clubs that winter, but Mrs. Singer organized a public library
association and pulled off a German. Mrs. Payley attended, and when she
tried to patronize Mrs. Singer with her compliments, that clever
infighter beat her to it by explaining the theory of the German to her.
That made Mrs. Payley so mad that the next month she invited the state
president of the Federation of Women's Clubs to visit her, and didn't
ask Mrs. Singer to the tea. The next week Mrs. Singer organized a
Country Club. It only consisted of a two-room pavilion in which picnics
could be held and dances could be pulled off, with long intermissions
for the extraction of slivers from the feet. But it was just as easy to
talk about while you were in town and to refer to in a hushed and
exclusive manner as if it cost a million, and when Mrs. Payley realized
that she could never hope to become exclusive enough to get into it,
though goodness knows she couldn't have been hired to belong to the
foolish thing, she quit speaking to Mrs. Singer, the split became a
chasm, and we began choosing up sides in earnest.
That winter Mrs. Singer seceded from the church which Mrs. Payley ran,
and founded an Episcopal church, taking seven choir members out of the
Congregational church, to say nothing of the organist. All this mixed up
religion in Homeburg that winter until you could scarcely tell it from a
ward caucus.
By spring it was dangerous to show favors to either side, and when the
school election came around, it was fought out between the Payley and
Singer factions. Sally Singer had been given higher marks than Sarah
Payley, and the upshot of it all was that when the Payley side prevailed
at election by nine votes, the superintendent lost his job. He was a
good superintendent and the cause of education didn't get over the jolt
for some years, but justice, of course, had to be done.
The Singers got some satisfaction out of it by electing the school board
treasurer, which took a lot of money out of the First National Bank.
That, of course, got the banks into the row. You city folks may have
your financial flurries, but if you've never been around and between and
under a bank scrap in a small town, you don't know what trouble is.
There were a couple of failures that needn't have happened, and a lot of
partisan financiering, and then the town rose up and sat down on our
social leaders with a most pronounced scrunch. We can stand just about
so much society in Homeburg, but when it gets to elbowing into business,
churches, schools and funerals, we are more sensible than you
metropolitans are. It only takes a half-day to pass the word through a
small town, and one fine morning the Payleys and Singers discovered
that while they were still facing each other like two snorty and
inextinguishable generals, their armies had gone off arm in arm.
That ended the feud and put society in Homeburg back in its proper
place--in the front parlors in the evening after the dishes had been
done up. The Payleys and Singers still continued to compete, but we
declined to fight and bleed for them and amused ourselves instead by
watching them from the sidelines. Mrs. Payley joined the "When I was in
Europe" brigade, and the Singers got the first automobile in town. It
kept the Singers so busy supporting and encouraging it, that the Payleys
were able to build the first modern house with a sleeping porch and
individual bathrooms--and about the time the Singers came back with a
two-story bungalow full of chopped wood furniture, Mrs. Payley went
abroad again and began to say: "The last time I was in Europe." It was
nip and tuck, year in and year out, between the two, and we all enjoyed
it a lot.
But it wasn't until the Payley and Singer children came home from
college and formed a tight little circle with their backs out, that we
began to reap the benefits of really haughty society.
The Payley and Singer children had absorbed all their families had to
offer, and then they went off to school in the East and laid in a
complete stock of the latest styles in superiority. They were all
finished in the same spring and shipped back to Homeburg--magnificent
specimens of college art with even their names done over--and when they
realized that they had to live forever in the old town, where no one
spoke their language or could even understand their clothes, the family
feud was forgotten and the four rushed together for mutual protection
and formed a real Smart Set.
It's just like your bigger crowd. It doesn't have anything to do with
us in particular. And we are just like you are. You open your Sunday
papers and read reams about the plumbing and pajamas and pet dogs and
love affairs of your first families, and I guess nothing that Sally
Singer or Sarah Payley ever did got past the scornful but lynx-eyed
Homeburgers. When Sarah was getting letters on expensive stationery from
Kansas City, the whole town discussed the probable character of a man
who would put blue sealing wax on his envelopes, and when Sally made her
pa put an addition on the Singer home, we knew what color she was going
to do her boudoir in three months in advance. But we are prouder than
your people. You hire down-trodden reporters to go and abase themselves
to get the information, while we wouldn't lower ourselves enough to ask
even by proxy. We just let the sewing women and hired girls tell us.
