"Up through Nater to Nater's God." So I had looked up through her glorious poems of Love and Home and Childhood and Beauty, her divine poems and statutes, up to the author, and my soul had knelt to her, and thinkses I, I am now on the eve of enterin' a home more perfect and beautiful than my eyes have ever beheld, presided over by a perfect angel. Of course I didn't spoze she had wings or a halo, knowin' a woman couldn't git around sweepin' and dustin' worth a cent with white feather wings, and knowin' the halo would more'n as likely as not drop off when she wuz smoothin' rugs or pickin' posies to ornament her mantelry piece. But I expected to see a woman perfected as I had never seen her before in every way. And I not only paid attention to the outside of our two frames, but I tried to pick out the very finest soul garment I had by me, to clothe my sperit in, knowin' then that it wuz hardly worthy of her.
But my meditations wuz broke in on about a mild from Pennell Hill by seein' a strange lookin' group of children ahead on us; they wuz bareheaded and clad in ragged dirty garments, and their faces and hands and feet wuz as near to Nater's heart as dirt could make 'em.
Their manners, too, wuz sassy, and grotesque in the extreme, for when we stopped and I asked 'em politely if they could tell us where Miss Evangeline Piddock lived, the oldest one sung out:
"What do you want with her! You can't see her anyway, she's abed!"
"No," sez another of 'em, "she won't look at you, you're too homely." And still another stuck a grimy forefinger on the side of a smudgy nose and sez, "What are you givin' us?" And then all three on 'em yelled out, "Rubber neck! Rubber neck!" Some sort of a
