SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room.

The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came.

By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests.

"Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim.
The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused, in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him from a seat in the warmest corner.

The old man was now turning ninety, and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have indignantly repudiated the idea.