A Name for Herself Read online

  That evening, around the tea-table, Polly gave us an account of her afternoon.

  “They were all so glad to see me,” she said, “and I sang hymns to them and read the tracts to three old bodies. And then I talked with Nora. Nora was a housemaid in grandmother’s family thirty years ago, you know. She looks exactly like the pictures you see of George Eliot.37 Well, Nora has an excellent memory, and she delights to tell me tales of long ago, when mother was a girl, and had simply dozens of beaux. I store them all up in my head, and when mummy begins to lecture me on my flirtatiousness I silence her by springing some of Nora’s reminiscences on her. She just colors up beautifully, and doesn’t say another word. Nora says mother was the prettiest girl in Halifax in her time.

  “There is one dear little old lady out there who just looks like a doll. Today she was sitting there, wearing a real dressy little black velvet bonnet, a lace-trimmed apron, a red waist, a black lace collar and a necklace of beads. Her little corner is neat as a pin, and all prettied up with mottoes and cards and nicnacs.38 I just sat down and told her all about the new party dresses I was getting for the winter, and she was as pleased as Punch.39

  “One woman there has a son in the South African Constabulary. She proudly showed me his photograph in uniform, and she just beamed when I said, ‘What a nice-looking boy!’ He was, too.

  “Oh, I had a very interesting afternoon, and I’m going every single Sunday after this to sing to them and read tracts to them. I think it is my duty.”

  Polly talks like that, you know, and she really meant it at the time. But it will be six months before she thinks of the Poor’s Asylum again.

  From the foregoing you’d think that Polly was rather a kind hearted and amiable creature, wouldn’t you? But listen to this.

  “You know,” she said, pensively, “I’ve been thinking about when the Duke and Duchess come.40 I’m so small, and just as sure as I get a good spot to see the procession some great, big man will plant himself squarely in front of me. That was the way it was when the first contingent came home.41 But I have evolved a really brilliant idea this time. I mean to arm myself with half a dozen good, stout hat-pins. Then if any brute of a man gets in my way I’m just going to jab one into him clear up to the head. I don’t care if it does hurt. I’m not going to stick at trifles when the chance of a lifetime to see a genuine Prince of the blood comes.”

  “But a policeman will take you in hand,” I objected.

  “No, he won’t,” said Polly triumphantly. “If he tries to I’ll make at him with another hat-pin. Do you suppose any policeman on earth could stand his ground before such a weapon in the hands of a desperate girl?”

  I think it’s not a half bad idea, and I’d try it myself only I know quite well that my nerve would fail me at the critical moment. But Polly’s won’t, and I hereby warn each and every member of the “male sect”42 in Halifax that, when the procession passes, he would better not get in front of a small girl with brown eyes, tip-tilted nose and a red hat. That’s Polly, and she will be in a dangerous mood.

  Somehow, the other evening, the conversation turned on the comparative vanity of men and women. Ted and I got quite excited over it. Ted, of course, took the part of his sex. He declared men were not half so vain as women.

  “Why, look here! You never see men daubing all those nasty, beautifying messes on their faces that girls do – creams and bleaches and glycerine, and that sort of stuff. Catch them!”

  Then I told a little tale.

  One day last summer I was in a Halifax drugstore. Before the counter stood a strapping, six-foot youth talking to the clerk in tones that were audible a block away.

  “I’m off on a camping bat,” he said, “and I want a few little creams and things to keep me from looking like a fright when I get back. Just give me” – here he read from a list – “a box of Blank’s cold cream, a tube of cucumber jelly, a bottle of Oriental face bleach, a piece of camphor ice, a bottle of vaseline, a tube of lanolin, a bottle of violet toilet water, two ounces simple tincture of benzoin, a bottle of witch-hazel extract, a box of borated talcum, some cocoa butter sticks, a bottle of rum and quinine hair tonic and a package of Jones’ infant powder.

