BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mrs. Petrie to the Author; Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner's study in _The Southern Home Journal_ (Louisville).
[From _The Evening Post_ (Louisville, Kentucky)]
She sat upon the edge of the veranda, fanning herself with her "split" sunbonnet, a tall, angular woman, whose faded calico gown "lost connection" at the waist line. Her spring being dry, she came to our well for water. Discovering that Angeline Keaton was a "character," I invariably inveigled her to rest awhile on our cool piazza before retracing her steps up the steep, rocky hillside to her cabin home.
"I missed you yesterday," I said as a starter.
"Yes'm," she answered in a voice harsh and strident, yet touched with a peculiar sibilant quality characteristic of the Kentucky backwoodsman, "and thar wuz others that missed me, too!"
Settling herself comfortably, she produced from some hidden source a box of snuff and plied her brush vigorously.
"We-all have got inter a wrangle over at Zion erbout the church music," she began. "I and Lum, my old man, has been the leaders ever since we moved here from Lick-skillet. We wuz alluz on hand--Lum with his tunin' fork and me with my strong serpraner. When it come to linin' off a song, Lum wuz pintedly hard to beat. Why, folks come from fur and near to hear us, and them city folks, at Mis' Bowles' last summer, 'lowed thar warn't nothing in New York that could tech us. One of 'em offered us a dollar to sing inter a phonygraf reckerd, but we wuz afeerd to put our lives in jopperdy by dabblin' in 'lectricerty. But even celebrerty has its drawbacks, and a 'profit is not without honor in his own country,' as the saying is. A passel of 'em got jellus, a church meeting was called, unbeknownst to us, and ermong 'em they agreed to make a change in the music at old Zion. That peaked-faced Betty Button wuz at the bottom of it. Ever since she tuk that normal course at Bowling Green she's been endeverin' to push herself inter promernence here at Bear Waller. Fust she got up a class in delsarty, but even Bear Waller warn't dull ernough to take to that foolishness! Then she canvassed the county with a cuttin' system and a book called 'Law at a Glance.' Now she's teaching vokle culshure. She orter know singers, like poits, is born, not made! Jest wantin' to sing won't do it. It takes power. It's give up mine's the powerfullest voice in all Bear Waller. I kin bring old Brindle in when she's grazing in the woods, back o' Judge Bowles' medder, and I simply step out on the portico and call Lum to dinner when he's swoppin' yarns down to the store quarter o' mile away. Fur that matter, though, a deef and dum man could fetch Lum to _vittles_.