+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ MAW'S VACATION THE STORY OF A HUMAN BEING _in the_ YELLOWSTONE _by_ EMERSON HOUGH AUTHOR OF: The Sagebrusher, Hearts Desire, The Covered Wagon, Curly of the Range, etc. ILLUSTRATED SAINT PAUL J. E. HAYNES, Publisher 1921 COPYRIGHT 1920 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT 1921 EMERSON HOUGH [Illustration: "Maw"] Times has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself--cooking, sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays because I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'd bring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken--it won't cook itself. Weekdays was one like another, and except for shoveling snow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and winter come. There was no movies them days--a theater might come twice a winter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of the inside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't have much other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now and then, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more than paid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and if when I was down town after the groceries I'd 'a' stepped into the drug store and bought me a lemonade--and they didn't have no nut sundaes then--they'd of had me up before the church for frivolous conduct.