Kate Trimble Sharber

“ Mammy Lou called us to breakfast just then, but I could eat only four soft-boiled guinea eggs, wondering what on earth Cassius had said in reply when Jean said genuflections to him.
"Pshaw! The rest isn't worth telling," she said with a weary look, as I pulled her down on the steps right after breakfast and begged her to go on about Cassius. "It ended with a disappointment—like everything else that has a man connected with it! You're a lucky girl to be in love with Lord Byron so long, for dead men break no hearts!" ”

“ Cousin Eunice is like a lovely iris, and Ann Lisbeth is like a Marechal Niel rose. Miss Cis Reeves used to look like a bright, happy little pansy, but that was before the twins were born. Now her collar to her shirtwaist always hikes up in the back and shows the skin underneath and her hat (whenever she gets a chance to put on a hat) is over one ear, and lots of 242 times she looks like she wishes nobody in her family ever had been born, especially the twin that cries the loudest. ”

“ And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is to write a little brown-backed book 13 that people will fill full of pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases. She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles against her looking-glass in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets dusted over with pink powder.
Now, Bertha is entirely different! ”

“ And when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's been married a heap more times than mother ever has. ”

“ Not one of us knew what to think of such a strange disease till all of a sudden I remembered Bertha's bad habit! And then I knew it was all off with Aunt Laura and the marrying. It wasn't very long till they all caught on to what it was on her face; and the worst part of it was that Brother Sheffield said he believed she did it a-purpose. He rose up very proud, and looking kinder relieved and said he could never marry a woman who would "defile herself with the trade-mark of Jezebel." ”

“ That blessed Waterloo! He's the sweetest thing I know anything about! Just about this time I reckon he's begging his "Daddy-boy" to sing Feep Alsie, Ben Bolt, for that's been his precious little sleepy song ever since he's been born.
When I think of those three and how happy they are, and how satisfied they are just to be together, I know that Rufe told me the truth that day, a long, long time ago! There is only one subject worth writing about—or one object worth living for! May every one of you grandchildren find just such an object, and be as happy as they are while living for it! ”

“ That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and I had to be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and they lose their job. ”

“ It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house, especially if he's at the watchable age, although he's such a darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch for a minute by himself. ”

“ I've often heard Doctor Gordon say that diseases have a "period of incubation," but I believe that love is one disease that doesn't incubate. It just comes, like light does when you switch on the electricity. This morning Mr. Gayle came so early that Rufe went into the sitting-room and began to poke fun at him, as usual.
"Hello, old man," he said, shaking hands with him. "I'm surely glad to see that it's you. Thought of course when the door-bell rang so soon after breakfast that it was an enlarged picture agent!" ”

“ Fairfax says the blue smoke will curl up from his cabin chimney at sunset and form a "symphony in color" against the green tree-tops; and he can lead the "untrammeled life." He is begging Miss Irene to go and lead it with him, I'm sure; and she's half a mind to do it, but can't bear the thoughts of it when she remembers Doctor Bynum's eyes and hands. Altogether the poor girl looks as uncertain as if she was walking on a pavement covered with banana peelings. ”

“ You hear a heap of talking these days about "the divine mission of woman," especially from long-haired preachers that don't believe in ladies voting; and another heap of talk about the "rights" of women from the ladies themselves.
There was so much of it going on last winter when I was at Rufe's that I told some of it to Mammy Lou when I came home. She says it's every speck a question of dish-washing when you sift it down to the bottom. The women are tired of their job and the men are too proud to do it unless the window shades are pulled down. ”

“ They have never even asked each other what make of corsets they wear, nor who operated on them for appendicitis. Bertha talks a great deal about Rufe and how devoted he was to her last summer, but Cousin Eunice won't talk at all when Bertha's around. She sits still and looks dumb and superior as a trained nurse does when you are trying to find out what it is that the patient has got.
Cousin Eunice has a right to act superior, though, for while other girls are spending their time embroidering chafing-dish aprons she is studying books written by a man with a name like a sneeze. ”

“ Now, 104 the bad part about making your living out of poetry or art is that so often you don't do it. This is the way with Julius. He draws fully as good as other artists, but he never has been able to get people to notice it. Professor Young says his work lacks "the divine spark," and so the poor young man has to heat his coffee over the gas-jet, like they always have to do in pitiful magazine stories. So much poetry and art have made him real thin, with strange flannel shirts, and he looks half like a writing person and half like a hero which was raised out West. ”

“ That was more than I could stand, so out from under the porch I slid, just in time to see Aunt Laura, with her face as red as the Indians they have in sideshows, turn and run into the hall where she could look at herself in the hat-rack looking-glass. She gave one tremendous yell which woke the baby and made the rest of the family come flying in from where they were. It wasn't a minute before me and Brother Sheffield were in the hall with her and mother and father running in off of the back porch, 66 and Dilsey with the baby in her arms leaning over the banisters to see what was the matter. ”

“ The rat was just pinned together and set up on Waterloo's little noggin, so Jean jerked it off and explained to Mr. St. John that it was her Aunt Merle's rat. I always knew it wasn't any good idea to talk about such things before a man that was a person's lover; but I thought Jean had had more experience in such things than I had and it wasn't my place to interrupt her. ”