Being an exclusive set in a small town is a whole lot harder than it is
in New York, and I've always admired our youngsters for the way they've
carried it off. Of course, four people can't form a club or give parties
or support an exclusive restaurant; they can't even be exclusive all by
themselves. They have had to mingle with us, but they are always
carefully insulated. They joined our Country Club, but they did it with
their fingers crossed, so to speak. They always come out together and
protect each other from our rude advances as much as possible. They
import college friends whenever they can, and they always have a few
bush leaguers, or utility players, to work in on such occasions. Henry
Snyder used to say he could tell when there was need of the peasantry at
the Singer house by the way Sally Singer would suddenly descend from the
third cross-road beyond Mars to the street in front of the post-office
and ask him with an accurately hospitable smile if he couldn't bring
his sister up to the house that evening to meet a few guests. And once a
year all four turn in and give a real dress rehearsal of up-to-date
social science, to which Homeburg is liberally invited and at which
unknown and unsuspected things are served for refreshments and a new and
deadly variation of bridge or dancing or punch or receiving lines or
conversational technique is put on for our inspection and bewilderment.
We have a show at our opera-house now and then, and we always go to
these affairs largely to see our Smart Set perform. It always
comes--even East Lynne is better that West Homeburg--and I'll tell you,
by the time they have come rustling in about half way through the first
act, H. DeLancey Payley and W. Sam Singer in clawhammers with an acre
apiece of white shirt and holding about four bushels of pink fluff over
their arms, and the boys have consulted anxiously with the usher, the
two girls, beautiful visions of Arctic perfection, standing in well-bred
suspense and holding their gowns in the 1915 manner, and all four have
hurried down to the best seats and have unharnessed and stowed away
their upholsterings, and DeLancey has folded up his explosive hat and
Sam has leaned back in a lordly way and beckoned to the usher for
another program--by the time all this has transpired, the actors have
forgotten their lines, and we have gotten our money's worth out of the
evening's entertainment.
The hardships those people inflict on themselves in the sacred cause of
correctness are agonizing. It takes something more than nerve to wear a
silk hat and Prince Albert down to the Homeburg post-office on Sundays
to get the mail--especially with Ad Summers always on hand to spill a
large red laugh into his sleeve and say to some friend in a tremendous
stage whisper that the darn dude's legs must be bowed or he wouldn't
want to hide 'em that way. And as for the carriage proposition, I'm
certain that no martyrs have endured more. DeLancey persuaded Hi Nott to
buy a real city carriage, and the four have used it faithfully; only the
Payleys and Singers live in different edges of town, and by the time Hi
has hauled Sam and his sister across town to the Payleys, through
Homeburg's April streets, which average a little more depth than width,
and has hauled the four down to the theater, there are usually about
three breakdowns. I've seen the four of them plodding haughtily home
from "Wedded but No Wife", the girls holding their imported dresses out
of the mud, and the boys sounding for bottom on the crossings with their
canes, while Hi drove the carriage solemnly down the road beside them.
The mud was too deep for them to get home in the carriage, but everybody
could see it was there and that they had paid for it and had done their
darndest, anyway. After all, that's no worse than the way you New
Yorkers carry your gloves in your hand in warm weather. You don't need
them, but you want the world to know you've got 'em and wouldn't be
found dead without 'em.
When our Smart Set gives a party, we all try to live up to it as far as
possible, and so we insist on going by carriage. Hi starts hauling us at
six o'clock, six to a load in dry weather, and he usually gets the last
batch there just in time to begin hauling the first platoon home.
