Toward sundown of that first great day of the Friendship Village Home-coming we was the happiest, wore-outest set of folks I about ever see. Not everybody we’d expected and hoped for had come--even Abner Dawes, he hadn’t showed up. But then he was such a big man that I donno’s any of us thought he’d come, any of the time. Only we did enjoy having it in the _Daily_ every few nights that he’d be there. The editor of the Friendship _Evening Daily_ got six distinct locals out of it for “Supper Table Jottings”--six nights hand-running. Thus: 1. Abner Dawes is expected to arrive from the east for the Home-coming. 2. Abner Dawes will arrive from the east the last of the week. The occasion is the Home-coming. 3. Word has been received that Abner Dawes will reach here Thursday evening to attend the Home-coming. 4. Abner Dawes will reach here to-morrow night. 5. Abner Dawes will reach here this evening on the Six fifty-nine, for a brief sojourn. 6. Abner Dawes arrived last evening and is quartered at the Opera House hotel. Some we hadn’t thought of turned up last minute, and had to tell folks who they were and then--my, what a welcome! Every few minutes, all day long, we’d hear a little shouting, and see a little crowd, and we’d all rush over, and there’d be somebody just got there, and everybody’d be calling ’em old names, and shaking hands with the children and kissing the grand-children. It was a real day. It’d be a day I’d like to talk about even if nothing else had happened but the day being just the day. Mis’ Sykes and I were in Eppleby’s booth, and in back of it the children was all trimmed and ready to begin their march, when I heard an unusual disturbance just outside. I looked, and I saw Lisbeth, that Eppleby had asked to come and help tend his booth that night, and she was just getting there, with Chris trotting alongside of her. But they weren’t making the disturbance. Most of that was Eppleby, shaking both the hands of a big, smooth-boned, brown-skinned man that was shouting at his lungs’ top: “_Eppleby Bebbleby_ _Wooden-leg,_ _Lost his knife_ _Playing mumblety-peg._” with all the gusto of a psalm. And Eppleby was shouting back at him something about “_Abner Dawes he comes to late_ _The wood was split and things was great._” And it was Abner actually come and getting himself welcomed by Eppleby just like one of us. And Abner begun remembering us all and calling us by name.