“I ain't a-faultinn ye, Mary Ann,” interposed Uriah gently. “I know haow 't is. I was on'y tellin' ye. I git I git a kind o' hum'sick sometimes. 'Pears like as if I sh'd feel more resigned like.... Don't ye cry, Mary Ann. I know, I know. You feel julluk I do 'baout back home, an' all luk that.” O woman! When the heft of thy intellect is thrown against a problem, something has got to give. Not long after, Uriah sits down to dinner, and can hardly ask a blessing, he has to swallow so. A pie is on the table! “Gosh, Mary Ann, but this is good!” says he, holding out his hand for the third piece. “This is lickinn good!” And he celebrates her achievement far and wide. “My Mary Ann med me a pie t' other day, was the all-firedest best pie I ever et.” “Med you what?” “Med me a pie.” “Pie? Whutch talkinn' baout? Can't git nummore pies naow. Frot 's all gin aout.” “I golly, she med it just the same. Smartest woman y' ever see.” The man dribbled at the mouth. “What sh' make it aout o'?” “Vinegar an' worter, I think she said. I d' know 's I ever et anythinn I relished julluk that. My Mary Ann, tell yew! She's 'baout's smart 's they make 'em.” I wish I knew who she really was whom I have called Mary Ann Kinney, she that made the first vinegar-pie. I wish I knew where her grave is that I might lay upon it a bunch of flowers, such as she knew and liked--sweet-william, and phlox, and larkspur, and wild columbine. It couldn't make it up to her for all the hardships she underwent when she was bringing up a family in that wild, western country, and especially that fall when they all had the “fever 'n' ager” so bad, Uriah and the twins chilling one day, and Hiram and Sophronia Jane the next, and she just as miserable as any of them, but keeping up somehow, God only knows how. It couldn't make it up to her, but as I laid the pretty posies against the leaning headstone on which is written: “A Loving Wife, a Mother Dear, Faithful Friend Lies Buried Here.” I believe she 'd get word of it somehow, and understand what I was trying to say by it.