MANNERS & MORALS: Funeralizing Uncle Row

MANNERS & MORALS

In the sun-worn clapboard cabin, the 113-year-old black body of Uncle Row Adams lay very still beneath the patchwork coverlet. Over his bed, his tall silk stovepipe hat hung on a peg in the wall. Through the dusty windows, his daughter Ella could catch glimpses of the worn-out Texas land. She wrote laboriously: "Sir. This to say Popa offi low. Now he done stop eating ennything, wont nothing and no one. I am riting let you no he no good. He might be living when you get hear and then he...

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