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.
I don't blame the men for being proud. They have something to be proud
of, for they can do exactly as they please, from wearing out the
seats of their trousers when they're little to being president when
they're big. When I was right little I used to think that the heathen
over the sea that threw the girl babies to the crocodiles were doing
it in hopes of killing out the girl breed, so the little new babies
would have to be boys. A heathen is anybody that lives on the other
side of the map from us.
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! She says it is a disheartening thing to have to take her
hands out of the biscuit dough when the cook's brother has died and go
to the telephone in a big hurry where folks tell her every symptom of
everything they have, from abscess on the brain to ingrowing
toe-nails. And she never gets the baby well lathered in his bath of a
morning but what some of her lady friends call her up and she has to
sit and talk for politeness' sake till the baby almost drowns and gets
soap in his eyes.
She tries to believe in New Thought though, and some days she "goes
into the silence." This means wrapping the telephone up in a
counterpane and stuffing up the door-bell until it can make only a
hoarse, choking noise. Then she spanks the baby and puts him to bed,
and that house is like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.
Yes, women certainly seem to have a hard time in this life. Even when
they marry rich and live in a hotel and never have any babies they
seem to be worse tired than the ones that warm bottles of milk and
peel potatoes. Some of them that Cousin Eunice knows are called
"bridge maniacs," and they shrug their shoulders and say "What's the
use?" if you suggest anything to them.
I have been home from Cousin Eunice's now for two weeks, for the
stylish, private school I went to up there lets out soon. Mammy Lou
says I'm the worst person to break out in spots she ever saw, and one
of my "spots" last summer was keeping this diary, which I did for a
while very hard and fast. Now a whole year has passed and it is summer
again and I am so lonesome that I believe I'll write a little every
day and tell some of the things we did at Rufe's last winter. If any
of you grandchildren who read are afflicted with that trouble of doing
things by fits and starts you may know who you inherited it from. I'm
not really to blame so much for neglecting you, my diary, for all the
time I needed you most last winter you were lost. This is a terrible
habit that all my things have--getting lost. My garters do it
especially and I have to tear great holes in my stockings by pinning
them up and then forgetting to stand stiff-kneed.
Rufe told mother last fall that I was so precocious, which I looked up
in the dictionary and admired him very much for, that I ought to be
where I could have good teachers. So after he and Cousin Eunice had
been married long enough to be able to bear the sight of a third party
at the breakfast table they wrote for me to come and I went.
I was kinder disappointed to see them looking like every-day folks
again, for the last time I had seen them they were looking as they had
never looked before and never will look again, for Rufe says he'll be
hanged if anybody can get him to appear in that wedding suit any more.
But oh, that wedding! And oh, that wedding march played on a
thundering pipe-organ that makes cold chills run up and down your back
thinking what if it was happening to you! When the time comes for "I
will" you nearly smother, you're so afraid they might change their
minds at the last minute and embarrass you half to death right there
before all those people.
They didn't change their minds then, though, nor since then either, I
honestly believe. They married safe and sound, and Cousin Eunice's
favorite book now is _1,001 Tried Recipes_. And Keats is lots of times
covered with dust.
I got this far last night when Mammy Lou passed by my window on her
way to her house from the kitchen and stopped long enough to make me
go to bed. She says it takes a sight of sleep and a "passel o'
victuals" for a girl of my age, and I don't have enough of either.
"I'se shore goin' 'er tell Mis' Mary how you set up uv a night," she
said, very fiercely, but she couldn't shake her finger at me for it
took both hands to hold the big pan she had under her apron. "An' as
fer eatin'! Why, a red bug eats more! An' such truck! Candy and apples
and fried chicken and fried Saratoga chips! _Fries_ nuvver was no good
for nobody at the gawky age, nohow. It takes _boils_ to fatten them!"
I promised I'd go on to bed and eat nothing but "boils" to please her
if she wouldn't tell father and mother how late I sit up, so she
promised. She never would tell anyhow.
I believe the next thing I wanted to mention about was the theaters
they used to take me to on Friday night when there wasn't any lessons.
I just love the theater. I believe if I don't decide to be a trained
nurse, although I am sure that is what I was cut out for, I may be an
actress. When they used to tell me pitiful tales at Sunday-school
about the heathen I was sure I wanted to be a missionary to Japan.
