Craig said he knew it, and Uncle Zach went on: “I belong there; so does Dotty. We joined the same day. Dot has stuck, but I’ve backslid two or three times. I repented bitterly, for I mean to be a good man, but I’ll be dumbed if it ain’t hard work for a feller to keep in the straight and narrer way and run a tavern.” Craig thought the share Uncle Zach had in running the tavern was hardly a sufficient excuse for backsliding, but he made no comment, and Uncle Zach went on: “I was goin’ to tell you about some of the noted folks,—moved away now,—but always had Ridgefield for their native town. There’s that Woman’s Rights and Temperance Woman, Miss Waters. Everybody has heard of her from Dan to Beersheby. Good woman, too,—and lectures smart about women’s votin’. I’d as soon they would as not. B’lieve the country’d be better off if they did, but I don’t want ’em to wear trouses. Miss Waters did a spell,—then left ’em off, and I’m glad on’t. Dot b’lieves everything she does is gospel, and I wouldn’t like to have Dot wear my trouses, s’posin’ she could get into ’em. A man or’to hold on to them, if nothin’ more. Then there’s another woman,—writes books, piles on ’em, the papers say, and if you b’lieve it some folks who came here are that foolish that they have my bloods, Paul and Virginny, and go over to see where she was born. An old yaller house, with a big popple tree at the corner. No great of a place to be born in, or go to see, but you can’t calcilate what city folks’ll do. I knew her when she was knee high and wore a sun bonnet hanging down her back, with the strings chawed into a hard knot. Knew her folks, too. She’s a lot of ’em down in the cemetery. Good honest stock, all of ’em, and belonged to the Orthodox church; but you can’t make me b’lieve she wrote all them books the papers say. No, sir.” “You mean sold,” Craig suggested, and Uncle Zach replied: “Mabby I do, but it amounts to the same thing. If they are sold they are wrote, and nobody ever wrote so many. No, _sir_. I’ll bet I never read twenty books in my life, includin’ the Bible. Hello, Mark, what is it? Does Dot want me?” and he turned to his clerk, who came round the corner with a paper in his hand.