SHE stood before a little old-fashioned twisted-legged toilet stand
putting the finishing touches to her hair, looking, the while, into a
queer little old-fashioned mirror which had been in the family ever
since she could remember. Almost everything had been in their family
a long while. Especially, Marion sometimes thought, her dresses had.
“They do not wear overskirts like this any more,” she had said to her
mother that morning, as she was looping it.
“They do not wear overskirts at all,” said Renie, the younger sister,
looking up from her book. Renie always knew what “they” did.
“I know it,” answered Marion, from whose face the slight cloud had
already passed; “but we do, because, you see, it hides the pieced part
of our dress, and the faded part, and various other blemishes. Why
should not there be a what ‘we’ do, as well as to be always quoting
what ‘they’ are about?”
Her mother laughed somewhat faintly. Marion’s quaint bright speeches
were always restful to her; but the fact was undeniable that the dear
girl’s clothes were old-fashioned and much worn, and the way to secure,
or at least to afford new ones, was hedged.
You would not have called her pretty had you seen her as she stood
before that little old-fashioned mirror, pushing in the old-fashioned
comb into her knot of hair, and trying to make it hold the hair in the
way the pretty new style fancy pins which the girls wore held theirs;
but you would have liked her face, I think; nearly every one did. It
was quiet and restful looking. She gave very little time to the hair,
for she was late. There was so much to be done mornings that she was
very apt to be late—I mean hurried. They never called her late at
the store; she was always in her place before the great bell ceased
ringing, but it required much bustling about and some running, to
accomplish this. She was only thirteen, and most of the girls in her
class in Sunday-school were students at the High School; but Marion had
been for more than a year earning her own living. She had charge of the
spool-cotton counter in one of the large stores.
It was a matter of some pride to her that she was a small saleswoman,
instead of a cash girl. She had commenced, of course, in that way; but
one happy day an unexpected vacancy had occurred at the spool counter,
and she had fitted in so well that she had been kept there, although
younger than most of the other salesgirls. Her face was quieter than
usual this morning. Perhaps because it was such a rainy morning that
she had felt compelled to wear the quite old dress, instead of the
somewhat fresher one which had lately begun to come to the store on
pleasant days. Marion had discovered that she needed special grace to
help her through the rainy days and the old-fashioned gown.
Not very many people were abroad shopping; but Marion had her share
of work, for those who came were in need of such commonplace useful
things as spool cotton, or tape, or needles. She bent carefully over a
drawer full of various colors, holding a tiny brown patch in her hand
the while, trying to match the shade. “No,” she said, shaking her head,
“that is not quite a match, but I am afraid it is the best I can do.
If I were you I would take a shade darker rather than the lighter; my
mother always does.”
The middle-aged woman, in a plain gossamer which covered her from head
to foot, glanced up at the thoughtful young face and smiled.
“Does she?” she said. “I like to hear a young girl quote her mother’s
judgment; it is apt to be wise judgment, I have noticed, as I think it
is in this case. Show me darker shades, please.”
So another drawer was brought, and yet another, and the young head bent
with the older one over them, and tried and tried again, and at last a
satisfactory shade was found and the sale was made. Five cents’ worth
of thread for fifteen minutes’ work!
“Why in the world did you putter so over that old maid and her patch?
I should have told her I couldn’t match it and sent her about her
business fifteen minutes ago.”
It was the girl whose stand was next to Marion who offered this bit of
advice, while the “old maid” in question was but a few steps away from
them looking at pin balls.
Marion turned a warning glance in her direction, and lowered her voice
to answer: “Because I couldn’t find a match sooner. We went over all
the thread drawers on that side, but I think we secured the exact shade
at last.”
“What does it signify? Nothing but brown cotton. Wasn’t the patch part
cotton? I thought so. The idea of making such an ado over a match for
cheap goods like that! I wouldn’t fuss with such customers, I can tell
you. Five cents’ worth of goods and fifty cents’ worth of bother. You
couldn’t have done more for her if she had been your sister.”
Marion looked after the plain woman thoughtfully, then looked down at
the tiny pin she wore. “I am not sure but she is. Anyhow, I was bound
to endeavor to please her. I’m an Endeavorer, you know.” She gave the
pin a significant touch as she spoke. It was very small—almost too
small to attract attention—but the letters “C. E.” were, after all,
quite distinct.