But those are just little troubles for our Smart Set. Your Smart Set has
no troubles except the job of spending its money fast enough to keep
from being smothered by the month's income. It does what it pleases, and
if anybody objects, it raises the price of something or other by way of
retort. But our Smart Set has to live in Homeburg, and what is more, it
has to live off of Homeburg, which is as hoity-toity a place to live
off of as you can find. Sally Singer can't afford to offend any one but
the depositors in the Payley Bank, and if DeLancey caused any Homeburger
to stalk down to his father's bank and extract a thousand-dollar savings
deposit, old man Payley would thrash DeLancey and set him to work on his
farm. They have to show their superiority over us so deftly and
pleasantly that we don't mind it. They have to keep us good-natured
while despising us. With half the genius for contemptuous conciliation
that the Payley and Singer children have displayed in the last five
years, the French nobility could have kept the peasantry yelling for
bread as a privilege long after 1793.
Emma Madigan weighs two hundred pounds and drives a milk route. She went
to high school with Sally Singer, and it is the joy of her life to poke
her head into the Singer home when Sally has company and yell: "Sall,
here's your milk!" But Sally never tries to refrigerate her with the
Spitzbergen glare which she uses on us collectively when she goes to the
theater. You couldn't possibly refrigerate Emma, but you might encourage
her to say more--like the time when Sarah Payley passed her on the
street without speaking, being busy treading the upper altitudes with a
young Princeton College visitor, and Em yelled back: "For goodness'
sakes, Sarey, if you didn't lace so tight you could get your chin down
and see some one!"
But most of us are not so frank. We are too good-natured. As a matter of
fact, we'd hate to see the Payleys and Singers common. They help to make
Homeburg interesting, and so long as they know their place and don't
irritate us, we wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world--that is, not
much.
There was a dancing school in Homeburg two winters ago, and to the
consternation of every one the Payley and Singer young folks joined it.
It took two meetings for us to discover what had clogged up the
atmosphere and taken the prance out of things. Then we tumbled. The
Payleys and Singers were educating us. They were fitting us to live in
the rarified upper altitudes of refinement and to mingle with rank
without stepping all over its feet. By the third meeting Henry Snyder
had caught on to most of the signals and he explained them to a lot of
us beforehand with care. When Sally Singer dropped on to a bench and
moved her skirt ever so slightly aside it was a sign that the young man
with whom she was speaking might sit down and hold sweet converse. And
when Sarah Payley smiled brightly at a gentleman from some distance and
just caressed the chair beside her with her eye for the millionth part
of a second, that young man, if he had a spark of gentility in him,
would hurdle the intervening chairs to arrive. We also discovered how
to get away just before the young ladies got bored, by other delicate
signs, and how to derive the fact that they were thirsty and needed
sustenance, and just how to imprison them in our strong but respectful
arms during a waltz, and how to collect fans and gloves and programs and
handkerchiefs from the floor without grunting or jolting the
conversation. It was hard work, and spoiled the evening to a certain
extent, but we did the best we could until Jim Reebe spoiled it all in
the fourth lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men during
the intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admired
properly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in his
megaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time you
made a hit with me was the day you slid down the banisters at school."
That finished the course; and the Smart Set, being unanimously absent
the rest of the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffed
our white gloves back into the bureaus and yelled for encores when we
couldn't get them any other way.
I'll tell you, a man could be a hero to his valet with half the exertion
which it takes to be a Somebody to an old grammar-school mate in a small
town.
Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for social
progress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married this
summer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three look
like the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire. Looks to
me as if there were going to be some of these mess alliances to wind up
with, for Sam Singer is calling on Mabel Andrews in citizen's clothing,
she having jeered him out of his Prince Albert; and Henry Snyder has
stopped scoffing and infests the Payley house to an alarming extent. So
I imagine that our Smart Set will get back to shirtsleeves in two
generations less than yours usually requires, and we'll miss it a lot.
Next to the ill feeling between the _Argus_ and the _Democrat_, it has
been our greatest diversion.
