By and by a wind began to shake the popple leaves above us and the sound soothed me like the whispered "hush-sh" of a gentle mother.
We dressed with unusual care in the morning.

After the chores were done and we had had our breakfast we went up-stairs to get ready.
Aunt Deel called at the bottom of the stairs in a generous tone: "Peabody, if I was you I'd put on them butternut trousers--ayes! an' yer new shirt an' hat an' necktie, but you must be awful careful of 'em--ayes." The hat and shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel.

Poor soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties.

It was that ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose.
Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such a crisis.
Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam and traded grain and salts for what he called a "rip roarin' fine suit o' clothes" with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three shillings a cord.

How often we looked back to those better days! The clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture out of the neighborhood.