A Name for Herself Page 12

  The trick is this. You take a hard-boiled egg, cut it in two and scoop out the shells. Then you each – there must be two of you – this is the good feature of it – there is no eerie nonsense about going off to encounter spooks alone – take half the egg and fill the shell with salt. You have to eat the egg and the salt, and if you can manage to devour the shell also your chances are so much better. Then you take off your shoes and stockings and go upstairs backward, on your bare feet, without speaking a word. If you speak the spell is broken. Then, of course, you get awfully thirsty in the night, and when the clock strikes twelve, the spirit of your future partner of weal and woe will appear and bring you a drink of water.61

  Well, Polly and I ate the egg and the salt, and took off our shoes and stockings, all in melodramatic silence. Then we started to go upstairs backward. It happened that the stairs were uncarpeted, having been newly varnished that day. The soles of our feet stuck to every step, and it seemed as if the skin must come off when we pulled them loose. I shall never forget that ascent. It would have been such a relief to have been able to say, “Oh, dear,” when we stuck extra fast, but we couldn’t, because speaking would spoil everything.

  And, after all, it was all in vain. Polly suffered agonies of thirst, but no obliging apparition came to her relief, and, as for myself, I went right to sleep, and never felt thirsty or woke up at all. Perhaps it was because we didn’t eat the shells. And we couldn’t walk comfortably for a week.

  Now that the chilly days have come we can revel in the luxury of open fires again. I do so love an open fire. It is delightful to sit before it in the dusk and watch the flames flickering and glowing, and darting up in their cheery, companionable way. When I am curled up in a cosy arm-chair before a purring fire every bit of malice and uncharitableness goes out of my heart, and I feel that I can forgive everybody, even my dearest friends. Autumn twilights and open fires and friendly gossip and delicious daydreams all belong together in the eternal fitness of things.62

  This didn’t happen in Halifax, but it might. I recommend it to the thoughtful consideration of “stern paryrunts”63 as an improvement on the old brutal methods.

  The girl was rather young, and so was he, but he nevertheless called formally on the object of his affections. One evening her father and mother entered the room at an early hour, the latter carrying a glass of milk and a huge slice of bread spread with jam.

  “Now, dear, run away to bed,” she said kindly to her daughter. “It’s time that all good little girls should be in bed.”

  Then the father addressed the amazed young man.

  “Now, youngster, you drink that glass of milk and take that slice of bread and jam to eat on the way home. And hurry, for your mother must be anxious about your being out so late by yourself.”

  The young man did not call again.64

  Polly has taken to perfuming her golden tresses with orris root.65 She sprinkles it over them with a sugar sifter, and then brushes them vigorously for an hour – Polly has any amount of spare time lying around, you know – until the perfume is thoroughly assimilated into the roots. The fragrance thus imparted will last for fully two weeks.

  [Dismal November]

  Saturday, 2 November 1901

  WELL, NOVEMBER IS HERE. IT’S THE MOST DISMAL month in the whole year, isn’t it? Polly says that is why she was born in it. Some of us at times put it the other way, and say it is dismal because Polly was born in it. But that is just when we are cross and Polly has been disagreeable.

  November seems to be an outcast among the months – the threadbare tramp of the calendar. The mellowness and drowsy charm of autumn have gone, and the crisp sparkle of winter hasn’t yet come. It is a sort of betwixt-and-between time, and that is always abominable. The trees are ragged, the fields sullen and the world seems out at the elbows generally. Of course, there are compensations – everything, even November, has compensations.66 But they don’t appear on the surface. Ted says the reason Thanksgiving is celebrated in this month is because people are so thankful there is only one November in the year.67

  Just now Polly has a special grievance against Max O’Rell.68 Max is one of those delightful people who know everything about everything, and air their knowledge in print mercilessly. I believe the real reason why Polly detests him is that she saw an article of his the other day on “What a Woman Should Be,” and discovered that she fell short of every one of Max’s requirements. But, as I told her, Max O’Rell is only one man, so what need she care?

  Max O’Rell is full of opinions about women. I always feel so sorry for his wife when I read them. But, in spite of his complacent reflections on and about our sex, I have a comforting suspicion that Max doesn’t really know much about us after all. He is too sure of his knowledge to be dangerous.

