A Woman Named Smith

ital Hyndsitis"; Doctor Richard Geddes said you'd only to take a glance at her house to see that she was predestined to be damned. I know that she was s

s, and the quaintest of Dutch schnapps bottles, cheek by jowl with an iron warming-pan, a bootjack, a rusty leather bellows, and a box packed with empty patent-medicine bottles, under the pantry shelf. A helmet creamer would be full of little rolls of twine

f the sweating hours spent in, so to speak, separating the sheep things from the goat things. I can't help stopping for a minute, though, to gloat over the front drawing-room that presently emerged, with a cleaned carp

shoulders, and a cap with a rose in it covering her parted brown hair. The little boy leaning against her knees had darker blue eyes, and fairer hair pushed back from a bold and manly forehead. The painting w

ott Hynds & Ric

Colnl. J. H.

Neece J

and his pretty, meek mother the place of honor in the room that had once heard his laughter and seen her tears. And we brought down-stairs the fine painting of Colonel James Hampden

f the room altogether, for we hadn't changed so much as we'd restored it. Even the glass shades that use'd to shield their wax candles were in their old places. T

y Ann El

. 2 Mos.,

or proud grandmother. It was such human and intimate things, the mute mementoes of children who had

ch was tucked a receipt signed by Judah Benjamin for Hynds silver melted into a bar and given to the Cause, written, "The glory is departed," across the package, and hidden it. Alicia, who had a hankering after Confederates, he

ose walls tha

s now where T

ldn't be done to it. In addition he was a grizzled, bearded, shambling old angel who clung to a reeking pipe and Utopian notions, a pestilent and whole-hearted socialist w

ean Jaurès lurking behind my coffee-pot and Fourier under the butter-dish. To-day I f

ly, placidly, benevolently, through

rs away. I give you the little leaflet, the little pamp

doctor next door

with innocent but consummate skill. Lookin

s tools, to know exactly what to do and how to do it," she

"I do more yet by you," he added charitably, "then make over for you ch

forlorn old things emerged, piece by piece, in shining rosewood and walnut and mahogany majesty. If you love old furniture; if it gives you a thrill just to touch a per

n each side was a space filled with more relics than all the rest of the house contained-portraits, signed and framed documents, letters, old flags, and a whole arsenal o

ed hats, and with such awe-inspiring noses! The center and largest tile was, of course, the Father of his Country, without the hat, but with the nose, and above him the original flag, with the thirteen stars for the thirteen

as as yellow as beeswax, and the sheets made one think of the Flying Dutchman's sails. This room was of almost monastic severity: an ascetic or a stern soldier might have occupied it. Besides the bed it contained four chairs, a clothes-press, a secretary, and a shaving-stand. On a small table near the bed were a Wedgwood mortar with a heavy pestle, a medicine glass, and a pewter candlest

n his room. I believe he died here, in this very bed. And after

to tell, as he lay there dying? His painted face in the library was not a bad man's face. It was proud, stern, stubborn, bigoted; a dark, unhappy face, but neither an evil nor a cruel one

it plainly had been read, perhaps wept over by a tortured heart, for it fell open at that cry of all sad hearts, the Fifty-first Psalm. I was moving this prie-dieu, when my foot slipped on the bare floor and I dropped it with a crash. Fortunately it was not injured. But what had looked like a mere line of carving on the outer edge of the small

een unaware of the existence of this book, which he had not had time to d

n the yellowed pages covered a period of years. He had not been one to waste words. Once or twice, as we hurriedly turned the pages, ap

more than give it a cursory glance. We turned feverishly to those years that

He protests he knows Naught & my Mthr. believes him as doth Emily

ages, raging to read the end, m

o, son of old Shooba's wife

came Schmetz the gardener, raving, gesticulating, and after him old Uncle Adam

docteur Geddes are with their paws upturning! They upturn with rapidity and completeness, led by

which he had presented me from his own cherished store-freesias, daffodils, tulips,

springing to her feet; "and we cou

ry with a snap. Hens

e," called Alicia, running out with Schme

re some enormous black-and-white hens, led by the biggest rooster I h

Adam stood with folded hands, looking on from a safe and sane distance. He refused to have anything to do with Geddes fowls in ol' Mis' Scarlett's yar

ak in the palings on our side of the hedge, while in my hands the rooster squawked

liked to do so, but with an arm made strong by a just and righteous rage I lifted that big brute high abo

ble grunt, as of one getting all the wind knocked out of him, a scuffle, and the

ut-murdered me!" grunte

mself and what he felt was coming battle. Uncle Adam had no wish to have to pray me to death, and he wasn't going to run any risks

h the light of battle in his eyes, Doctor Geddes ap

off that

in their morals, horrible in their habits, and shameless in their behavior. And the husband of these wretches,

