"Well, I thought to myself that there wasn't much hope o' me understandin' anything I'd hear at that Brownin' Club, but of course I was glad to dress up again in my silk dress and my lace, and to please Henrietta I went down into the parlor and listened to the readin'. First, a young lady read a paper about the 'Message of Brownin'.' She said every poet had a message to give to the world jest like the prophets in Old-Testament times, and I gethered from her paper that Brownin' was a man that always looked on the bright side and believed that things was goin' to come right in the end; and towards the last she read some mighty pretty verses. I wish I could ricollect 'em all. It was somethin' about the spring o' the year and the mornin' and the dew like pearls and the birds flyin'. The words was jest like a picture of a spring mornin', and the last of it was, 'God's in his heaven--all's right with the world!' That's jest as true as anything in the Bible, and it sounds like it might 'a' come out o' the Bible, don't it, child? "Then another lady read some o' Brownin's poetry, 'Pary--' somethin' or other." "Paracelsus," I suggested. "That's it," said Aunt Jane, "but I ain't a bit wiser than I was before, for I never did find out whether that was the name of a man or a woman or a town or a river or what. I set and listened, and every now and then it'd seem like there was somethin' that I could understand, but before I could lay hold of it here'd come a lot o' big words that I never heard tell of before, and, I declare to goodness, my old brains got tired tryin' to git some sense out o' that poetry. Why, it was jest like tryin' to read at night by the light o' the fire. The fire'll blaze up, and you'll see everything plain for a minute, and then it'll die down, and there you are in the dark again. "Well, when the lady got through readin' the poetry, she said she was goin' to read her interpretation of it. I ricollected how Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream and Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and I says to myself, 'Now, I'll find out all about it.' But bless your life, child, the poetry was hard enough to understand, but the interpretation was a heap harder; and I says to myself, 'Brownin's poetry never was intended for a old woman like me.' And I jest leaned back in my chair and looked at the hats and the bonnets the ladies had on. Pretty clothes always was one o' my weak points, and will be till I die, I reckon. When I was a child father used to question us children about the sermon when we got home from church. I never could tell much about it, except the text, and I ricollect hearin' mother say to him one Sunday, 'If Jane could jest remember as much about the sermon as she remembers about the hats and bonnets, we could have her ordained to preach.'