Good land! no skein of yarn, no matter how smooth it is, and no matter how neat the swifts run, nor how fast the winder is—nuthin’ of that kind can compare with the skein of life hung onto the swifts of time—how fast they run, how the threads fly, how impossible it is to stop ’em or make ’em go slower, or faster, or anything! They jest turn, and turn, and turn, and the day’s reel offen the swifts, and the months and the years. Why, if you jest stopped still in your tracks and meditated on it, it would be enough to make you half crazy with the idee—of that noiseless skein of life that Somebody somewhere is a windin’—Somebody a settin’ back in the shadows out of sight, a payin’ no attention to you if you try to find out who it is, and why he is a windin’, and how long he calculates to keep the skein a goin’, and what the yarn is a goin’ to be used for anyway, and why, and how, and what. No answer can you get, no matter how hard you may holler, or how out of breath you may get a tryin’ to run round and find out. You have got to jest set down and let it go on. And all the time you know the threads are a runnin’ without stoppin’, and a bein’ wound up by Somebody—Somebody who is able to hold all the innumerable threads and not get ’em mixed up any, and knows the meanin’ of every one of ’em, till bimeby the thread breaks, and the swifts stop. But I am a eppisodin’. Wall, as I said, time rolled along till they had been down South most two months, and Thomas Jefferson wrote me that Maggie seemed a good deal better, and he wuz encouraged by the change in her. When all of a sudden on a cold December evenin’ we got a letter from Maggie. Thomas Jefferson wuz took down sick, and the little girl. And there wuz Maggie, that little delicate thing, there alone amongst strangers in a strange land. And sez she, “Mother, what _shall_ I do?” That wuz about all she said in the way of complaint or agony. She wuzn’t one to pile up words, our daughter Maggie wuzn’t. But that wuz enough. “Mother, what _shall_ I do? what _can_ I do?” I illustrated the text, as artists say, while I wuz a readin’. I see her pale and patient face a bendin’ over the cradle of the infant, and little Snow, and over _my boy_, my Thomas Jefferson, who laid on my heart in his childhood till his image wuz engraved there for all time, and for eternity too, _I_ think. Wall, my mind wuz made up before I read the last words: “Your loving and sorrowful daughter, Maggie.” Yes, my mind wuz all made up firm as a rock; and to give Josiah Allen credit, where credit is due, so wuz hisen—his mind wuz made up too. He blowed his nose hard, and used his bandana on that, and his two eyes, and he said, “Them specks of hisen wuz jest a spilin’ his eyes.” And I took up my gingham apron and wiped my eyes. My spectacles sort o’ hurt my eyes, or sunthin’, and my first words wuz, “How soon can we start?” And Josiah’s first words wuz, “I’ll go and talk it over with Ury. I guess to-morrow or next day.”