"You'd think I'd hate to part with the family belongin's? Well, you wouldn't think so if you knew how much trouble these same belongin's have been to me all my born days. You know everybody has idols. Some women make idols of their children, and now and then you'll find a woman bowin' down and worshippin' her husband, but Mother's idols were chairs and tables and bedsteads. You've noticed, haven't you, that there's always one child in a family that'll get nearly everything belongin' to the family? They'll claim this and that and the other, and the rest o' the children will give in to 'em jest to keep from havin' a quarrel. Well, Mother was the claimin' one in our family, and whatever she claimed she got, and whatever she got she held on to it. If Mother'd been content with the things that her mother handed down to her, it wouldn't 'a' been so bad, but there never was a member o' the family died that Mother didn't manage to get hold o' some of the belongin's. If there was a sale, she was the first one there, and she'd take her seat right under the auctioneer's hammer, and if she made up her mind to have an old chair or an old table, why, nobody ever could outbid her; and in the course o' time the house got to be more like an old junk shop than a home. I used to tell Mother she got everything belongin' to her dead kinfolks except their tombstones, and I wouldn't 'a' been surprised any day to come home and find one or two nice old gravestones settin' up on the mantel-piece for ornaments, or propped up handy in a corner. "And every piece of that old mahogany, Maria, was polished till you could see your face in it. The first thing after breakfast, Mother'd get a piece o' chamois skin or an old piece o' flannel, and she'd go around rubbin' up her chairs and tables and lookin' for scratches on 'em; and as soon as I was old enough to hold a rag, I had to do a certain amount o' polishin' every day, and when Mother's rheumatism settled in her arms, all the polishin' fell to me. It looked like the furniture was on Mother's mind night and day, and it was: 'Samantha, have you polished your grandfather's secretary?' 'Samantha, don't forget to rub off the parlor center-table.' No matter what I wanted to do, I couldn't do it till that old furniture was attended to. When I look back, Maria, it seems to me I've been livin' all my life in the valley of the shadow of old mahogany. You know how it is when the sun comes out after a long spell of cloudy weather. Well, that's jest the way it was the day that old mahogany furniture went out o' the house, and this pretty yellow furniture came in. I really believe that was the happiest day of my life.