The yard—the lawn they called it—wuz awful big. It wuz as big as from our house over to Deacon Gowdey’s, and acrost over to Submit Danker’ses, and I don’t know but bigger, and all sorts of gay tropical plants wuz sot out in bunches on the green grass, and there wuz lots of big beautiful trees a standin’ alone and in clusters, and a wide path led up from the gate to the front door, bordered with beautiful trees with shinin’ leaves, and there in the front door stood our daughter Maggie, white-faced, and gladder-lookin’ than I ever see her before. How she did kiss me and her Pa too! She couldn’t seem to tell us enough, how glad she wuz to see us and to have us there. And my boy, Thomas Jefferson, cried, he wuz so glad to see us. He didn’t boohoo right out, but the tears come into his eyes fast—he wuz very weak yet; and I kissed them tears right offen his cheeks, and his Pa kissed him too. Thomas Jefferson wuz very weak, he wuz a sick boy. And I tell you, seein’ him lay there so white and thin put us both in mind, his Pa and me, what Jonesville and the world would be to us if our boy had slipped out of it. We knew it would be like a playhouse with the lights all put out, and the best performer dumb and silent. It would be like the world with the sun darkened, and the moon a refusin’ to give its light. We think enough of Thomas Jefferson—yes, indeed. Oh, how glad little Snow wuz to see us! And right here, while I am a talkin’ about her, I may as well tell sunthin’ about her, for it has got to be told. Snow is a beautiful child; she becomes her name well, though she wuzn’t named for real snow, but for her mother’s sirname. I say it without a mite of partiality. Some grandparents are so partial to their own offsprings that it is fairly sickenin’. But if this child wuz the born granddaughter of the Zar of Russia or a French surf, I should say jest what I do say, that she is a wonderful child, both in beauty and demeanor. She has got big violet blue eyes—not jest the color of her Pa’s, but jest the expression, soft and bright, and very deep-lookin’. Their gaze is so deep that no line has ever been found to measure its deepness. When you meet their calm, direct look you see fur into ’em, and through ’em into another realm than ourn, a more beautiful and peaceful one, and one more riz up like, and inspired. I often used to wonder what the child wuz a lookin’ for, her eyes seemed to be a lookin’ so fur, fur away, and always as if in search of sunthin’. I didn’t know what it wuz, but I knew it wuzn’t nuthin’ light and triflin’, from her looks. Some picture of holiness and beauty, and yet sort o’ grand like, seemed before her rapt vision. But I couldn’t see what it wuz, nor Josiah, nor her Pa, nor her Ma. Her hair is a light golden color, not yeller, nor yet orbun, but the color of the pure pale shiny gold you sometimes see in the western heavens when the sky is bright and glowin’.