Maw's Vacation: The Story of a Human Being in the YellowstoneHough, Emerson
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Maw's Vacation: The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone
Hough, Emerson
American wit and humor; Camping; Tourists; Yellowstone National Park
Many and many a talk I had with Maw, dear old Maw, some sixty thousand
of her, this past summer. The best of all vacations is to see someone
else having a vacation who never has had a vacation before in his or her
life. The delight of Maw in this new phase of her existence has been my
main delight for many a week in the months spent, not so much in
watching geysers as in watching Maw. Sometimes I steal away from the
pleadings of the saxophone, leaving even Stella O'Cleave with the
slumberous eyes sitting alone at the log rail of Old Faithful Inn. I
want to see Maw once more, and talk with her once again about the
virtues of a vacation now and again; at least once in a lifetime spent
in work for others.
I do not always find the girls at home in the camp. For some reason they
seem of late to be out later and later of evenings. Paw has found a
crony here and there about the camps, and swaps reminiscences of this
sort or that. Sometimes I find Maw alone, sitting on the log, gazing
into her little camp fire. Once, I recall, one of the girls was at home.
"Roweny!" called out Maw suddenly. "Roweny, where are you? Come and talk
to the gentleman."
A voice replied from the other side of the car, where Rowena was sitting
on the running board. I discovered her, chin in hand, looking out into
the dark.
"I was afraid some perfessor had got her," explained Maw to me. "Come on
out, Roweny, and set by the fire. This gentleman seems sort of nice, and
he's old."
Rowena, seventeen years of age, uncrossed her long young limbs and came
out of the darkness, seating herself on the running board on our side,
where the firelight shone on her clean young features, her splendid
young figure of an American girl. She was comely enough in her spiral
putties and her tanned boots as she sat, her small round chin on the
hand whose arm was supported by a knee. Rowena appeared downcast. While
Maw was busy a moment later, I asked her why.
I think it must have been the mountain moon again; for Rowena, seventeen
years of age, once more looked gloomily out into the night.
"If I thought I could ever find a man that would understand me I believe
I would marry him!" said she, as has every young girl in her time.
"Tut, tut! Rowena!" I replied. "I believe that I understand you, simple
as I am myself, and you need not marry me at all. I understand you
perfectly. You are just a fine young girl, out on almost your first
vacation, with your Maw. It is the moon, Rowena. It is youth, Rowena,
and the air of the hills. Believe me, it will all come right when the
cook has finished his Princeton; of that I am sure.
"And Rowena," I added, "you will grow up after a while--you will grow up
to be a wholesome, useful American woman, precisely like your Maw."
"Precisely?" said Rowena, smiling.
But I saw how soft her eye was, after all, when I mentioned Maw--her
Maw, who came out of another day; who has worked so hard she is
uncomfortable now without her knitting when Old Faithful plays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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