Mother used to take me to a tea store with her every time we went into
the city to buy things we couldn't get at home and the walls were
covered with pictures of Japan. I never will forget how blue the sky
was nor how white the clouds, and it seemed the loveliest country in
the world to me, except home. And I would look at mother and wonder
how she would feel if I told her that some day I was going to leave
her and father and sail away to that beautiful land where the poor,
ignorant people didn't know how to wear corsets nor eat hog meat. Of
course they needed somebody to tell them what they were missing and I
was eager to be that one!
That was a long time ago! I know more about Japan now! I know more
about America too! Doctor Gordon said one night last winter that if
some of the missionaries were to go all over this country and tell
folks to open their windows and stop murdering their babies with candy
and bananas they would do more good than trying to teach the Japanese
so much. He said he didn't know which was the more heathenish, to
throw children in the river and let them have a quick death or stuff
them on fried meat and pickles and let them die by slow torture.
The mothers are hard to teach, he says, because they don't more than
leave the doctor's office with a poor little pale baby than they meet
an old woman who tells them not to let the child be doctored to death,
to "feed 'im." They will tell the mother "Didn't _I_ have eleven? And
everything _I_ et, _they_ et!"
He told us so many stories of murdered babies that I got to feeling
like I'd prefer being a nurse in a day home. I love babies! And Doctor
Gordon has the loveliest eyes!--But I haven't got to him yet.
Speaking of the theater, I got to see many notorious people on the
stage this winter. Rufe said I would get a great variety of ideas from
the best plays. I did. I got a great variety of Ideals too. One time
he would be tall, fair and brave, with a Scotch name, like Marmaduke
Cameron, or Bruce MacPherson. Then the very next time I'd go he'd
change his looks and disposition.
I loved some of the operas, too, especially _Il Trovatore_. I wish the
singers were slender, though. It hurts your feelings to have the
"voice that rang from that donjon tower" belonging to a great fat man
with no head to speak of, and what he has consisting mainly of jaws.
Of all the songs on record (not phonographic record) next to _Dixie_
and _La Paloma_ I believe I love _Ah, I have sighed to rest me!_ The
words to this are not so loving, but the tune is so pitiful.
I wish my name was Dolores Lovelock, or Anita Messala, and I could get
shut up in a tower. I have a girl friend in the city and every time we
write to each other we sign the name we're wishing most was ours at
that very minute. Her last letter was signed "Undine Valentine," but I
don't think that's half as pretty as Mercedes Ficediola.
It wouldn't hardly be worth while for me to change my name now,
because I change my mind so often. I'm a great hand to start a thing
and then branch off and start something entirely different, such as
learning how to make the table walk, and pyrography. Cousin Eunice
said one day when she looked around at the things I had in my room
that it reminded her of Pompeii when they dug it up--so many things
started that never would be finished.
One of the things we enjoyed most at Cousin Eunice's was walking out
to a lovely old cemetery not very far from her house. It is so old and
so beautiful that you're sure all the people in the graves must have
gone to Heaven long ago. Along in April, when the iris and
lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom and the birds and trees and sky all
seem to be so happy, you look around at those peaceful graves and you
don't believe in hell one bit. You think God is a heap better than
folks give Him credit for being. But I hope this will never come to
Brother Sheffield's ears, for he thinks you're certainly going there
if you don't believe in a hell worse than the Standard Oil Company on
fire.
While I'm on this kind of subject I want to tell something that Rufe
said last winter, but I'm afraid to, for if mother ever saw it she
would get Brother Sheffield to hold a special meeting for Rufe. I
might risk it and then lock my diary up tight. Rufe said one time when
I remarked that I liked St. John better than St. Paul: "No wonder! St.
John's _liver_ was in good working order!"
Cousin Eunice and Rufe are still very earnest and study deep things,
even if they don't read Keats so much. They know a jolly crowd of
people that call themselves "Bohemians." Lots of nights some of them
would come to Cousin Eunice's and we would cook things in the
chafing-dish and "discuss the deeper problems of life." They are not
real Bohemians though, for, from what they said, I learned that a real
Bohemian is a person that is very clever, but nobody knows it. He
"follows his career," eating out of paper sacks and tin cans and
sleeping on an article that is an oriental couch in the daytime. Then
finally some rich person finds him and invites him to dinner, and this
is called "discovering a genius."
When our friends would come we would talk about the "Brotherhood of
Man" and the North Pole and such things as that. I listen to
everything I can hear about the North Pole for I never have got over
the idea that Santa Claus lives there. And the "Brotherhood of Man"
means we're all as much alike as biscuits in a pan, the only
difference being in the place where we're put; and we ought to act
accordingly.
