Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1896-01-16
"A WEDDING TOMBSTONE.
pY o,.aaIcE I. cLrNemAs.

!. ! : !. ! !
40 you never heard
n ON tell of Melindy Bar
~ bour's weddin n
" <NN tombstone?" said
MWhS>M " grandma, in tone
I&68H N of surprise. "For
SVVfAAA the lands sake, l
~ ASRU thought everybody
-ASZ knew about that"
/ confessed the
most nbjcct Ignorance and Immediately
drew up to the fire. This was partly to
gain information and partly because,
although the fireplace was wide and
dcep-throated and big logsw were blazing
In it, there were biting draughts of
singing air coming in at the loosely-fit-
ting door. For grandmother would not
he persuaded to leave the home that had
been hers for so years, and which now
showed some signs of decay. She sat
knitting vigorously by the freight,
for, although she had all the modern
convcnicnccs of heating and lighting,
her big fireplace cast its ruddy glow
out into the room through all the long
winter evenings. l was an angular
schoolgirl of Is then, with n great love
Of the romantic, and was on n four
weeks visit at the old homestead. 1t
seemed never to occur to grandma that,
having been raised in n different part of
the country, the happenings at Ragged
Corner (where she livcd) would nat
urally be unknown to me. She always
expressed fresh surprise ut my ig.
norance on these subjects. After knit
ting few minutes in silence, she be-
gan:
"You've seen the old stone house dowr
on the bank of the river, all shut in with
pines and eyergreens? It's nigh hun
dred years old When was born it had
been built ten years. When was {
young married woman the Barbours
came to live there, and they were proud
high-feelin' people that nobody could
get acquainted with. That's what mad,
'cm take it so dretful hard when-but
here | am, way head of my story. YOU
zee, Mr.. Barbour embezzled or did some
thing of that kind, and went to prison
''Thcn his wife and little hoy shut
themselves up in the stone house ant
never went outside the gate hardly
She's had good deal of schoolin'. his
mother had, and she taught him her
self as long as she could, and then ht
bought books and studied by himself
lie tried going to school when he was &
small boy, but one of the scholars
threw it Mt him about his father, and
Mortimer nearly killed him, and after
that his mother KEEP him home. And sh,
was such proud woman, was Mis- Bar
bour, and lofty and severe in her ways
She wouldn't let nobody sympathizt
with her, which everybody wanted to
as there's so little going on in plac,
like Ragged Corner. Mis- Barbour wa:
real selfish with her grief, so she got her
self dsliked, besides folks bein' sus
picious after the way her husband
turned out. What did they live on
Oh, the boy farmed it, and later they d,
say he wrote books on what they called
natural history, though to my mind i
was the most unnatural stuff / eve
heard tell of-all about beetles and bug
with 300 muscles in their Leads, and a
could carry 200 times their own weigh
ON their own backs, which everybod.
knows he must have got up rs he wen
nlong. They were dretfully taken VI
with each other, he and his mother
and she believed everything he said wa
20, even about the bugs and beetles
But she was his own born mother, ant
chat explains it.
"When she died, Mortimer liked t.
went crazy. lie planted her grave wit
vi'lets and pansies, and at the head wa
white marble monument he had gon
to the city for-nothing nearer woul
suit him. But he didn't display no taste
Nothing on it, my dear, but the oil
lady's name and the date she dicd--no