Clemence : $b the schoolmistress of WavelandBabcock, Retta B.
General
Clemence : $b the schoolmistress of Waveland
Babcock, Retta B.
Boarding schools -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
There was also a weekly paper published there, by an ambitious youth,
called the "Clarion," which contained snappish editorials about its
neighbors, aspiring criticisms upon the publications of different
authors, always ending in an unmistakable "puff," if they were at all
popular, or a feeble attempt at discriminating censure, if the unlucky
scribe was unknown to fame, and had (poor wretch,) his way yet to make
in the literary world.
Clemence got quite attached to the Swans' during her brief stay with
them. She regretted to leave them for the uncongenial society of
strangers.
Her next boarding place was at Dr. Little's. He was rightly named, Mrs.
Wynn had taken pains to inform her, and they were a well-matched pair.
"The way that man charged, when my Rose had the fever and chills, was
amazin'. I know one thing, there would be a good opening in Waveland for
any single young man who wanted to set up opposition to the old Doctor.
For _my_ part, I'd call on him every time my family needed his services,
which would probably be pretty often, for Rose is kind of delicate like.
He'd be sure to have one patron, for it would do me good to spite the
Little's."
Clemence thought, when she first saw this couple, about whom she had
heard so much, that though the little weazen-faced Doctor might chance
to be rightly named, yet the same remark could not, by any means, apply
to the mountain of flesh he called his wife.
"Oh, but you don't know her," said Maria, their one servant, after tea.
"I always thought, before I came here, that fat people, especially them
that had plenty of means, sort of took life easy. But I've changed my
mind, since I knew Mis' Little. I've been in her service risin' of five
years, and you might as well think of catching a weasel asleep. It's
'Mariar,' the last thing at night, and 'Mariar,' the first thing in the
morning. I don't know when she rests, for she never lays down while I am
awake, for fear I shant do just so much. If them there philysophers,
that want to find out the secret of perpetual motion, and can't, would
come across Mis' Little, they'd own beat. She's just kept a spinning for
the last five years. And Sundays she's more regular to church than the
minister himself, besides all the weekly meetings, and always gets up
and tells what the Lord's done for her soul. Then the Doctor he follows,
and talks about the gold-paved streets, and all that, and is sure to
bring in a Latin quotation. After that, he sits down, and goes to
twirlin' that big jack-knife of his, and I can't help thinkin', though I
know it's wicked, that if he was to get to heaven as he expects, the
very first thing he'd do, would be to whip out that knife, and go to
scrapin' away to get a little gold dust to put in his pocket; he! he!
he! Don't look so horrified, Miss Graystone. I suppose, now you think
I'm dreadful ungrateful. One thing I know, they'll palaver you till
you'll think they was two pink and white angels that had slid down a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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