The Cagwins are rich, and Polly had every advantage money could give, and old Mom Nater gin her a lot of advantages money couldn’t buy, beauty and intellect, a big generous heart and charm. And you know the Cagwins couldn’t bought that at no price. Charm in a girl is like the perfume in a rose, and can’t be bought or sold. And you can’t handle or describe either on ’em exactly. But what a influence they have; how they lay holt of your heart and fancy. Royal Gray, the young man who wuz payin’ attention to her, stopped once for a day or two in Jonesville with Polly and her Ma on their way to the Cagwins’ camp in the Adirondacks. And we all liked him so well that we agreed in givin’ him this extraordinary praise, we said he wuz worthy of Polly, we knowed of course that wuz the highest enconium possible for us to give. Good lookin’, smart as a whip, and deep, you could see that by lookin’ into his eyes, half laughin’ and half serious eyes and kinder sad lookin’ too under the fun, as eyes must be in this world of ourn if they look back fur, or ahead much of any. A queer world this is, and kinder sad and mysterious, behind all the good and glory on’t. He wuz jest out of Harvard school and as full of life and sperits as a colt let loose in a clover field. He went out in the hay field, he and Polly, and rode home on top of a load of hay jest as nateral and easy and bare-headed as if he wuz workin’ for wages, and he the only son of a millionaire—we all took to him. Well, when the news got out that I wuz goin’ to visit Washington, D.C., all the neighbors wanted to send errents by me. Betsy Bobbet Slimpsey wanted a dozen Patent Office books for scrap books for her poetry. Uncle Nate Gowdey wanted me to go to the Agricultural Buro and git him a paper of lettuce seed. And Solomon Sypher wanted me to git him a new kind of string beans and some cowcumber seeds. Uncle Jarvis Bentley, who wuz goin’ to paint his house, wanted me to ask the President what kind of paint he used on the White House. He thought it ort to be a extra kind to stand the sharp glare that wuz beatin’ down on it constant, and to ask him if he didn’t think the paint would last longer and the glare be mollified some if they used pure white and clear ile in it, and left off whitewash and karseen. Ardelia Rumsey, who is goin’ to be married, wanted me, if I see any new kinds of bedquilt patterns at the White House or the Senator’s housen, to git patterns for ’em. She said she wuz sick of sun flowers and blazin’ stars. She thought mebby they’d have sunthin’ new, spread eagle style. She said her feller wuz goin’ to be connected with the Govermunt and she thought it would be appropriate. And I asked her how. And she said he wuz goin’ to git a patent on a new kind of jack knife. I told her that if she wanted a govermunt quilt and wanted it appropriate she ort to have a crazy quilt.