Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue: “Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett,” she said, with her disarming smile, “except that there is not quite enough to go around.” The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something really worth while. Then she tossed off: “‘’Tain’t always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but sometimes the scarcity thereof.’” Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of us to say a word of praise to an author, while unconscious of his relationship to the book praised. Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature of our auditor! How we feel ourselves anointed with his approval, our good taste and critical faculty how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long way towards mitigating the discomfitures caused by the reverse of this unctuous blunder. “The Book of Hiram,” said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, “is a book—it do surprise me that it escapes your notice back East. You ever heard tell of the Book of Mormon?” Mary assented. “Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more undefiled. The youngest child can read it without asking a single embarrassing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it without having any fleshly meditations intrudin’ on his piety.” The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon, and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal and wash the dishes. “That’s the kind of book for me,” continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously swishing about in the soapy water. “Story-books don’t count none with me these days. It’s my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot too much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print folks. Flesh and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from the on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck in compassion. I’ve pondered on that a whole lot, seem’ a heap of indifference to every-day calamity, and the way I assay it is like this: print folks has terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and worriments by the authors of their being. The trimmings to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don’t you reckon I’d be willin’ to have a spell of trouble if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in? Yes, indeed, I’d be willin’ to turn a few of them shades of anguish, ‘gray’s ashes,’ ‘pale as death,’ and so on, if they’d give me the dress novel ladies seems to have for them special occasions.” “But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett,” observed Judith Rodney.