“O, bother!” said her neighbor, speaking contemptuously, “so am I; at
least so far as wearing the pin is concerned. I wear it because it is
pretty, and I have so few ornaments that I have to make the most of
them; but as for putting sentiment into spools of cotton and balls of
tape, I can’t do it; the things don’t match.”
“They ought to,” Marion said gravely. “If you and I don’t put our
pledges into spools of cotton and balls of tape of what use are they?
Because we spend our days in just such work.”
“I know it,” with a discontented yawn; “I’m sick and tired of it. It
is a slave life; I’d get out of it if I could. If there was any chance
of getting promoted it would be a little different. Belle Mason has
been transferred to the ribbon counter, and she gets more wages and
sees other sorts of people, and has lots of fun; she hasn’t been in
the house as long as I have, either; it is just because she was put at
a counter where she had a chance of pleasing people, and here we have
just to poke over tape and cotton and pins, and such stuff. I think
it’s mean!”
PANSY.
[Illustration: SAYING HER EVENING PRAYER.]
HELEN’S “APRIL FOOL.”
“MAMMA, is an April fool different from any other kind of a fool?”
cried Helen Palmer, rushing into the sitting-room on arriving home from
school.
“Oh! good-evening, Mrs. Glenn,” she added, as she noticed a lady who
sat sewing with her mother.
“What does the child mean?” exclaimed Mrs. Glenn, returning Helen’s
nod, then looking her astonishment at Mrs. Palmer, who said: “What do
you mean, Helen?”
“Why, the girls are all talking to-day about to-morrow being ‘April
Fool Day,’ and they said a lot of things I don’t understand, about
calling people ‘April fool.’ They all agreed to see who could make the
most fools and tell about it Monday. They said I must too, and I didn’t
want to tell them I did not know how to do it, or what it means.”
“You don’t mean to tell me, Helen Palmer, that you don’t know anything
about April fool?” cried Mrs. Glenn, in surprise.
“No,” said Mrs. Palmer; “she doesn’t. This is her first year at school,
you know; I have taught her at home, and in our country home she heard
very little but what we told her. I never saw any sense or fun in the
custom of fooling on the first day of April, and did not instruct her
in it when I taught her of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, St.
Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Decoration Day and Fourth of
July.”
“But what is it?” insisted Helen.
“Well, my dear, it is a custom which I’ve read has come down hundreds
of years, to send people on ridiculous errands on that day and call it
an April fool. It is done all over Europe, and the Hindoos of India do
exactly the same thing on the thirty-first of March. As I’ve always
known it, people not only send others on foolish errands, but they
often play practical jokes, silly and cruel, and actually lie to each
other to fool them. It is a custom much better forgotten than kept.”
“I should think so,” cried Helen.
“But, mamma,” she continued, “what shall I do? The girls expect me to
tell my share on Monday.”
“We’ll see, dear, by and by. Go and put away your things now.”
Mrs. Glenn went away after tea, and Helen began at once to coax her
mother to tell her how to come up to the girls’ plans without doing
anything silly or wicked.
“I think, if I were you, I would spend the day surprising people with
something good. Do things to help or please, and when they show their
surprise say ‘April fool!’”
“O, mamma! that will be delightful,” cried Helen. “Tell me some things
to do.”
“No, my dear, that is your business.”
All that evening Helen was very thoughtful, and next day she was
unusually busy. At night she declared she had never been so happy.
Monday morning she met the girls, and they began to tell their jokes.
“I fooled everybody around the house,” said Carrie Andrews. “I filled
the sugar-bowl with salt, and papa got a big spoonful in his coffee.
You ought to have seen the face he made. He didn’t more than half like
it, even when I called out ‘April fool!’ I sent George out to pick up
a package of sand I had dropped near the gate. I rang the doorbell and
got Ann to go to the door, and there I stood and said ‘April fool.’ I
sent a letter to Louise, and tied mamma’s apron-strings to her chair.”
Helen listened in amazement, as one girl after another told of such
silly tricks.
At last they turned to her. “Well, Helen, what did you do?”
“Oh! I fooled every one in the family, but I did a lot of new things,”
said Helen.
