Judd Mortimer Lewis. May 9, 1939 709
JUBILEE'S PARDNER
Today
was Tuesday and when I woke up I rolled Jubilee up in the quilt
and rolled him out of bed and fell on him and we had a wrassling match be- fore I let him down, and then I went down and passed up the bassburner and went out to milk the cows in my short britches and left the bunch in the barn when I went in to strain the milk:, and the girls came and Angela was with them and the room was full of bluets and dogwood and I finished feed- ing my face and we went outside and my grandfather was standing in the door to the greenhouse looking at the lielock that was in bloom over in the far corner of the yard, and he said, "I don't know when I have been so in love with the world," and none of us said anything and he said, “I have seen the sun rise in far and strange places and here I am living in a little yard
as big as a pocket handkerchief, with my loved ones about me, and I am happy. Robert Louis Stevenson is buried on a mountain-top and the verse on his tomb reads, “Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And here I lie where I’ve longed to lie,
So lay me down with a will,
And this be the verse that ye grave for me,
‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill'”
And
then he said he would like that verse on his gravestone and I was beginning to
have a pain in my heart, and then my grandfather said to me, "Over your
grandmother's grave I have got the same verse Mark Twain had put on his wife's
grave,
“Warm summer sun shine kindly here,
Warm summer rain fall gently here,
Green
grass above, lie light, lie light,
Goodnight,
Sweetheart, goodnight ,goodnight,"
And
then Feeble butted in and said, “Goodnight! Goodnight!” Who started this
funeral procession?" and we all laughed, and my grandfather laughed and
said, “You kids run along. I want to be alone with my thoughts, so we skun out
and got to school just in time, and after school we went out to the pasture and
rolled up our britches and the girls took off their shoes and stockings and
waded in the creek and all of us waded too deep and got wet and then we made a
fire to dry ourselves and Angela said it was the best time she ever had and she
caught a crawfish and rolled it up in her handkerchief to show it to her mother
and was said she was proud of her and asted her if anyone pushed her in the
creek, and when she said we hadn’t her mother said she was supprized and
disappointed and she wunk at me. So I bet she wants us to push Angela in.