The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-14


 A car with the chairman of the N commission, whose name even
 would have paralyZed anybody but. Aunt Augusta, and Mamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline and several more of the ladies made up the rest of the committee which had gone to es- cort the distinguished guests to the rally. The Graz was in the last car with H perfectly delicious old gray haired edition of Dickie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. What saved them was Polk appearing between us with three long mint topped glasses.
 I'm glad old Dick immediately had his eyebrows well tangled in the mint of his julep, for I got my own eyes farther down into Cousin James deep gray ones than I expected and it was hard to come up. I hadn't had plunge in them for three days and went pretty deep
 Eve he said softly, as he raised his glass and smiled across his green tuft
 Yes, I know he knows that I know there is an answer to that name when he says it that way, but Pm not going to give it until am ready and the place is rome ntically secluded enough to suit me. He just dares me when he says it 10 me before other people. That reminds me, the harvest moon is full tonight and rises an hour later every evening from now on. II don't want to wait another month before propose to him. I've always chosen moonlight for that catastrophe of my life I wonder if men have as good times planning the continuation of their suits as I am having with miner
 But had to come down quickly to a little thing like the raNy and give. the signal to feed all the 300 people, who . by that time were nice, polite, raven ing wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey pit to keep them from get ting too brown while the llsmbs caught up with them
 Jane was the master of ceremonies, because I balked at the laat minute. 1 think I would be capable Df managing even a national convention in Chicago, that far away from the IIarpeth val ley, but I couldn't do 1t with my friends of pioneer generations looking on. A man or woman neyar grows up at all to the woman who has knitted baby socks for them or tie man who has let them ride down th,1 hill on the front of his saddle.
 And at the head of the center table Jane asked the Graz to sit beside her, @o that he would be in place to com mand attention for her when she want ed to speak and where ever ybody could hear him when he did.
 lanes speech of welcome made such an impression that it is no wonder some of the old mothers in Israel got up to itefate it as the dinner pro gressed.
 She, as usual, refrained from preju- dice smashing and stones at glass houses throwing, and she hadn't said ten sentences before she had the whole feeding multitude with her.
 She began on the way our pioneer mothers had to contrive to keep larders stocked and good things ready for the households, and she tick1ed the palate of every man present by mentioning every achievement in culinary way that every woman of hia household had made in all the generations that had gone over Harpeth valley. She called all the connections by their right names, too, and she always gave the name of the originator, who was some dear old lady that WAS sleeping fin the Greenwood at the 9oot of the hill or in some grave oveg at Provi- Aence or Hillsboro or Bolivar and who rwas grandmother or great-grandmoth- er to a hundred or more of the guests II had EVondered why Jane had been boring over that old autograph manu- script receipt book in my desk fo1 days, and as she paid these modern resurrecting compliments to the long gone cooks tears and laughs literally deluged the table.
 And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the doInestic woman his tory of the valley Jane showed in the most insidious way possible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which had been woven the wool of the whole history of their part of the nation, political financial and religious. I never heard anything like it in all my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused, tense, farmer faces I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the Harpeth valley and built brake that would stop any whirlwind on the wo- man question that might attempt to come in on>us over the ridge from the outside world. They saw her point and were hard hit. When votes for women" gets to coming down Prayi- dence road the farmers will hitch up a wagon and take mother and the schildren with well packed lunch bas- ket to meet it half way This is a prophecyi
 Mother Mayberry from Providence, who is the grand old woman of the whole valley, having established her claim to the title thirty years ago by taking up her dead doctor husband s practice and riding saddlebags to suf- fering ever since as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising from her seat by the side Of one of the entranced magnates- who had been so delighted Fyfth her and her phiIosophies that he eou1d hardly do his dinner justice-and addressing the rally in her wonderful