  “Those are all right, aren’t they?” he queried anxiously. “Girl gave me that list and told me I’d come home fit as a fiddle if I used ’em. Last year when I got back I looked like a battle-scarred veteran, and I’m determined to come out better this time, if it takes a fortune. Just send all those things over to the house, won’t you, old fellow? And wrap ’em up so they won’t break, and the contents ooze out.” Then he went out as smug as you please.

  “There’s no use judging all men by one fool sample,” growled Ted grumpily.

  I read something the other day which called back to memory sundry recollections of childhood hours spent at a brown desk in a certain little white-washed country schoolhouse. Out of all the “mental exercises” which the powers that were inflicted on us, worst of all did we dread “paraphrasing,” in which we had to take an innocent passage from a poet who had never done us any harm, and write its sense out in our own words. What untold wear and tear of gray matter I might have been spared, had I but possessed the gift of condensation indicated by the youth in this story.

  A boy was asked to paraphrase these lines from the ballad of Lochinvar.43

  “She is won – we are gone over bank, bush and scar.

  They’ll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar.

  There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan,

  Fosters, Fenwicks and Musgraves, they rode and they ran.

  There was racing and chasing on Canobie Lea.”

  The lad reflected a while, and then wrote:– “Loch left, followed by the whole gang.”

  Here is a conundrum Ted sprang on me the other day – when I hadn’t been doing a thing to him either, mind you:

  “Why do we honor Royalty?”

  I said:

  “That is one of the problems of history, sonny, I give it up.”

  “Because a British Sovereign is eleven-twelfths fine gold,” said Ted.44

  What should be done to the man who carries concealed conundrums about with him! Suggestions called for.

  When Polly came home from the Marine Band concert the other evening she was uplifted over a new idea in sashes.

  “There was a tall, slender girl sitting before me,” she said, “and she wore a soft-sash of shaded blue silk. This was tied in two bows about five inches apart. The top one was the smallest, and its ends were carried down to form the other one, the ends of which reached the floor. I’m going to have one tied like that for Genevieve’s party next week.”

  [Collisions and Crossed Wires]

  Saturday, 19 October 1901

  FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS HALIFAX HAS PRESENTED A weird, half-finished appearance, very much as might a beauty who is dressing for a festivity, and has her toilet only half completed. Skeleton-like structures have sprung up on the streets; here and there vivid patches of color have blossomed out startlingly along the sombre blocks; and at every step you have met people rushing along with armfuls of queer things and bunting. Then, as for running into people – bless me, I couldn’t begin to count all the people I’ve caromed into, or been caromed into by, while I was gazing skyward or twisting my neck half off trying to see the latest thing in decorations. I count myself lucky to have escaped with a few bruises. But Polly had her new hat almost spoiled by colliding with somebody – she declares he was walking backwards – and she is furious over it.

  Some of the decorations are very nice; others remind you of the things you sometimes see in bad dreams. A frantic outburst of color without any clearly apparent design is not bound to be beautiful. But at the present moment of writing the decorating is only well under way and children and fools should never judge work half done.45 By the time this appears in print – when there will be nobody to read it because everybody will be staring at something else – Halifax will have
got all her finery on, and doubtless the general effect will be very gay and gorgeous. Only, as Ted says, I do hope the Provincial Building, when completed,46 will look a little less like a venerable octogenarian tricked out in the fripperies and abbreviated skirt of a chorus girl than it does at this very moment.

  Nature has been doing a little quiet decoration on her own account after her ancient fashion. Not in honor of the Royal visitors, perhaps, because she does it every year for prince and peasant, and anybody who has eyes to see. She is an unrivalled colonist, that same old nature. What magnificent tones of maple crimson and birchen gold and chestnut amber she is lavishing on us in this “moon of falling leaves”!47 And the vines! Is there anything in the world more satisfyingly beautiful than a tangle of vines, vivid wine-reds and bronzes and purples, creeping over a ruddy old brick wall? Even Ted, who hasn’t a spark of poetry in his soul at all, admits that such a sight “goes to the right spot somehow.”

  Polly’s soul is all harrowed up at present. She is so deep in the slough of despond48 that even the prospect of the Royal visit can’t pull her out. I’m going to tell you why, because I think her misfortune may give a needed warning to other people.

