A peasant had come home to his bare-lookin' cottage, and found his wife
dead in her bed.

He didn't rave round and act, and strike an attitude. No, he jest turned
round and sot there on his hard stool, with his hands on his knees,
a-facin' the bare future.

The hull of the desolation of that long life of emptiness and grief that
he sees stretch out before him without her, that he had loved and lost,
wuz in the man's grief-stricken face.

It wuz that face that made up the loss and the strength of the picter.

I cried and wept in front of it, and cried and wept. I thought what if
that wuz Josiah that sot there with that agony in his face, and that
desolation in his heart, and I couldn't comfort him--

Couldn't say to him: "Josiah, we'll bear it together."

I wuz fearful overcome.

[Illustration: I cried and wept in front of it, and cried and
wept.]

And then there wuz another picter called "Breakin' Home Ties."

A crowd always stood before that.

It wuz a boy jest a-settin' out to seek his fortune. The breakfast-table