Homeburg Memories

our Best Famili

astonish myself. Here are ten thousand women going by in clothes that would make a lily turn red and burn up with sh

ible means of support-Oh, I see! There's a girl under it with one of those rifle-barrel skirts. Gee! Ssh, Jim! Did you see the lady who just passed? Let's beg her pardon for intruding on this earth. Say, you could peel enough haughtiness off of

s the stories in your papers about Mrs. Clymorr Busst's clever pearl earrings, made to resemble door knobs; and about Mrs. Spenser Coyne's determination to have Columbia University removed because it interferes with the view from her garage; and about little Mrs. Justin Wright's charming innocence in buying a whole steamship whenever she goes over to Europe. I'd go

do this in

o it fast enough i

ed carriage which is used for the family of the deceased at funerals, we have our exclusive and magnificent class just as New York has. We haven't a Four Hundred in Homeburg, but we have a Two Four-Hun

trouble to deny it. In a way, she was regarded as a public benefactor. Nobody else cared to spend the money necessary to be a Smart Set, and since Mrs. Payley was willing to fight and b

o matter how much thought you put into it, and while you were readjusting your sights and clawing for her fingers and perspiring with mortification, she was getting a start on you which kept you bashfully humble as long as she was in sight. She was real goods, Mrs. Payley was-not arrogant, but just naturally superior. People who called at the Payleys'

tle nor'-nor'east of her chatelaine watch, when Mrs. Payley put out her hand some four inches southwest by south, and waited calmly for Mrs. Payley to correct herself. There was an awful moment of

and I shudder now when I think

a busy woman, and organized a flower mission. Its object was to distribute flowers to the sick and needy, who generally consisted of Pat Ryan. Pat was nearly smothered in flowers that year, being good-natured, and as the work of coll

nth 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 abo

ch, taking seven choir members out of the Congregational church, to say nothing of the organist. All

ally 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 supe

u 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, church

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 individ

om college and formed a tight little circle with their backs ou

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 th

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 wh

ays 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

h 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 h

red 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 dres

sist on going by carriage. Hi starts hauling us at six o'clock, six to a load in dry weather,

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

ly 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 pass

he Payleys and Singers common. They help to make Homeburg interesting, and so long as they know t

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 respect

the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffed our white gloves ba

with half the exertion which it takes to be a Some

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 Payle