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Aunt Jane's cheerful voice called me back from the tombs. "Here's a piece o' one o' my dresses," she said; "brown ground with a red ring in it. Abram picked it out. And here's another one, that light yeller ground with the vine runnin' through it. I never had so many caliker dresses that I didn't want one more, for in my day folks used to think a caliker dress was good enough to wear anywhere.

"Do you mean," she said, studying the girl's lovely face, "that ef I should wash them there bunk-house winders, an' string up some posy caliker, an' stuff a chair, an' have a pin-cushion, I could make that there mounting come in an' set fer me like a picter the way it does here fer you?" "Yes, that's what I mean," said Margaret, softly, marveling how the uncouth woman had caught the thought.

I'm tired o' seein' the ministers walk up into the pulpit in their slick black broadcloths, and their wives settin' down in the pew in an old black silk that's been turned upside down, wrong side out, and hind part before, and sponged, and pressed, and made over till you can't tell whether it's silk, or caliker, or what.

"Jest feel o' that," she continued, tossing some scraps into my lap. "There ain't any such caliker nowadays. This ain't your five-cent stuff that fades in the first washin' and wears out in the second. A caliker dress was somethin' worth buyin' and worth makin' up in them days. That blue-flowered piece was a dress I got the spring before Abram died.

Then there's the 'unger for gettin' under cover when you're bein' sniped, an' the 'unger for blood, when you've got the Hafridis, or the Fuzzies, or the Dutchies, at close quarters, and the bay'nits are flickerin' in an' out of the dirty caliker shirts or the dirty greatcoats like Jimmy O! There's the 'unger for freedom and fresh hair when you're shut up in a filthy mud cattle-pound like this 'ere Fort, or a stinkin' trench, with a 'andful of straw to set on by day an' a ragged blanket to kip in by nights.

"So I went eout and gunned one partridge and one old crow, 't had been ha'ntin' my corn patch ever senct I could remember, so 't he was jest as familiar tew me as the repair on the slack o' my britches, and I dressed 'em both, dreadful tasty an' slick they was jest 'beout the same size dressed an' rigged 'em eout esthetiky with some strips o' pink caliker; and 'long at the 'p'inted time the man he come deown arter 'em.

"She is a brig," I pricked up my ears at this, and so, too, I could see, did Smellie "of about three hundred tons register; long, and low in the water; mounts fourteen guns, seven of a side, and a long 32- pounder on her forecastle. Has very tall sticks, with a rake aft; and a tremendous spread of `caliker. And she's the fastest craft in all creation.

"Captain," said Tim to the hotel-proprietor, who had joined the crowd, "ef two fellers comes here from the East, one uv 'em ez round ez a punkin an' red ez a flannel shirt an' bald ez a land-tortle, an' t'other ez brown ez a mud-catty an' poor ez a razor-back hog, tell 'em I'm yere to pilot 'em up Elk to Colonel Bangem's caliker tents.

And Sam he laughed, and says he, 'Aunt Jane, if we could wear quilts and eat quilts we'd be the richest people in the country. Sam was the best-natured man that ever was, or he couldn't 'a' put up with Sarah Jane's shiftless ways. Hannah Crawford said she sent Sarah Jane a bundle o' caliker once by Sam, and Sam always declared he lost it.

His eyes were fixed on a mirror across the room. Over at the sideboard the waiter vigorously wiped a bottle. "Well, we was married," continued the tremulous voice, "an' not half an hour later mother fell down the cellar stairs an' broke her hip. Of course that stopped things right short. I took off my weddin' gown an' put on my old red caliker an' went ter work.