IV
THE SERVANT QUESTION IN HOMEBURG
_How Mrs. Singer Amuses Us All by Insisting on Having It_
No apologies, Jim. If the Declaration of Independence who prepares your
meals for you has packed up and gone, I don't need any explanations. I
understand already. You can't ask me up to dinner because there isn't
going to be any dinner. If you don't go out to a restaurant, you'll get
a bite yourself while Mrs. Jim puts the children to bed. And then you'll
spend the evening wondering where you can beg, borrow, abduct,
hypnotize, or manufacture another cook.
I know all about it. The great sorrow has come upon you, and there's
only one comfort--there are others. It falls upon all who try to get out
of doing their own housework in New York. And I'll bet you were good
enough to the last cook, too--only asked her for one night out a week,
came to her meals promptly, didn't demand more than a fair living wage,
and let her have the rest. Yes, of course you did. And you're going to
let the next one have the best room and ring for her breakfast in the
morning, aren't you? What? Draw the line at that? Well, Jim, I admire
your nerve. You're one of the grand old rugged patriots who will not be
trodden on. Why did your last cook leave, anyway?
Didn't like the kitchen, eh? And being in a flat you couldn't tear it
out and rebuild it. Yes, I agree with you. The servant problem in New
York is getting to be very serious. To-day you are gay and happy with
luxury and comfort all about you, and to-morrow you are picking
sardines out of a can with a fork for dinner. I am certainly glad I live
in the country, where servant girls do not come on Monday with two
trunks and go away early Thursday morning with three trunks and a
bundle.
We have no servant problem in Homeburg. However, I exclude Mrs. Singer
from this "we." There are only two servants in the whole town. Mrs.
Singer has them. That is, she tries to have them. Mrs. Singer's attempt
to have servants in a town which is full of hired girls is one of the
things which make life worth living and talking about in Homeburg.
How do I know about it? Bless you, we all know about it. It's a public
tragedy. Can't help ourselves. We've had four of Mrs. Singer's
ex-servants in our house in six years, and they have all told their
troubles. Mrs. Singer trains girls for the entire town. She's twice as
good as a domestic science school, and she doesn't charge any tuition.
She is devoting her life to the training up of perfect hired girls, and
we revel in the results. It is ungrateful of us to blame her for taking
away our hired girls, because, as a matter of fact, she is our greatest
blessing. Right at this minute in Homeburg I know that two eager
families are sitting around waiting for the latest Singer class in
domestic science to graduate and come back to them for jobs. It ought to
come most any time. The course rarely lasts over three months.
You see, Mrs. Singer isn't one of us. She came to Homeburg from a large
city, and she brought her ideas with her. She's not the kind of a woman,
either, who is going to cut those ideas down to fit Homeburg. Her plan
is to change Homeburg over to fit her ideas. She's been working at it
for fifteen years now, and I must say she's won out in several cases.
Dress suits are now worn quite unblushingly, we have a country club
half a mile from the post-office--that's the advantage of a small town,
you can get away from the rush and bustle of the city into the sweet
cool country in about four jumps--and no one thinks of serving a party
dinner without salad any more. But she's fallen down on one thing. She
can't keep servants. That problem has been too much for her. Mrs.
Payley, her rival, has had the same hired girl for sixteen years or
more; but Mrs. Singer scorns a hired girl. She must have servants, two
of them, and while she has a remarkable constitution and has stood up
for years under the fight, I don't see how she can keep it up much
longer.
A hired girl in Homeburg is a very reasonable creature. We never have
any trouble with them, and they have very little with us. We usually
catch them green and wild, just off the steamer, and they come to us
equipped with a thorough working knowledge of the Swedish language, and
nothing else to speak of. Our wives take them in and teach them how to
boil water, make beds, handle a broom, use clothespins, and all the
simpler tricks of housework, to say nothing of an elementary knowledge
of English, which they usually acquire in a month; and we pay this kind
a couple of dollars a week, and they wash the clothes, take care of the
furnace, and mow the lawn with great pleasure. They usually stay a year
or so and then they go to Mrs. Singer's finishing school. They do not go
because they are discontented, but because she offers them five dollars
a week, which is a pretty fair-sized chunk of the earth to a young
Swedish girl just learning to do a few loops and spirals in English and
saving up the steamer fare to bring her sister over.
