If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ainât no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didnât ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldnât find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. She warnât particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her âtributeâ before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertakerâ âthe undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead personâs name, which was Whistler. She warnât ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, manyâs the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warnât going to let anything come between us.
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