Miss Edwina

Cornelius was there, and they had scarcely said hello when he told his son to start shifting a pile of firewood from one side of the backyard to the other.

Miss Edwina, who heard him making smacking noises when he ate -- perhaps he was so glad to have some home cooking -- told him brightly: "Turn left at the foot of the stairs, son Thomas. There's a trough for you in the kitchen."

Regis

The main problem was Marion's husband, who was alternately high on alcohol and ether. The alcohol Tennessee didn't mind, but the smell of ether drove him crazy.

Regis had a glass eye and one evening, during dinner, to emphasize a point, he threw it at his mother-in-law. It landed in her soup. A lesser woman might have fainted, or screamed, but not Mrs. Black.

She rose to the top of Tennessee's list of gentlewomen. As though nothing had happened, she removed it gracefully with her soup spoon and passed it to Marion, saying she believed it was something that Regis had lost.

Edwina

Edwina found a sad young man sitting in the midst of his nice furniture. His wife had left him, and he didn't want any of it again.

Edwina bought it all, some of which she kept for more than half a century.