Mrs. Singer takes our nice, green, young hired girls, who are willing to
do anything up to the capacity of a stout back, and she tries to make
servants out of them. She gives them embroidered aprons and caps and
makes them keep house her way. And after they have spent a couple of
months making coffee to suit Mrs. Singer, and going over the mahogany to
suit Mrs. Singer, and arranging the magazines on the table to suit Mrs.
Singer, and taking up the breakfast to Miss Sally to suit Mrs. Singer,
and going over the back hall again to suit Mrs. Singer, and keeping
their mouths closed tightly all day to suit Mrs. Singer, and only going
out on Thursday afternoons to suit Mrs. Singer, they sort of get tired
of the job, and one after another they stop Mrs. Singer at a favorable
moment and say these fatal words:
"Aye gass aye ent stay eny longer."
Then some Homeburg family joyfully seizes on the deserter, and Mrs.
Singer starts out all over again on the job of making a servant out of a
hired girl.
I have to admire the woman for her eternal grit. She won't give up for
a minute. She is going to run her house just so if she has to train up
a million girls and lose them all. Half the time she has to do her own
work, but I'll bet that when she has the luncheon ready she puts her
little white lace napkin on her hair and comes in and announces it to
herself in the proper style; and I'll bet, too, that she doesn't talk to
herself while she is working in the kitchen, either. She says the way
Homeburg women talk to their servants is disgraceful; that it lowers a
servant's respect for her mistress. I'd give a lot to see Mrs. Singer
looking at herself coldly in the glass after breakfast and giving
herself orders for the day in a tone that would brook no familiarity
whatever.
Our women-folks, who are familiar with the Singer residence, say that it
is a beautiful thing full of monogrammed linen and embroidered towels
and curtains that have to be washed as often as a white shirt, and that
whenever they call they are pretty sure to find Mrs. Singer trying to
teach some new and slightly dizzy second girl how to take care of the
house without breaking off the edges.
You observe the fluency and ease with which I say "second girl." We all
do in Homeburg. We're used to talking about second girls since Mrs.
Singer has tried to keep one. As far as her experience has taught us, we
are firmly convinced that having a second girl is like having mumps on
the other side too. When Mrs. Singer isn't busy trying to teach her cook
how to run the oven and the plate heater and serve the soup all at the
same time, she is attempting to give a new second girl some inkling of
the general ideas of her duties. Trouble is most of them are ten-second
girls. They listen to the program in the Singer household and then they
sprint for safety to some family where they will work twice as hard, but
will give three times as much satisfaction. Then Mrs. Singer arms
herself with the dust rag and clear-starch bowl, and subs on the job
until she finds a new second girl--after which the cook gives up her job
with a loud report, and Mr. Singer stays down-town for dinner at the
Delmonico Hotel until the Singer house management is staved off the
rocks again.
We feel sorry for the Singers and invite them out a good deal while they
are hunting cooks. And they pay us back royally as soon as the household
staff is fully recruited once more. We eat strange but delicious dishes
made by a reluctant and mystified girl, plus Mrs. Singer's
persuasiveness and will power; and said girl, still reluctant, and
scared into the bargain, serves the dinner with a lace-edged apron and a
napkin on her hair, Mrs. Singer egging her in loud whispers like the
prompter in grand opera. Steering a green cook through a dinner party,
and keeping up a merry conversation at the same time, calls for about as
much social skill as anything I know of. I myself stand in awe of Mrs.
Singer.
As for the rest of us--we have no servant problem, having no servants.
And about the only hired girl problem we have is the following: "Shall
the girl eat with the family or in the kitchen?" Mrs. Singer wished that
on us. Ten years ago there was no question at all. The girl ate with the
family, and waited on the table when something was needed which couldn't
be reached. Then Mrs. Singer came to town and made her eat in the
kitchen, since which time the question has raged with more or less fury
and the whole town has chosen up sides on it. Half of us want the girl
to eat in the kitchen, and the other half are invincibly democratic and
have her at the table.