American essays -- 19th century; American fiction -- 19th century; American poetry -- 19th century; Short stories, American
Mrs. Jessamine lives in Houston. You can meet any number of ladies
every day out walking on Main Street that resemble her very much. She
is not famous or extraordinary in any way. She has a nice family, is
in moderate circumstances and lives in her own house. I would call her
an average woman if that did not imply that some were below the
average, which would be an ungallant insinuation. Mrs. Jessamine is a
genuine woman. She always steps on a street car with her left foot
first, wears her snowiest lace-trimmed sub-skirts on muddy days, and
can cut a magazine, wind a clock, pick walnuts, open a trunk and clean
out an inkstand, all with a hairpin. She can take twenty dollars worth
of trimming and make over an old dress so you couldn't tell it from a
brand new fifteen dollar one. She is intelligent, reads the newspapers
regularly and once cut a cooking recipe out of an old magazine that
took the prize offered by a newspaper for the best original directions
for making a green tomato pie. Her husband has such confidence in her
household management that he trusts her with the entire housekeeping,
sometimes leaving her in charge until a late hour of the night.
Mrs. Jessamine is thoughtful, kindhearted and an excellent manager.
She has two children, a little boy of 7 and a little girl of 4, of
whom she is extravagantly fond. The Jessamines are going to keep a
cook as soon as Mr. Jessamine's salary is raised, but just at present
Mrs. Jessamine is doing her own work.
While she is attending to her duties she gives the children a paper of
needles, the scissors, some sample packages of aniline dyes and a box
of safety matches to play with, and during the intervals of baking and
sweeping the rooms she rushes in, kisses and cuddles them and then
flies back to her work singing merrily.
One afternoon last week Mrs. Jessamine was lying on the bed reading a
Sunday paper. The children were blowing soap bubbles with some old
pipestems of Mr. Jessamine's that he had discarded because they were
full of nicotine.
Mrs. Jessamine was reading an account of some cruel treatment of
children that had been unearthed by the Gerry Society, and the tears
came to her eyes as she thought of the heartless and criminally
careless mothers of the land who are the cause of so much suffering to
their innocent little ones.
Presently she fell asleep and dreamed this dream:
She was all alone in a great room. She heard the doorbell snap and
footsteps leaving and dying away in the hall outside. The room was a
strange one, and she went about to examine it. She paused in front of
a mirror and saw her reflection, and lo, she was a little child, in a
white pinafore, with wide-open, wondering eyes and tangled dark curls.
She heard the front door below stairs close and the gate open and
shut. She began to play around the room with some dolls and pictures,
and for a while was quite happy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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