SAINT PAUL
J. E. HAYNES, Publisher
1921
COPYRIGHT 1920
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1921
EMERSON HOUGH
[Illustration: "Maw"]
Times has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what
they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we
didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither.
The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself--cooking,
sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays
because I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'd
bring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken--it won't
cook itself. Weekdays was one like another, and except for shoveling
snow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and winter
come. There was no movies them days--a theater might come twice a
winter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of the
inside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't have
much other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now and
then, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more than
paid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and if
when I was down town after the groceries I'd 'a' stepped into the drug
store and bought me a lemonade--and they didn't have no nut sundaes
then--they'd of had me up before the church for frivolous conduct.
Of course Paw kicks about the crops and prices, but I've been living
with Paw forty years, and I dunno as I can remember a time when he
didn't kick. He kicks now on the wages he pays these city boys that come
out to farm; says they're no good at all. But somehow or other, things
gets raised. I notice the last few years we somehow have had more
clothes and things, and more money in the bank. When Paw bought the
automobile he didn't ask the minister if it was right, and he didn't
have to ask the bank for a consent, neither. Cynthy's back from
college, and it's all paid for somehow. Jimmy's in a mail-order store
in Chicago. I've got a girl to help me that calls herself a maid, which
is all right enough, though we used to call Judge Harmsworth's help a
girl and let it go at that, law me! My other girls, Hattie and Roweny,
are big enough to help a lot, and Paw reasons with them considerable
about it. I've always been so used to work that I think I can do it
better myself. I always like to do for my children.
But Paw, ever since I married him, has been one of those energetics.
They call him an aggressive business man. Some of them call him a
dominant man, because of his whiskers, though he knows well enough about
how scared of him I am. Only time I ever was scared of Paw was when he
got the car. I thought he would break his fool neck and kill Roweny,
that had clim in with him. He did break down the fence in front of the
house and run over the flower beds and all.