Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
I acted well. (But then I spoze I do look remarkable young for one of my
years, and I admired her good horse sense in seein' it so plain.) But
she looked real mauger, and I sez:
"You look kinder beat out, Jane Olive, hain't you well?"
Yes, she said she wuz well, but had so many cares that they wore on her.
"Why," sez I, "you don't try to do your housework alone, do you?"
No, she said she had ten servants.
So I knowed she didn't have to do the heaviest of her work, but her face
looked dretful tired and disappinted and I knowed it wuz caused by her
efforts to git into fashionable society, for I'd hearn more about it
since I come here, Miss Huff knowed a woman that lived neighbor to her,
she said that in spite of all Sam Perkinses money and Jane Olive's
efforts she couldn't git so fur into the circle of the first as she
wanted to, though she had done everything a woman could do.
Went off summers where the first went and winters too. When it wuz
fashionable to go to springs and seasides she went and ocean trips and
south and north, and when it wuz the fashion to go into the quiet
country she come to Jonesville.
And now she wuz tryin' a new skeem to git into the first, she got up a
name for bein' very charitable. That took her in, or that is part way
in, for her money went jest as fur and wuz jest as welcome to heathens
and such as if it wuzn't made out of pork. It went jest as fur as the
money that wuz handed down from four fathers or even five or six fathers
who wuz small farmers and trappers in Manhattan years and years ago. Her
money went jest as fur as though it had descended onto her from the sale
of the mink skins and cabbages of the grandpas of the 400.
Well, as I say, this did more than all her other efforts put together,
and took her inside furder, for givin' as much as she did they had to
invite her to set down on the same charitable boards where these genteel
females wuz settin'. And when a passel of wimmen are settin' down on one
board they have to be more sociable and agreeable like, than if they wuz
settin' round on different piles of lumber.
So Jane Olive wuz highly tickled and gin money freely. And now I don't
want it understood that Jane Olive done every mite of this work and gin
every cent of money for the speech of people or to git on in fashionable
life. No, she wuz kinder good hearted and felt sorry for the afflicted.
Her motives wuz mebby about half and half, half goodness and half
ambition, and that is I spoze a little worse than the average, though
motives will git dretfully mixed up, evil is worse than Canada thistles
to git mixed with good wheat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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