"shut up!-Now then, I want to k

ly. "Look at my bulbs!

roared the doctor. "Ju

sieur, again I implore that you will remain calm and listen to t

?" said I, outraged. "I think you had bet

an through it-beak, spurs and tail feathers-that's why!" bawled the doctor. "Gad! I

ted severely: "one on your tong

ll but murdered me, and yet has the stark effrontery to blather about temper! You'v

whom you greatly resemble in that same matte

lly. "Fish-blooded old mummy! His place is in a Can

nd that your hens are unutterable nuisances, I see no reason why he should change his

were hatched under Satan's wings. Monsieu

our yard when they invaded my premises? Very well: I threw

!" A horrible sneer t

mber anything save the grace before meat, so he pra

Sophronisba!" he hissed, and, having hurled this han

y the shoulders and shake her soundly; but catching her eye instead, I also fell into h

ver the hedge-a big, leonine head with a tossing mane and a tameless beard. An enormous pair of shoulders followed, a tree-trunk of a leg was swung over, and Doct

him sweetly, "we're la

arly fine bulbs-eh, Schmetz?-and more than I need for myself. Will you share them with me,

cia said instantly. "When

ning eyes. "By jingo, I'll get 'em th

ood friend the doctor, that the socialist argument boiled down amounts to about this-that one should do without boiled eggs for breakfas

make tinkerings mit the inside plumbings, Gott bewahre! and cut up womens and cats and such-like poor little dumb b

said Comr

ep race-thoughts, Comrade Geddes-seeds, bulbs, germs, all of them, in the ugly husks of the common people. Out of our muck and grime they come, the little green shoots which the fool will say is poison, maybe, but which the wise know and labor an

gold on your altars. And you say, 'Listen: Jesus the carpenter talks plain words t

at this opportune moment that Mary Magdalen led around a corner of Hynds House no less personages than Mrs. Haile and Miss Martha Hopkins. Their eyes fell up

s demurely as cats. I should have felt like a boy c

er paper on 'The Ironic Note in Chivalry'? How about 'The Effect of the Pre-Raphaelites

tor," smiled Miss Hopkins, a dish-fa

d to Alicia and me, politely: "Miss Hopkins," he informed us, "moves among us clot

and blank, as befits a minister's wife. Alicia's eyes were downcast, but a wicked dimple came and went in her cheek. She looked ravishingly pretty, the bright hair breaking into curls about

ere reorganizing their missionary society and wanted to see if they couldn't interest us in the good work. Th

garden soil from his knees, and shook his

s who of course don't need a hospital, nor even a decent school, in our Christian midst. Ladies, good afternoon!" He made a fleering motion of the hand and was gone.

ll into step with me. In a low voice she thanked me, hurriedly, for having dropped th

he pitiful truth of the slim, poor, aristocratic little parish; the old church overtaken and surpassed by its more modern and middle-class rivals; and the minister's family struggling alo

k bluntly you must pardon it. Miss Gaines and I can give two hundred dollars a year between

n't show it by so much as the quiver of an eyelash. Only a faint, faint co

h a glimmer of humor in her worried eyes: "As you say you're a b

aughed, and

ng, naked little Love, holding his torch above his curl-crowned head. You miss him, when you come up the broad drive from the front gate,

ed Miss Hopkins, staring with all her eyes. And I knew with g

here, like the dead come to life!" murmur

mself as a child," said Miss Hopkins. Then she remembered her duty, he

ry work, placid enough, but it lacks that plastic, fluidic serenity, that divine new

terror of papers on art. They are, Alicia informs me, purple piffle. Yet Alicia dr

ving torn the poor little peasant Love to tat

know what art is," adm

us clothed in white sami

than a child," she said kindly. "When you

d the Irish hate to have to improve their minds. I imagine it takes an a

d: it was a master

the statue?" she inquired critically. "Now, I should ne

ame back to

tioning that to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, if you don't mind. You

e Gatchell seen fit to tell us? Alicia had dropped a bomb-shell that before night would detonate in every house in Hyndsville. They haven't very much to

r, of course. Certainly if Mr. Jelnik selected that particular spot for the statu

ing of art there is to see," Alicia agreed, placi

Geddes?) accepting the interlopers in the house of his fathers! Nicholas Jelnik selecting the site for the statue Richard had brought home in pride, and Freeman had buried in sorrow! Miss Hopkins's stare dismissed me, shifted t

ry meeting, and take stock. Incidentally (For goodness' sake, don't look so scandalized, Sophy Smith! this is a fight for our lives, so to speak!) incidentally, I shan't

ultivate your imagination, my dea

grizzled head out at

vate you the heart. It iss not what the woman thinks, but what she loves, what she feels, which makes of the world a home-place for men und kinder." The good old Jew nodded

Hynds's diary, which we were simply burning to read. I opened the table drawer in