  Polly has got into trouble about a postscript.49 Myself, I think postscripts were invented to get people into trouble, and for no other purpose whatever. Being a woman, I always put postscripts to my letters, and I suppose I shall go on in the same old abandoned way to the end, albeit I know it is a bad, bad practice. Somehow, a letter doesn’t seem properly rounded up without a P.S., does it? And then I’m always sure to think of the most important piece of news after I’ve signed my name.

  But to return to Polly. Last Sunday she wrote a couple of letters to two of her friends of the sterner sex. Polly always writes that kind of letter on Sunday. I’ve lectured her and lectured her, but it doesn’t do any good. She is properly punished for it now, however.50 Well, she put her letters into envelopes and addressed them – one to Tom and ’tother to Jack – but didn’t seal them up. That evening something funny happened. That is, Polly thought it funny, and so would Jack, but it seems that Tom would not be likely to see the humor of it. Next morning Polly, in a hurry to mail her letters, snatched one from its envelope, scrawled down a postscript – three pages long – and sent it off. That afternoon she came to me like one of the heroines in Laura Jean Libbey’s novels51 – dissolved in floods of tears. It had just dawned on her that she had put Jack’s postscript to Tom’s letter, and she was sure it would make Tom furious. It did, too. Polly got a letter from him yesterday, and since then she has been a woebegone damsel.

  The moral of all this is: Don’t write postscripts. But if you must write them, if the laws of your being absolutely necessitate postscripts, be careful that you never match the right P.S. with the wrong letter.

  In reading a fashion review the other day I came across an announcement that filled me with joy. It was that the dressmakers were going to put pockets in women’s dresses again. Delightful! For years we have gone pocketless. We have wandered forlornly around with handkerchiefs sticking out at the corners, pocketbooks hanging here and memoranda tucked away there. And we have lost these things with religious regularity. But, if this announcement be reliable and not a heart-breaking will-o’-the-wisp, our trials in this respect are over, glory be!

  Of course the men, who seem to have an unaccountable liking for old, threadbare jokes, say it wouldn’t be any use for us to have pockets because we couldn’t find them if we did have them. But that is a masculine delusion. Trust a woman to find her pocket – and a man’s too, if it comes to that! If the pocket comes back to its own I shall throw up my hat with joy in its honor.

  Another thing men are always poking fun at is the hair-pin. I’m sure I don’t know why. There isn’t a more useful thing to be found on the face of the earth. The origin of hair-pins is lost in antiquity. Probably Eve sat down outside the gates of Eden and twisted a convenient twig into the first hair-pin, and by doing so she did much to mitigate the unpleasant inheritance consequent on her indiscreet tampering with green fruit.

  Let me tell you the things I saw Polly do with a hair-pin in just one half hour.

  She buttoned her boots and gloves with one; she cut the leaves of her magazines and opened her letters with it; having mislaid the key of her jewel box she picked the lock with a hairpin; she fished up a stick-pin that had fallen into a crack in the floor; she picked the meats out of a lot of walnuts; she impaled marshmallows to toast over the gas; she trimmed her lamp wick; she straightened one out and propped up a straggly flower in her window garden with it; she took a cork out of a bottle with one, and she pegged down a loose cord in her sweet-pea pyramid with another.

  And yet some people imagine that all a hair-pin is good for is to pin up hair!52

  Young man, do you want to be right up-to-date in the matter of signet rings?53 If so, have a tiny photograph of “her” framed in a narrow gold border, take the place of the usual engraved device.

