By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which – once, twice, and again – he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue – he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene – perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium[14]. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon – then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
Eliza Calvert Hall
Aunt Jane’s Album
They were a bizarre mass of color on the sweet spring landscape, those patchwork quilts, swaying in a long line under the elms and maples. The old orchard made a blossoming background for them, and farther off on the horizon rose the beauty of fresh verdure and purple mist on those low hills, or ‘knobs’, that are to the heart of the Kentuckian[15] as the Alps to the Swiss or the sea to the sailor.
I opened the gate softly and paused for a moment between the blossoming lilacs that grew on each side of the path. The fragrance of the white and the purple blooms was like a resurrection-call over the graves of many a dead spring; and as I stood, shaken with thoughts as the flowers are with the winds, Aunt Jane came around from the back of the house, her black silk cape fluttering from her shoulders, and a calico sunbonnet hiding her features in its cavernous depth. She walked briskly to the clothes-line and began patting and smoothing the quilts where the breeze had disarranged them.
‘Aunt Jane,’ I called out, ‘are you having a fair all by yourself?’
She turned quickly, pushing back the sunbonnet from her eyes.
‘Why, child,’ she said, with a happy laugh, ‘you come pretty nigh skeerin’ me. No, I ain’t havin’ any fair; I’m jest givin’ my quilts their spring airin’. Twice a year I put ’em out in the sun and wind; and this mornin’ the air smelt so sweet, I thought it was a good chance to freshen ’em up for the summer. It’s about time to take ’em in now.’
She began to fold the quilts and lay them over her arm, and I did the same. Back and forth we went from the clothes-line to the house, and from the house to the clothes-line, until the quilts were safely housed from the coming dewfall and piled on every available chair in the front room. I looked at them in sheer amazement. There seemed to be every pattern that the ingenuity of woman could devise and the industry of woman put together, – ‘four-patches,’ ‘nine-patches,’ ‘log-cabins,’ ‘wild-goose chases,’ ‘rising suns,’ hexagons, diamonds, and only Aunt Jane knows what else. As for color, a Sandwich Islander[16] would have danced with joy at the sight of those reds, purples, yellows, and greens.
‘Did you really make all these quilts, Aunt Jane?’ I asked wonderingly.
Aunt Jane’s eyes sparkled with pride.
‘Every stitch of ’em, child,’ she said, ‘except the quiltin’. The neighbors used to come in and help some with that. I’ve heard folks say that piecin’ quilts was nothin’ but a waste o’ time, but that ain’t always so. They used to say that Sarah Jane Mitchell would set down right after breakfast and piece till it was time to git dinner, and then set and piece till she had to git supper, and then piece by candle-light till she fell asleep in her cheer.
‘I ricollect goin’ over there one day, and Sarah Jane was gittin’ dinner in a big hurry, for Sam had to go to town with some cattle, and there was a big basket o’ quilt pieces in the middle o’ the kitchen floor, and the house lookin’ like a pigpen, and the children runnin’ around half naked. And Sam he laughed, and says he, “Aunt Jane, if we could wear quilts and eat quilts we’d be the richest people in the country.” Sam was the best-natured man that ever was, or he couldn’t ’a’ put up with Sarah Jane’s shiftless ways. Hannah Crawford said she sent Sarah Jane a bundle o’ caliker once by Sam, and Sam always declared he lost it. But Uncle Jim Matthews said he was ridin’ along the road jest behind Sam, and he saw Sam throw it into the creek jest as he got on the bridge. I never blamed Sam a bit if he did.
‘But there never was any time wasted on my quilts, child. I can look at every one of ’em with a clear conscience. I did my work faithful; and then, when I might ’a’ set and held my hands, I’d make a block or two o’ patchwork, and before long I’d have enough to put together in a quilt. I went to piecin’ as soon as I was old enough to hold a needle and a piece o’ cloth, and one o’ the first things I can remember was settin’ on the back door-step sewin’ my quilt pieces, and mother praisin’ my stitches. Nowadays folks don’t have to sew unless they want to, but when I was a child there warn’t any sewin’-machines, and it was about as needful for folks to know how to sew as it was for ’em to know how to eat; and every child that was well raised could hem and run and backstitch and gether and overhand by the time she was nine years old. Why, I’d pieced four quilts by the time I was nineteen years old, and when me and Abram set up housekeepin’ I had bedclothes enough for three beds.
‘I’ve had a heap o’ comfort all my life makin’ quilts, and now in my old age I wouldn’t take a fortune for ’em. Set down here, child, where you can see out o’ the winder and smell the lilacs, and we’ll look at ’em all. You see, some folks has albums to put folks’ pictures in to remember ’em by, and some folks has a book and writes down the things that happen every day so they won’t forgit ’em; but, honey, these quilts is my albums and my di’ries, and whenever the weather’s bad and I can’t git out to see folks, I jest spread out my quilts and look at ’em and study over ’em, and it’s jest like goin’ back fifty or sixty years and livin’ my life over agin.
‘There ain’t nothin’ like a piece o’ caliker for bringin’ back old times, child, unless it’s a flower or a bunch o’ thyme or a piece o’ pennyroy’l – anything that smells sweet. Why, I can go out yonder in the yard and gether a bunch o’ that purple lilac and jest shut my eyes and see faces I ain’t seen for fifty years, and somethin’ goes through me like a flash o’ lightnin’, and it seems like I’m young agin jest for that minute.’
14
delirium – mental state marked by confused thinking, hallucinations, etc. as a result of the intoxication of the brain caused by fever or some other physical disorder.
16
a Sandwich Islander – a resident of the Sandwich Islands, the second name of the Hawaiian Islands, a group of the volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean; the first European who visited the islands in 1778 was Captain James Cook (1728–1779).