Oh! these dazzlingly cool, fresh, spring days. If there is anything more
beautiful in the West than their gaudy Indian summer, it is the half
scared spring. The wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise
Nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not.
Each night a grand sunset crowns the close of a cloudless day.
Weeks ago Carlton's decree was granted him, but he stays to hold me in
his arms while I wait for mine. You ask if we are engaged? Yes--awfully
engaged all the time.
I have never before been able to understand why people put such vast
sums in churches. Now I know. It isn't on account of the worship, nor of
the interior, but for the steps. When you take into consideration what
assistance they have rendered lovers, it only seems just that they
should be taxed. We worship at Christian Science Church, because it's
darker, every night except Wednesday; but they have some sort of a
shin-dig then, so we switch to the Episcopal and take communion with
each other. Nice clean, comfy, red granite steps that so many pious,
divorce-hating feet have passed over. My sympathies go out to all women,
even if they are fallen and so did Christ's; but the good Sioux Fallians
are above it. They pull all the hay to their side of the manger and
forget that we, having never used such food, don't miss it now. It is a
pity that we can't infuse more of the "God-honor-and-the-ladies" spirit
into this depth of silliness out here.
The West is so big and glorious and free, it seems strange that the corn
crop should be so superior to the people. I suppose it is because each
perfect stalk of corn turns its face to God and Heaven, and the people
are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. When we pass
them on the street we feel like saying: "Our reputations are in your
hands. In God's name be merciful!"
I am keeping house now in my room--light housekeeping, you know. It's
positively airy sometimes. My landlady--bless her ignorant soul!--allows
my little ice-box to remain in her butler's pantry, which I have
christened "cockroach alley." They--the cockroaches--are so large and
educated that I have named them, and each one comes when it's called and
feeds from the hand.
She wears the most artistic skirts--always ball-room back and ballet
front. Her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the
Bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "Grandma, there's a
grammatical error in this Bible," and my landlady said: "Well, kill it,
child, kill it!" She spends whole hours each day talking to her birds,
which, she claims, save the expense of a piano. I told the grandchild to
go out into the sunshine this morning and it would do her cold good. She
said, very saucily: "I won't go into the sunshine, my grandma told me to
go into the air." My grandma didn't tell me to go there, Lorna, but
someone must have ordered it, for in the "air" I am, and so high that I
no longer feel the earth beneath my feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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