Story-Tell Lib | Page 7

there was a sore place, a sort o' scar, that ached and smarted all day
and all night, and never, never healed up. And bimeby the poor plant
got all wore out with the achin' and the mournin' and the missin' and
she 'peared to feel her heart all a-dryin' up and stoppin', and her leaves
turned yeller and wrinkled, and--she was dead. She couldn't live on, ye

see, without her little berry.
They called it bein' dead, folks did, and it looked like it, for there she
lay without a sign of life for a long, long, long spell. 'Twas for days and
weeks and months anyway. But it didn't seem so long to the mother
plant. She shet up her eyes, feelin' powerful tired and lonesome, and the
next thing she knowed she opened 'em again, and she was wide awoke.
She hardly knowed herself, though, she was so fresh and juicy and 'live,
so kind o' young every way. Fust off she didn't think o' anything but
that, how good and well she felt, and how beautiful things was all
'round her. Then all of a suddent she rec'lected her little berry, and she
says to herself, "Oh, dear, dear me! If only my own little berry was here
to see me now, and know how I feel!" She thought she said it to herself,
but mebbe she talked out loud, for, jest as she said it, somebody
answered her. 'T was a Angel, and he says, "Why your little berry does
see you,--look there." And she looked, and she see he was p'intin' to the
beautif'lest little plant you never see,--straight and nice, with little bits
o' soft green leaves, with the sun a-shinin' through 'em, and,--well,
somehow, you never can get it through your head how mothers take in
things,--she knowed cert'in sure that was her little berry.
The Angel begun to speak. He was goin' to explain how, if she hadn't
never lost her berry, 'twouldn't never 'a' growed into this pretty plant,
but, he see, all of a suddent, that he needn't take the trouble. She
showed in her face she knowed all about it,--every blessed thing. I tell
ye, even angels ain't much use explainin' when there's mothers, and it's
got to do with their own child'en. Yes, the mother plant see it all,
without tellin'. She was jest a mite 'shamed but she was terr'ble pleased.

The Stony Head
V
When little Lib told the story I give below, Deacon Zenas Welcome
was one of the listeners. The deacon was a son of old Elder Welcome
who had been many years before the pastor of the little church in a

neighboring village. Elder Welcome was one of the old-fashioned sort
not so common in these days, a good man, but stern and somewhat
harsh. He preached only the terrors of the law, dwelt much upon the
doctrines, the decrees, election, predestination, and eternal punishment,
and rarely lingered over such themes as the fatherhood of God, his love
to mankind, and his wonderful gift to a lost world. The son followed in
his father's footsteps. He was a hard, austere, melancholy man,
undemonstrative and reticent, shutting out all brightness from his own
life, and clouding many an existence going on around him. I have
always thought that his unwonted presence among us that day had a
purpose, and that he had come to spy out some taint of heterodoxy in
Lib's tales, to reprove and condemn. He went away quietly, however,
when the story was ended, and we heard nothing of reproof or
condemnation.
The Stony Head
Once there was somethin' way up on the side of a mountain that looked
like a man's head. The rocks up there'd got fixed so's they jest made a
great big head and face, and everybody could see it as plain as could be.
Folks called it the Stony Head, and they come to see it from miles away.
There was a man lived round there jest where he could see the head
from his winder. He was a man that things had gone wrong with all
along; he'd had lots o' trouble, and he didn't take it very easy. He fretted
and complained, and blamed it on other folks, and more partic'lar
on--God. And one day--he'd jest come to live in them parts--he looked
out of his winder, and he see, standin' out plain ag'in the sky, he see
that Stony Head. It looked real ha'sh and hard and stony and dark, and
all of a suddent the man thought it was--God.
"Yes," he says to hisself, "that's jest the way I 'most knowed he looked,
ha'sh and hard and stony and dark, and that's him." The man was
dreadful scaret of it, but some