If he would say and tell you true, When your account has long been due, That ten per cent was charged to you, You’d swear until the air was blue.
If he helps you, then why not him, And don’t keep sending off your tin, But give it to your home merchants, And keep the gloss from off their pants.
There’s something in the falling snow, That brings back years of long ago, That makes you think of younger days, Behind a span of gallant bays.
The frosty air, the rosy dames, The secrets and the loving names, Of days gone by long years ago, Comes back today with falling snow.
The laughter pealed o’er rocks and trees, The songs re-echoed with the breeze, Of merry rides so bright and gay, Are chasing thru my mind today.
The biting air with keen delight, Puts crispness in the appetite, And mother’s pies of golden hue, Soon faded like the morning dew.
And how I wish I could today, Turn back the years the youthful way, And drive the bays and see them go, And blush with youth midst falling snow.
That’s Sallie over there in that potato patch. She has been endeavoring to tease from mother earth enough tubers to supply the family through a long winter. Nature in this and many other instances has been unkind. The rain waited too long and the one supply of food that fills so large a place are small as marbles, nevertheless this dear soul laboriously gathered them and is carrying them, pail at a time, and storing them away for a long, cold winter. Though the tubers are small and puny, she has a way of cooking them with such marked success that they would tickle the palate of a king and he’d be passing his plate the second time.
Sal does the housework, the buying of supplies, cares for the chickens, plants the garden, does the sewing, picks up the paint brush when necessary, and does about everything that anyone can do. She is past fifty years of age, most of them hard and bitter years. They have not been the kind of years where the goal has been worth the trials and bitterness. The streaks of silver are beginning to show in her dark hair, she is small in physique, clean limbed, lithe, resourceful, determined, and intelligent. Her schooling in the practical side of life is an attainment any one should be proud of. She is one of the most wiry and courageous women that has ever lived such a grand and noble life and kept the sad, dreary and lonely part locked up in her unselfish heart.