  Lately he has been giving columns of good advice to “the engaged girl.” Goodness only knows what will happen if she follows his advice, but there’s one comfort – she won’t.

  Every now and then you read things purporting to be the naive and truthful utterances of children on various subjects. Most of them are very funny, especially if they are true – but sometimes you are haunted by a doubt that they have a made-to-order flavor. Hence, when you meet with something “really truly” so, it is all the more enjoyable. A friend of mine gave me a very good illustration of a childish misunderstanding the other night.

  In one of the elementary catechisms used in Sunday Schools for infant classes occurs the question, “Why should we honor and love God?” or words to that effect, the answer being, “Because He makes, preserves and redeems us.” The comma after “makes” is, of course, vital to the proper meaning of the sentence. My friend said that until she was ten years of age she honestly thought that the answer was, “Because He makes preserves, and redeems us.”69

  One day last week Polly laid down the magazine she had been reading with a groan.

  “What’s the matter?” I queried sympathetically.

  Polly made a wry face.

  “I’ve been reading an article by one of those detestable creatures who tell you what you ought not to eat. He has given here a whole list of eatables to be avoided, and I don’t believe there is a thing in the world that I like which is not tabooed.”

  Then I crossed my hands at the back of my head, leaned back luxuriously in my easy chair and gave Polly a bit of a preachment.

  “My child,” I said – I always talk like that when I want to impress Polly with my superiority in years and wisdom – “don’t let articles of that stripe disturb you. They really don’t amount to a row of pins. Tomorrow you will probably read another which will contradict every word of the one you have just read. People would never eat anything at all if they started out to live by the hygienic rules in the magazines. The people who tell you what you ought to eat, and the people who tell you what you ought to read are members one of another. The best plan, as I’ve found it, is to go ahead and eat the things you like, and read what books you want to. Even if you have a weakness for the Duchess’ novels70 or for mince pies and doughnuts, that doesn’t argue that you are in a parlous state, mentally or physically. Not at all, in spite of the hygienic writers.

  “Just because a thing is printed in the papers, Polly,” I went on – waxing eloquent – “you are not bound to believe it. Some dreadful fibs do creep into the papers now and then. As for the perpetrators of those what-you-oughtn’t-to-eat articles, they always remind me of the fox-who-lost-his-tail story.71 I firmly believe that they are cranks who have lost their own digestions beyond finding, while fooling with health foods or something of the kind, and now want to prevent everybody else from enjoying themselves. Time was when I used to put some faith in their teachings and try spasmodically to live up to them, but oh, I’m wiser now! Life is too short, and there isn’t much use in starving yourself to keep yourself alive.

  “Of course,” I hastened to add – not wishing Polly to rush off and squander her quarter’s allowance in a wild, soulless revel of caramels
and almond rock – “there’s no sense in going to extremes. As Josiah Allen’s wife says, ‘Be mejum,’72 and then you’ll have a good digestion and a clear conscience, both of which are inestimable blessings.”

  When I paused, out of breath, Polly beamed and said:

  “What a comforting old dear you are, Cynthia. Let’s go out and have some ice-cream.”

  After all it takes a woman to find a way out of a difficulty. For example here is a little tale of the course of true love in the Emerald Isle,73 which I read somewhere not long ago.

  A poor couple went to the priest for marriage and were met with the demand for the marriage fee. It was not forthcoming. Both the consenting parties were rich in love and little else. The father was obdurate.

  “No money, no marriage.”

  “Give me lave, your riverence,” said the blushing bride, “to go and get the money.”

  It was given. After a short interval she returned with the sum of money and the ceremony was completed to the satisfaction of all. But the newly-made wife seemed a little uneasy.

  “Anything on your mind, Catherine?” inquired the father.

  “Well, your riverence, I would like to know if this marriage could not be spoiled now.”

  “Certainly not, Catherine. No man can put you asunder.”

  “Not even yourself, father?”

  “No, no, Catherine. You are past me now. I have nothing more to do with your marriage.”

  “That aises me mind,” said Catherine, “and God bless your riverence. There’s the ticket for your hat. I picked it up in the lobby and pawned it.”