  A laugh is as good as a dose of medicine, say the folks who know. Here’s your laugh. I saw it in a newspaper the other day so it must be true:

  A Sunday school teacher was in the habit of telling her little pupils about some incident which had come under her notice during the week, commenting on it, and then asking them to quote a verse of Scripture appropriate to it. One Sunday she told of a poor cat which had its tail cut off by some bad boys. After talking about the cruelty of this she asked for the usual quotation. After a moment’s reflection a little girl raised her hand and said gravely:

  “That which God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”54

  [“After the Ball”]

  Saturday, 26 October 1901

  IT IS “AFTER THE BALL”55 WITH HALIFAX NOW. THE DUKE and Duchess have come and gone, the decorations have been stripped away and the frenzy of patriotic enthusiasm has simmered down to its usual comfortable glow. After all, it’s nice. A Royal visit stirs up our gray matter pleasantly and forms a picturesque incident to tell our grandchildren, but after it is at an end it is also pleasant to settle back comfortably into our respective little grooves again with a sigh of something very like thankfulness that the whole fuss is over and done with. Dukes and Duchesses may come and go, but the work-a-day goes on forever.

  Polly got a good look at the Duchess – without the aid of any hat-pins, fortunately – and she declares that she is royally beautiful. Polly likes to enthuse, you know; she thinks it is a sort of patriotic duty to say things like that. Ted remarks patronizingly that the Duchess was a rather fine-looking woman, but he really wouldn’t take the trouble to look at her twice if he met her without knowing who she was.56

  “It’s just the beaux yeux of her crown that Polly admires,”57 he declares.

  Anyhow, the Duchess had her hair done just beautifully. Everybody is agreed upon that.

  The illuminations were very beautiful. Those of the warships in particular made us think of our childhood dreams of fairyland. Thousands of people were on the streets last Saturday night in spite of the rain and there was as much fun in looking at them as at the illuminations. Ted declares he had the good time of his life.

  “It was the greatest fun out,” he says, “to watch the women who were clinging to the railing in front of the Provincial building, hoping to catch a glimpse of Royalty when it came to the reception. It must have been fearfully wearisome, but they hung on there like grim death for over an hour. The manoeuvres of some who were down to get up were amazing examples of grit and persistency. And such black looks as those who were trying to climb up got from those already in place.”

  Polly and I got dripping wet and had our Sunday-go-to-meeting hats ruined. But bless me, what odds? We will have plenty of time to get new ones before the next itinerant Prince comes our way.

  Is there anything in the world more lovely than a fine October morning? When I ask questions like this Polly and Ted laugh heartlessly and say that if I try to describe an October sunrise I must do
it by dead reckoning, because I never get up early enough to see. But that’s a libel – born of their mean malice, you know. I do get up early sometimes – and I always enjoy it so much that I make a resolution on the spot that I will rise with the lark every morning thereafter for the space of my natural life. And the next morning I sleep so late that I have to gobble down my breakfast standing, and pin my hat and put my gloves on as I tear down the street!58 There ought to be a law against making resolutions.

  But to return to my mutton!59 A really fine October morning is a glorious thing. All the valleys and the purple basins among the hills are filled to the brim with delicate mists as if the spirit of the autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain. Such ethereal colors, too – amethyst and pearl and silver and rose and smoke-gray; and they trickle over the edges of the valleys and scarf the russet shoulders of sere slopes.

  There is such a heavy dew that the fields glisten like cloth of silver and baby winds are ruffling the crisp leaves in elfin dances along the lanes or sending them spinning down the river like a fleet of fairy shallops.

  One must be out in the really, truly country to see these elusive lovelinesses at their best. But the early morning is charming, even in the city, when the ends of the streets run off into blue hazes through which the harbor waters cream and sparkle, and the crisp leaves rustle under our feet, and there is all around us the pleasant stir of awakening life and labor.

  Next week comes All Hallowe’en.60 We are going to try lots of tricks at our house. We always do. There is any amount of fun in it, although I don’t believe any of us ever saw anything yet, for all our pains.

  Last year Polly and I tried a Hallowe’en dodge. We promised each other afterwards, “cross our hearts solemn and true,” that we would never, never tell anybody about it. Well, I’ve kept silence on it a whole year, and that’s as much as anyone could expect of a woman and a secret. I’m going to tell it now. Polly is out of town in some unearthly place, where Echoes are few and far between, so I am in hopes she’ll never see this. Please don’t anybody tell her when she comes home, for if she finds out she’ll never forgive me.