Some of the young ones talk a great deal about how the children of the
nation ought to be brought up, and they tell about what their family
life is going to be like, though Rufe says most of them haven't got
salary enough to support a cockroach.
I think the "Brotherhood of Man" business is a good thing to teach
children, for I wasn't taught it and I shall never forget my feelings
when I first learned that Christ was a Jew! I thought it couldn't be
so, and if it was so I could never be happy again. So the Bohemians
are going to teach their children that the Jew is our brother and that
he hath eyes and if you prick him he will bleed. These are their own
words. I'm sure the Jews are lovely people since I've seen Ben-Hur on
the stage and the picture of Dis-Disraeli. That's all I know about him
and I'm not sure how to spell that. I'll skin my children if I ever
catch them saying "Sheenie" in my presence.
And we make limericks! We don't make them in the chafing-dish though,
as I thought when I first went there. A limerick is a very different
thing from what you'd think if you didn't know. It's a verse of poetry
that's very clever in every line.
Among the Bohemians I liked best were a married couple and Ann
Lisbeth. Besides having the same name as mine, Ann Lisbeth is a
beautiful foreign girl who was living across the ocean when she was
born. Her last name is something that _Disraeli_ is not a circumstance
to, and I'd never spell it, so I won't waste time trying. She's going
to get rid of that name pretty soon and I don't blame her, although
Cousin Eunice says it is a noble one across the ocean. _Still_ I
don't blame her, for the man is a young doctor, Doctor Gordon that
I've already mentioned, and perfectly _precious_. Next to a prince I
believe a young doctor is the most thrilling thing in the world!
Ann Lisbeth lived near Cousin Eunice and they were great friends. She
and her mother were very poor because they got exiled from their home
for trying to get Ann Lisbeth's father out of prison where the king
had put him. Oh, the people across the ocean are so much more romantic
than we are in this country! Now, father wouldn't ever get put in
prison in a lifetime!
Ann Lisbeth has to work for a living. She does embroidery--exquisite
embroidery, and lace work that looks like charlotte russe. She is the
kind of looking girl that you'd expect to have a dressing-table
covered with silver things and eat marshmallows and ice-cream all the
time. She is what Cousin Eunice calls a "lotus-eater." This like to
have worried me to death at first, for I misunderstood it and imagined
it was something like eating roaches. I wasn't going to blame Ann
Lisbeth for it even if it _was_ like roaches, for I thought maybe it
was the style in her country across the ocean. What is _one_ nation's
style would turn another's stomach; and everybody likes what he was
raised on, even Chinese rats and Limburger cheese.
It was very romantic the way Ann Lisbeth met Doctor Gordon. She had
gone down to the florist's one slippery day to spend her last quarter
for white hyacinths to cheer her mother up when she had the good
fortune to slip down and break her arm. Doctor Gordon happened to be
passing at the time in his automobile and he carried her to the
hospital and fixed the arm. He said white hyacinths were his favorite
flower, too, so he sends them to her and her mother every day.
Poor Doctor Gordon! He's having a hard time to make a living like
every other young doctor. He says sometimes he has a whole month of
blue Mondays come right together. And he says every time he happens to
wake up with a headache he also has a blowout in his best tire and
gets a notice from the bank that he's overdrawn the same day.
I liked him extremely well myself for a while, and he seemed to like
me. He called me his little sweetheart, but I soon saw that a little
sweetheart has to take a big back seat when there's a grown one
around.
Mother and I have been laughing all day about a little affair that
happened here last winter while I was away at school.
After Christmas mother and father went back to stay at Rufe's with me
a few days, for they said the place was so lonesome when I left they
couldn't stand it. Of course they met Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth,
for we were always at each other's house, either to learn a Mount
Mellick stitch or to play a piece from a new opera. Mother liked Ann
Lisbeth's sweet ways so much that she said she just must come down
and make her a visit before she _thought_ of getting married.
About the time for the first jonquils to bloom, early in February,
mother wrote that they reminded her so much of me and made her so
lonesome, that she wished Ann Lisbeth would come on then. So she
packed her suit-case and went.
Everybody knows how the people in a little place will look at a
stranger that comes in, because they're so tired of looking at each
other. So they stared at her from the station clear up to the house.
Now, city people never get any enjoyment out of staring unless they
see somebody in trouble, such as an unfortunate young man with his
shoulder to the wheel, trying to repair a puncture, by the side of a
muddy road. Then they stare, and giggle too.
