Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ Louisa, when we were going home that night, said she supposed that Mrs. Jameson would try to improve our literary society also; and she was proved to be right in her supposition at the very next meeting. Mrs. Jameson came, and she not only read selections from Browning, but she started us in that mad problem of Shakespeare and Bacon. Most of the ladies in our society had not an intimate acquaintance with either, having had, if the truth were told, their minds too fully occupied with such humble domestic questions of identity as whether Johnny or Tommy stole the sugar. ”

“ Louisa ventured to say that she thought vines very pretty, but she knew some people objected to them on the score of spiders, and also thought that they were bad for the paint. We poor, frugal village folk have always to consider whether beauty will trespass on utility, and consequently dollars and cents. There are many innocent slaves to Mammon in our midst.
Mrs. Jameson sniffed in her intensely scornful way. “Spiders and paint!” said she. “I am going to have the houses of this village vine-clad. It is time that the people were educated in beauty.” ”

“ Flora Clark opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. White clutched her arm and looked at her so beseechingly that she kept quiet.
Mrs. Jameson continued, utterly unconscious of having given any offence. We supposed that she did not once think it possible that we knew what the usages of ladies' societies were. “Ladies,” said she, “I am sure that you will all prefer having your minds improved and your spheres enlarged by the study and contemplation of one of the greatest authors of any age, to indulging in narrow village gossip. I will now read to you a selection from Robert Browning.” ”

“ Had I attempted to live upon your fresh biscuits, your frosted cakes, your rich pastry, I should be in my grave. One of those biscuits which you see there before you is equal in nourishment to six of your indigestible pies, or every cake upon the table. The great cause of the insanity and dyspepsia so prevalent among the rural classes is rich pie and cake. I feel it my duty to warn you. I hope, ladies, that you will consider carefully what I have said.”
With that, Mrs. Jameson withdrew herself a little way and sat down under a tree on a cushion which had been brought in the carryall. ”

“ Dress does make so much difference in a girl's prospects, you know,” said Grandma Cobb shrewdly.
I thought of poor Harry Liscom, and how sorry his little sweetheart must have felt not to be able to show herself in her pretty dresses to him. However, I was exceedingly glad to hear that she had cried, because it argued well for Harry, and looked as if she had not found another lover more to her mind in New York. ”

“ Grandma Cobb went on to say, “for I like the young man myself; and as for Harriet, her mind is set on him, and she's something like me: once get her mind set on anybody, that's the end of it. My daughter has got the same trait, but it works the contrary way: when she once gets her mind set against anybody, that's the end of it unless Robert Browning steps in to turn her.”
Louisa and I were heartily glad to hear of Mr. Browning's unconscious intercession and its effect upon Mrs. Jameson, but we wondered what Caroline Liscom would say. ”

“ Jacob Liscom is a pleasant-faced, mild-eyed man, very tall and slender. He lifted out the Jameson boy, who did not jump out over the wheel, as boys generally do when arriving at a picnic, and then he tipped over the front seat and helped out Madam Cobb, and the younger daughter, whose name was Sarah. We had not thought much of such old-fashioned names as Harriet and Sarah for some years past in our village, and it seemed rather odd taste in these city people. ”

“ Louisa and I thought Flora might be right. At all events, we did not wish to set ourselves up in opposition to her. We never carried the books into the society, and we never read Mrs. Jameson's letter about them, though we did feel somewhat guilty, especially as we reflected that Flora had never forgotten the affair of the jumbles, and might possibly have allowed her personal feelings to influence her.
“I should feel very sorry,” said Louisa to me, “if we were preventing the women of this village from improving themselves.” ”

“ For my part,” continued Grandma Cobb, who had at times an almost coarsely humorous method of expressing herself, “I believe in not having your mind on your inwards any more than you can possibly help. I believe the best way to get along with them is to act as if they weren't there.”
After Grandma Cobb went home, as late as nine o'clock, I saw a clinging, shadowy couple stroll past our house, and knew it was Harriet Jameson and Harry, as did Louisa, and our consciences began to trouble us again. ”

“ Jameson had had dyspepsia ten years on those hard biscuits it was more than any of us had had on our cake and pie. We left the biscuits, and the two paper packages which Mrs. Jameson had brought, in a heap on the table just where she had put them.
After we had replaced the baskets we all scattered about, trying to enjoy ourselves in the sweet pine woods, but it was hard work, we were so much disturbed by what had happened. We wondered uneasily, too, what Flora Clark would say about her jumbles. We were all quiet, peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too fast. ”

“ We were so thankful that none of the out-of-town celebrities ate Mrs. Jameson's chicken pies, since they had a rather unfortunate experience as it was. The dinner was a very great success, and Flora Clark said to me that if people a hundred years ago ate those hearty, nourishing victuals as these people did, she didn't wonder that the men had strength to found a Republic, but she did wonder how the women folks who had to cook for them had time and strength to live. ”

“ Jameson's calm state of manner. Then she at once relapsed into her own. “My daughter says that she is convinced that the young man is worthy, though he is not socially quite what she might desire, and she does not feel it right to part them if they have a true affection for each other,” said Grandma Cobb. Then she added, with a shake of her head and a gleam of malicious truth in her blue eyes: “That is not the whole of it; Robert Browning was the means of bringing it about.”
“Robert Browning!” I repeated. I was bewildered, and Louisa stared at me in a frightened way. ”

