California -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Western stories
Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known,
the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted
specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the
“Per-rairie Rose.” Being one of those who contend resolutely against
their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and
struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to
principles of “order,” which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope,
as “Heaven's first law.” But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own
“Jeemes” sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature asserted
itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard “between
meals,” and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those
important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted
walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were “keerless” of their
clothes. So with but one exception, however much the “Prairie Rose”
might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance,
the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling. That
one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She was the
realization of her mother's immaculate conception--neat, orderly, and
dull.
It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that “Clytie” was
a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher
threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was “bad,” and set her up
before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,
therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to
school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss
and others. For “Clytie” was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's
physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket,
to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and
languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour
of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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