There were several young men at the station that day, and, as Ann
Lisbeth went down there not breathing to a soul that she was engaged,
they came near losing their minds over her beautiful skin and foreign
accent.
The one of them that seemed to be most impressed was a bore--no, he
wasn't just an every-day kind of bore that asks you if this is your
first visit to that place and tells you afterward that he never has
been so impressed in his life on short acquaintance. I've heard Cousin
Eunice talk about them, but this man wasn't like that sort of bore. He
was a perfect _auger_. Many a time when he has dropped in to see
father of an evening and I would have to put my book down for
politeness' sake, I've sat there and pinched my face, the side that
was turned away from him, till it was black and blue, to keep awake.
Pinching your arm or leg wouldn't have done any good with this
man--you had to pinch up close to your brain.
All the time Ann Lisbeth was there he showed so plainly that he was
coming to see _her_ that mother and father would go out and leave them
alone, though father said he felt so sorry for her that he promised
always to do something to run him off by ten o'clock. Every man knows
how to do these things, I believe, such as taking off his shoes loud
and telling mother to wind the clock, in a stagey voice, and making a
great racket around the front door. And when the young man would hear
these signs he would leave.
Right in the midst of Ann Lisbeth's visit one day she got a telegram
from Doctor Gordon saying that he was coming down that evening and
leave on the midnight train. This is a sure sign a man cares. He
couldn't stand it any longer. Well this Mr. W. (I'll call him that for
fear his grandchildren might feel hard toward mine if it ever got to
their ears that I had spelt his name right out) had said he was coming
over that night to bring some new records for the talking machine, to
try them; but, when Ann Lisbeth told mother about Doctor Gordon
coming, mother telephoned him, Mr. W., I mean, not to come till the
next night when father would be at home, as he wanted to hear the
records.
Sure enough father did have some business out in the country that
afternoon and didn't get home until about ten o'clock that night. He
heard voices as he passed the parlor door, and thinking of course it
was Mr. W., decided that he would run him off right away so poor Ann
Lisbeth could get some sleep.
Mother was already asleep and there was no way for him to know who it
really was in the parlor, so he took his shoes off and slammed them
down in vain, and rattled out the ashes, and wound the clock, and
coughed and sneezed. By this time he was awfully sleepy, for it was a
cold night and he had had a long drive, so he went to bed and to
sleep.
Along about twelve o'clock father woke up, and seeing a light still in
the parlor, tried to get mother roused up long enough to ask her what
else she supposed he might use besides _dynamite_ to run that fellow
off. Mother was still so sleepy that she didn't say anything, so
father got out of bed and opened his bedroom door. There were voices
talking very easy in the parlor, so father, thinking that surely Ann
Lisbeth would be ready to commit suicide by this time, decided he
would walk to the front door and open and shut it real loud, knowing
_that_ would run him off, without waiting to slip on his trousers.
Now, father is long and lank, and wears old-timey bob-tail
night-shirts, winter and summer; and all the rooms of our house open
_square_ into that one big hall--and there are no curtains to hide
behind!
Just as father reached the front door and began tampering with the
lock, out walked the happy pair from the parlor and they must have had
a mighty tumble off of Mount Olympus or Pegasus, or whatever that
place is called. They jumped back as quickly as they could, but of
course they couldn't get back quickly enough to suit all parties
concerned.
Father finally got the door open and, to keep from having to pass the
parlor door again, he ran _clear_ around that big, rambling house,
bare-footed, and with the February moon shining down on him and the
February wind whistling through his little bob-tail night-shirt.
The noise of so many doors opening and shutting made mother wake up in
a hurry, and, being used to father's ways of leaping, then looking
afterward, she realized what had happened.
Poor father came around to the side porch and scratched on the bedroom
door for mother to let him in. By this time she was so near dead from
laughing that she could hardly speak, but managed to use her voice a
little, just to pay him back for doing such an idiotic thing, she
said.
She opened the bedroom door a little, so Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth
could hear, then called out in a loud, distressed voice:
"Oh, Dan! _Have_ you come home in _that condition_ again?"
Everybody that knows father knows that he never drank a drop of
anything stronger than soothing-syrup in his life; and when he had met
Doctor Gordon in the city they hadn't been able to get off the subject
of prohibition, they both were so temperate. It was a terrible thing
to be called "in that condition" before _him_!
But mother let him in, and Doctor Gordon caught his train back to the
city where he sent father at least _two_ dozen funny post-cards on the
subject of "that condition."