“What were they?” cried the girls, in chorus.
“Well,” said she, in a low voice, “I got up real early, and crept
softly downstairs and set the table in the dining-room, while Jane
was starting breakfast in the kitchen. She ’most always has it set at
night, but mamma and the sewing woman were using the long table to cut
out goods when Jane went to bed. She was hurrying as fast as she could,
and rushed in, and when she saw the table set she threw up both hands,
and said: ‘Well, now, however did that table get set? Was it witches’
work?’
“Then I jumped out from behind the door and cried: ‘April fool!’
“‘So it is,’ she said; ‘an’ it’s a fine one you’ve given me; I’ll not
forget it of you.’
“After breakfast mamma was just going to get Baby to sleep, and some
one came to see her on business. She asked me to keep him till she
could get back. I took him, and rocked and sung to him, and he went
to sleep. I laid him down in his crib, and then hid to see what mamma
would do. I heard her hurrying upstairs and into the room. Then she
stopped and stared. I stepped up softly behind her and kissed her, and
said, ‘April fool!’ She thought it was a nice one.
“Uncle Guy came in and asked mamma to mend his glove when she had time.
As quick as I could I got my thimble and needle and silk and mended the
glove; and when he came in again in a hurry and said: ‘Well, I can’t
wait now for it to be mended,’ he drew it on and said, ‘Why, it is
mended.’ Then I called out, ‘April fool, Uncle Guy!’
“‘O, you little rogue!’ he said; ‘I’ll pay you up.’
“Well, then I mended Frank’s sails to his boat when he started to do it
and papa called him away, and”—
“What did you do for your father?” asked Marjie Day.
“Oh! papa said he must hunt up some papers in the library at
lunch-time, so I looked them up and laid them on his plate, and when he
said: ‘Why, how did these get here?’ I said: ‘April fool!’ And that’s
all,” added Helen, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“Well!” exclaimed Carrie Andrews, “if that don’t beat the Dutch.”
“Wasn’t it a good way?” asked Helen, almost crying.
“Of course, you little goose! but who else would ever have thought of
it?”
“Mamma said she didn’t like silly jokes, and said I had better try
surprising people with pleasant things. I like it so well I am going to
do it every day in the year.”
“There’s the bell,” cried Belle Adams; “but hadn’t we all better try
it?”
F. A. REYNOLDS.
ABOUT PHILADELPHIA.
BY THE PANSIES.
ITS first name was Coaquenaque. I am glad they changed it to
Philadelphia, because it is easier to pronounce; but I like Indian
names. I went to Philadelphia once with my uncle. I think Broad Street
is one of the nicest places in the world. I went to Germantown to see
where Charlie Ross used to live, but I was so small I don’t remember
very much about anything, only Broad Street. I’m going again next year,
and I’ll look around and write you what I see.
JOHN T. ROBINSON.
* * * * *
I WENT with father to Philadelphia three years ago; we staid near
Washington Square; it is beautiful there. The trees are just splendid.
Father told me it used to be a great burying-ground. I could not make
it seem possible. A great many unknown soldiers, father said, were
buried there; it was in Revolutionary times. How sad it must have been
to live then! I like the little parks in Philadelphia that they call
“squares.” I saw the place where they held the Sanitary Fair, when they
roofed over the entire square, and let the trees stand as pillars.
LAURA CREEDMORE.
* * * * *
ONE of the most interesting places I visited in Philadelphia was Mr.
Wanamaker’s store. I did not know a store could be so large. It takes a
hundred miles of steam pipes to heat it.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN STATUE.]
My uncle has a fruit farm of ten acres, and I used to think when I
walked around it that ten acres was pretty big; but there are over
fourteen acres of floor to walk around in Mr. Wanamaker’s store! The
different departments are fixed up beautifully. They have lovely
parlors and dining-rooms and bedrooms all rigged up with beautiful
furniture, to show people how to furnish their rooms, and every few
days they change and give you another style. But the most interesting
part of the store, to me, was the way the money is sent to the
cashiers. There are eighty-one pay-stations in the store; then there
is a central cash desk where twenty-five cashiers are busy all day
long receiving the money that is brought to them through the tubes.