“ I'd rather try to cure drink than make a good housewife of a girl who hasn't been brought up to it. How do I know it's in her? And there I would have her right under Harry's nose. She shall never marry him; I can't and I won't have it.”
Louisa and I speculated as to whether Caroline would be able to help it, when she had taken her leave after what seemed to us must have been a most unsatisfactory call, with not enough sympathy from us to cheer her. ”

“ We know what the favorite diet of this village is; and as long as we can eat it ourselves it seems to me it is safer than to try something which we may like and everybody else starve on, and I guess we haven't exhausted some of the older, simpler things, and that there is some nourishment to be gotten out of them yet for all of us. It is better for us all to eat bread and butter and pie than for two or three of us to eat the olives and caviare, and the rest to have to sit gnawing their forks and spoons. ”

“ She is a smart, handsome woman, and would have been married long ago if it had not been for her temper.
Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to gather up the jumbles; she just went on after that remark of hers, opening the rest of the things; there were only one or two more. Then she took the cracker-box which Harry had brought; he had stolen away to put up his horse, and it looked to me very much as if Harriet had stolen away with him, for I could not see her anywhere.
Mrs. Jameson lifted this cracker-box on to the table and opened it. It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. ”

“ Mrs. Jameson was the only one who did not appear in the least disturbed; she did not seem to realize that she had done anything unusual.
Caroline Liscom was not at church—indeed, she had not been much since the boarders arrived; she had to stay at home to get the dinner. Louisa and I wondered whether she was relieved or disturbed at losing her boarders, and whether we should ever know which. When we passed the Wray house on our way home, and saw the blinds open, and the fresh mould in the garden, and the new shingles shining on the hen-house roof, we speculated about it. ”

“ Until that summer nobody in our village had ever taken boarders. There had been no real necessity for it, and we had always been rather proud of the fact. While we were certainly not rich—there was not one positively rich family among us—we were comfortably provided with all the necessities of life. We did not need to open our houses, and our closets, and our bureau drawers, and give the freedom of our domestic hearths, and, as it were, our household gods for playthings, to strangers and their children. ”

“ We often think that the younger women don't do as much work when the gentlemen are coming; they are upstairs so long curling their hair and prinking.
I wondered if Flora Clark had said anything. I heard afterward that she had not, but I saw at once that she was endeavoring to wreak a little revenge upon Mrs. Jameson. By a series of very skilfull and scarcely perceptible manœuvres she gently impelled Mrs. Jameson, without her being aware of it, into the seat directly in front of the stove. ”

“ Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite appropriate. However, I suppose that she was not to blame, poor child, and it may easily be more embarrassing to have old fine clothes than old poor ones. Really, Harriet Jameson would have looked better dressed that day in an old calico gown than the old silk one which she wore. Her waist was blue silk with some limp chiffon at the neck and sleeves, and her skirt was old brown silk all frayed at the bottom and very shiny. ”

“ There was to be a grand procession, of course, illustrative of the arts, trades, and professions in our village a hundred years ago and at the present time, and Mrs. Jameson engineered that. I never saw a woman work as she did. Louisa and I agreed that she could not be so very delicate after all. She had a finger in everything except the cooking; that she left mostly to the rest of us, though she did break over in one instance to our sorrow. We made pound-cake, and cupcake, and Indian puddings, and pies, and we baked beans enough for a standing army. ”

“ That house was enough to make a strong-minded woman like Caroline dumb, and send a weak one into hysterics. It was dripping with water, and nearly all the furniture out in the yard piled up pell-mell. I could not see how she was going to get supper for the boarders: the kitchen fire was out and the stove drenched, with a panful of biscuits in the oven. ”

“ When Adeline and her mother reached Mrs. Peter Jones' gate they stopped, and they all stood there together looking. Then I saw Tommy Gregg racing along, and I felt positive that his mother had sent him to see what the matter was. She is a good woman, but the most curious person in our village. She never seems to have enough affairs of her own to thoroughly amuse her. I never saw a boy run as fast as Tommy did—as if his mother's curiosity and his own were a sort of motor compelling him to his utmost speed. ”

“ Jameson went away. To tell the truth, most of the women in our village had so much work to do, since they kept no servants, that they could not take many ten-mile walks, no matter what length skirts they wore. However, many wore the short ones while doing housework, which was very sensible.
During that morning call, Mrs. Jameson, besides the reformed costume, advocated another innovation which fairly took our breaths away. She was going to beautify the village. We had always considered the village beautiful as it was, and we bridled a little at that. ”

“ Jameson were on the very best of terms, and Harriet was running over to Caroline's house to take lessons in housekeeping, instead of to mine, before the week was out.
There was a beautiful wedding the last of October, and young Mrs. Harry Liscom has lived in our midst ever since, being considered one of the most notable housekeepers in the village for her age. She and her husband live with Caroline Liscom, and Louisa says sometimes that she believes Caroline loves the girl better than she does her own son, and that she fairly took her into her heart when she saved her life. ”

“ There was a steady yell of fire from a crowd of boys who seemed to enjoy it; the water was swishing, the firemen's arms were pumping in unison, and everybody generally running in aimless circles like a swarm of ants. ”

“ She begged us to cut off our gowns at least three inches around the bottoms, for wear when engaged in domestic pursuits, and she tried to induce mothers to take off the shoes and stockings of their small children, and let them run barefoot. Children of a larger growth in our village quite generally go barefoot in the summer, but the little ones are always, as a rule, well shod. Mrs. Jameson said that it was much better for them also to go without shoes and stockings, and Louisa and I were inclined to think she might be right—it does seem to be the natural way of things. ”