“ An editorial is a smart remark opposite the society column; and Rufe couldn't think up smart things while he was squalling.
"Oh, for a desert island!" he said one night when he was awful busy and couldn't get anything done. "Oh, for a mammoth haystack where I might thrust my head to drown the noise—I've read that Jean Jacques Rousseau used to do so! Listen, I've made a rhyme!"
"'Tis not rhymes but dimes we need most just now; so go on with your work," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo together to take him up-stairs. ”

“ Professor Young and Mrs. Young both kept remarking all day how lovely it was to be able to spend the Fourth of July in a cool ravine instead of in the horrid city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys. ”

“ She wants everybody to have a good time, and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl, she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and Dilsey to 10 make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come at the same time, for she said girls love to be together. ”

“ Bertha knows if Aunt Laura could get Brother Sheffield to marry her she would unwill the 60 money from the baby; so she thinks up things to tell me to do to keep them from being together, and I've been doing them. One time I hid her purple Sunday bonnet, then her curls to keep her from going to prayer-meeting, but I'm glad to say that I have never taken the dimes which Bertha said she would give me for doing them. I hate Aunt Laura enough to do mean things to her myself, which is a better principle than to do them just for dimes. ”

“ Cousin Eunice said she thought sending post-cards was the one melancholy pleasure of traveling, and so I bought a quarter's worth at every place.
Traveling is a melancholy pleasure when you have a baby that you won't let drink a drop of water unless it has had the germs all stewed in 263 it. Waterloo is getting to be such a big boy now, too; but he still talks like a telegram—just the most important words of what he wants to say, with all the others left out. He's crazy about foot-ball, chewing-gum and billy-goats. ”

“ Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard, there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is the nicest lady in the world. ”

“ I reckon the very last of her dimples will soon be changed into wrinkles, for there's another one since the twins! Nobody can say that Miss Cis is not bearing up bravely, though. She does all she can to present a stylish, straight-front appearance when she goes out, which isn't often. But at home they are all perfectly happy together, Mr. Macdonald getting down on the floor to play bear, and if he does look more like a devil's horse while he's doing it, with his long arms and legs, the twins don't know the difference.
Marrying has helped Julius' looks more than anybody I ever saw. ”

“ Another good thing about a man is he can say, "Damn that telephone!" Rufe says it whenever he's busy and it bothers him, but Cousin Eunice can't. All she can do is to have sick headache when she gets worn out.
I know one tired lady whose husband is a busy doctor and whose baby is a busy baby, and lots of times the lady has to stop up her ears to say her prayers. And she hardly ever has time to powder her face unless company is coming, but, sick or well, she has to answer that telephone! ”

“ Just about that time Bertha happened not to be feeling very well, so mother wrote for her to come down to our house where the air would be good for her, and then she would have Dilsey to tend to it. You'd never guess what it is, my diary, so I'll tell you. It's a baby! A live one with open and shut eyes, and can cry; you don't have to pull a string to make it, either. This makes it better than even the finest doll, and, as I'm above dolls anyhow, a baby is more suitable to one of my age. ”

“ I thought at first he must be proposing, for the folks around here say that Widow Hollis is "setting up to" anybody when she's trying to marry. But Marcella said right away that she would be delighted, which I knew couldn't mean marrying, for when a young lady gets proposed to she never even lets on how glad she is, much less says delighted right out in plain words. He said her face was the purest Greek he ever saw, which didn't make her mad, although it would me, for a Greek is a smiling, oily-looking person which runs a candy kitchen. ”

“ Then you can have her any age you like best. Maybe if I were to tell exactly how many birthdays I've had you would always be saying, like mother and Mammy Lou, "You're a mighty big girl to be doing such silly things." Or like Rufe says sometimes, "Ann, you're entirely too young to be interested in such subjects as that." So you will have to be satisfied when I tell you that I'm at the 6 "gawky age." And a person is never surprised at anything that a girl at the "gawky age" does.
I am little enough still to love puppies and big enough to love Washington Irving. ”

“ Parkes is the baby's father, and also Bertha's husband. He is one of the nicest men you ever saw, pleasant all the time, which people say is because he's a drummer which sells things. He carries valises full of lovely crackers and little cakes with icing on the top, and calls it his "line." I've heard Rufe and Cousin Eunice talk about "lines falling in pleasant places," and I think it must mean something like this, for our house has been a pleasant place since Saturday night when he came to spend Sunday with us and Bertha. ”

“ I thought as I watched her. "I shall go straight up-stairs and wipe the dust off my diary with my petticoat!"
I reckon Rufe and Cousin Eunice both thought that Mr. Gayle and Miss Claxton had met before, for they didn't offer to introduce them, but I knew they hadn't, so I was the one that had to do it. I had forgotten how The Ladies' Own Journal said it ought to be done, and I was kinder scared anyway; and when I get scared I always make an idiot of myself. So I just grabbed her right hand and his right hand and put them together and said, "Mr. Gayle, do shake hands with Miss Claxton!" ”