The clerk at a pay-station takes the money you give him, and starts it
in one of the pneumatic tubes, and away it shoots to the central desk
on the second floor; a cashier there looks at it, sees what change is
needed, and shoots it back. I don’t understand it very well, but I mean
to. I am going to study the principles of pneumatic tubing, and Chris
and I are going to have one to reach from my window to his. We are only
about fifty feet apart. In Wanamaker’s they have seven miles of tubing
to carry their money around. We took dinner at the Wanamaker Dairy,
right in the store; it was jam full, and it will seat eight hundred
people at once. Chris and I are going into partnership when we get to
be men, and are going to have a store just exactly like it.
HENRY W. GILMORE.
* * * * *
I WENT to Philadelphia last winter and attended Mr. Conwell’s church
on Broad Street. It is very big—the biggest in the world, I guess—or
maybe I mean in this country. It will hold thousands of people. Mother
says she thinks Dr. Talmage’s church is bigger, but I don’t see how it
could be. The people can’t all get in; they have to have tickets and be
let in by a door-keeper. The singing sounds just grand. There is a very
large choir, and the organ rolls and rolls. I liked Mr. Conwell almost
better than any minister I ever heard, except my own, of course. Then I
went to Sunday-school; hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children!
I never saw so many together before. Of course I saw other things in
Philadelphia, but what I liked the best was that church. It seemed so
funny to see folks crowding into church on Sunday morning, and to have
a big overflow meeting for those who couldn’t get in. Where I live they
have to coax the people to come to church, and there’s lots of room
always.
FANNY PIERCE.
* * * * *
ONCE I went to “Old Swede’s” Church in Philadelphia. It is very old.
There used to be a log church on the place where it stands; sometimes
it was used for a fort. That was in 1677, but about three years
afterwards the brick church was built, and that is the one I went to.
In the churchyard are many very old graves, and some new ones. Some
of the names on the grave-stones are so old I could not make them
out. It seemed very strange to be in a church which was built almost
two hundred years ago. Then we went to the queer little old house on
Letitia Street where William Penn used to live. Great big buildings
have grown up around it, and they make it look very odd. Then we went
to the old London Coffee House; I had studied about that in my history,
and I was disgusted to find it turned into a cigar store. It is a very
queer old building. I saw the house where the first American flag was
made; that is on Arch Street.
HELEN STUART CAMPBELL.
[Illustration: VIEW OF INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA. (_See “About
Philadelphia.”_)]
* * * * *
MY sister Helen has written all about old places and never mentioned
Carpenter’s Hall! She says that is because she knew I would. I went
there with father and Helen. I think it is one of the grandest places
in Philadelphia. It is the “Cradle of American Independence.” That
was where the first prayer in Congress was made the morning after
Boston was bombarded. Before that some of the people had objected to
having Congress opened with prayer, but after that morning nobody ever
objected again. The inscription on the wall says it was here that
“Henry, Hancock and Adams inspired the Delegates of the Colonies with
Nerve and Sinew for the toils of war.”
Then of course we went to Independence Hall, where the second
Continental Congress gathered, and saw the old cracked bell which rung
on the first Fourth of July. Helen says there was a Fourth of July
every year before that time; but I mean the first one which was worth
having.
ROBERT STUART CAMPBELL.
* * * * *
I THINK the prettiest place in all Philadelphia is Fairmount Park.
If I lived there I should want to stay in the park all summer. The
drive out is just as lovely as it can be. We crossed the Girard Avenue
bridge, which is a thousand feet long. You can walk or ride across,
just as you please. There is a sidewalk on each side of the carriage
drive sixteen feet wide, and beautifully paved. The railing around this
bridge is trimmed with flowers, vines and birds, made in bronze. We saw
the old house which was built by William Penn’s son. And we went to the
Zoölogical Gardens and saw the bear-pits and everything; then there is
a part called the “Children’s Playground,” which is lovely.
JAMES HURST.
[The above are some of the gleanings from the many
letters received. Wish we had room for more. We are
greatly pleased with your efforts to help on this
department of THE PANSY. The main difficulty is, that
many letters come too late to be of use. Notice the
list of cities published in the December PANSY, and
make a start three months ahead, then you will be sure
to be on time.—EDITORS.]
THE SPOOL-COTTON GIRL.