley,-but I couldn't do it with my friends of pioneer generations looking on. A man or woman never

e her, so that he would be in place to command attention for her whe

that I believe they would have been obliged to pay exclusive attention to them if the things to eat had not been just as odoriferous and substantial. Befo

hat it is no wonder some of the old mothers in Isr

es-at-glass-houses throwing, and she hadn't said ten sent

gone over Harpeth Valley. She called all the concoctions by their right names, too, and she always gave the name of the originator, who was some dear old lady that was sleeping in the Greenwood at the foot of the hill, or in some grave over at Providence or Hillsboro or Bolivar, and who was gran

religious. I never heard anything like it in all my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused, tense, farmer faces, I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the Harpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirl wind on the woman-question that might attemp

the river, even in the time of Old Hickory. Everybody had something to say and got to his feet to s

aiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plump matrons anywhere from

and "riding saddlebags to suffering ever since," as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising from her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,-who had been so delighted wi

e men for many a day, because their strong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and fathers and sons have got their feet up on the bluff of Paradise

of the table to shake hands with her, but had to wait until she came out of the embrace of Nell

and how they need men to look after them, but she said something to Mr. Haley, who shook his head and then got up and pro

ther, into the right place, by having relays of pones browned to the right turn and potatoes at the prope

st for years. And as he had cleared away the last scrap from the last table, he leaned against a tree, exhausted and t

and Dickie, but I was glad then that I sat so I could look straight into his face as the light

h Pocket itself. He gave the Earth credit for the crops that she had yielded up for her children's sustenance. He described how she had bred forest kings for the building

great deep bell, he turned and looked out over the valley with an expression

r mother,

Harpeth. "She has bared her breasts to suckle us, covered us from sun and snow, and now she expects something from us. If she has built us strong and ready, then we are to answer when the world has

call of its grandeur into their eyes. We seemed to be looking across fields and forests and streams to the dim purple hills that might be

e east to balance the red old sun that was sinking in the west. Only the Magnate sat still in his place for several long minutes looking out across

the world might hear. And then suddenly it came over me in a great warm, uplifting, awe-inspiring rush that a woman who takes on herself voluntarily the responsibility of marrying a poet

achievement

ross into the sunset, "make me

r the maples everybody was gone, and I could hear the last rattle and whirl going down the hill. For a secon

that had at last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the fi

le, "shall we stay here forever and ever, or hurry down through the cemetery by the

ion of the theme, and have clapped him to my breast and been happy ever after. That is what a courageous man would have don

we got? Do you thi

t leads between the hedge into the little half-acre of those who rest. Then as I tried

arm that it was difficult

cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak, while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn't feel like honorabl

hat I want to hold Lee Greenfield to. How do I know that he hasn't had a

arry me the next favorable opportunity I get, if I die wi

under the circumstances. Surely he wouldn't refuse me, but ho