City and town life -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Love stories, American
You remember, my diary, a good many pages back I mentioned in here a
pair of Bohemians that were married to each other and were friends of
ours and would come to Rufe's every week and we would all do funny
things? Well, I couldn't write about them then, for I didn't have any
space for married people, wanting to save it purely for folks that
loved each other. But now it does seem like Providence that they've
come down here to spend the summer in the country, for there's not a
single loving soul left to write about, Aunt Laura being gone and
Brother Sheffield never very loving when she was here, except chicken.
Their name is Mrs. Marie and Augustus Young. Father says that Adam or
the legislature knew a thing or two when it named them _Young_. He is
a professor and owns a chair in a college that must either have gold
nails in it or sit extra good, for Rufe says it is worth five thousand
dollars a year. Mrs. Young sings vocal. I wish she didn't, especially
in a parlor. If anybody is singing or reciting a speech on a platform
and flowers and electric lights it thrills you and you really enjoy
it; but if they do it in a close room, especially if it trills high or
has to kneel down and get red in the face, it makes you so ashamed for
the one that's doing it, and for yourself, too, that you look straight
at the carpet. Even then the blood rushes to your head.
They have built a house with such a wide porch running all around it
that it reminds you of a little, tiny boy with a great big hat pulled
down over his eyes, which is called a bungalow. They said they had
brought a "complete outfit for light housekeeping" along with them,
but when mother saw it she laughed considerable on the outside of the
bungalow, for it was fifty-three books, mostly ending in "ology," a
hammock and some chairs that lean away back, a guitar apiece, a great
many little glass cases that you stick bugs and butterflies in if you
can catch them, a picture of the Apostle Hosea, with his head all
wrapped up like an old lady with the neuralgia, which they both said
they could not live without, and a punching-bag, which they punched a
great deal in the city, not having any baby to amuse themselves with,
which was a good thing for the baby I reckon. So mother sent them over
a great many things and Professor Young said she was the most sensible
woman he ever saw, including a biscuit board and a sifter. They have
been here a few days now and are delighted with the country air and
the green scenery, and, although it does seem proud to say it, _me_.
They thought very highly of me at Cousin Eunice's and said I was the
most "interesting revelation of artless juvenile expression" they ever
saw, which I wrote down on paper and when I came home taught it to
Mammy Lou to give in at the experience meeting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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