  [Wedding Bells]

  Monday, 11 November 1901

  REALLY, IT SEEMS AS IF EVERYBODY WERE GETTING MARRIED. In every paper I pick up I see headings such as these: “Interesting Event,” “Wedding Bells,” “Two Hearts Made Happy,” “United in Marriage,” and so on. In all instances, of course, the bride looked beautiful, and was charmingly dressed, and the wedding was quiet but pretty. Wouldn’t it be a positive relief to hear of a noisy wedding or an ugly bride.

  FIGURE 5 Advertisement for “Around the Table,” Halifax Daily Echo, 9 November 1901, 9. (Microfilm located at Library and Archives Canada.)

  This reminds me of a story I read once upon a time about a reporter who had just secured a position upon the staff of a newspaper. The editor told him that in reporting imagination was at a discount, and that he must stick to plain, unvarnished facts. The first assignment given him was to report a local wedding. The guileless youth, faithful to his instructions, stuck to plain, unvarnished facts. He said the bride’s red hair and freckles showed to rather worse advantage than usual in her white dress, but that, owing to her down-dropped eyes, her squint was not greatly in evidence, and, on the whole, she presented a better appearance than the bridegroom, who looked frightened to death, and had never amounted to much in the community anyhow. The whole account was in a similar vein, and the reporter thought he had done his duty. But, alas, he lost his job, and the editor nearly lost his head when the irate relatives of the bride and groom invaded his sanctum.

  The moral of this is that it is best to stand by the good old way, in the matter of weddings, at least.

  But the interest in weddings is perennial. Folks like to see them and hear about them. The bride, for once in her life, if never again, is the central figure of her world. It is her day and hour of triumph. How she looked, how she was dressed, how she carried herself through the ceremony – these are the echoes of the conversation that buzzes about her. All the world loves a lover, it is said,74 and it is equally true that all the world loves a bride.

  Then, again, there is a never-fading charm in the dainty details of the trousseau, and the pretty gifts and household plenishings that are to adorn the new home. The charm cannot be defined, but is none the less powerful. The woman who doesn’t delight in seeing the belongings of a bride must be a weird sort of creature indeed.

  Long live the dear brides! Cynthia wishes them every happiness and a lifelong honeymoon.

  The meanest man alive has been discovered again. He is always being discovered in a new place. This time it isn’t in Halifax, fortunately. Polly and I read this story in a Detroit paper the other day, and Polly said she just wished she had been that girl, and wouldn’t she have taught that young man a lesson! I’ve no doubt she would, too.

  But here’s the story. It may serve as a warning.

  “The wretch! I’d like to have his blood,” snapped the pretty girl in blue. “I would, so there! I’d like to know what he did mean, hanging around here, if he didn’t mean business. Mad? Of course I’m mad! You’d be mad if you’d had to put up with what I had. He was here the other evening, and something told me that the supreme moment had arrived. He was awfully nervous and fidgetty. No, it wasn’t a case of tight shoes, stupid. Don’t be silly! Do you think I was born yesterday? I got ready my oh-this-is-so-sudden look, and none too soon, for he leaned over and said tenderly:

  “‘Would you marry me if I proposed?’

  “You needn’t tell me what I should have said. I know just as well as you do that I should have told him to ask me if he wanted to find out. But he is the only eligible young man I know, and I couldn’t afford to take any chances, so I murmured ‘yes!’

  “‘By Jove,’ said he, ‘I’ve won the bet. You see, one of the boys at the club bet the cigars that you wouldn’t have me and I took him up.’

  “What followed is a mere blank. For the life of me I can’t remember whether I sent for the police or turned on a fire alarm.”

  Somebody once said a woman is at the bottom of every bit of mischief that goes on in the world.75 I don’t know who it was; but, of course, it was a man. It is really dreadful the way men blame everything on us. I suppose they can’t help it – heredity is too strong for them. Adam began it when he hadn’t backbone enough to take his shortcomings on his own shoulders, and it has come down through the ages until it has got chronic with them now.

  But, really, the line ought to be drawn somewhere. The other day, while reading the September Bookman, I came across an article – written by a man? Oh, yes! – in which it said that women are responsible “for the deterioration of heroes.”76

  Now, I call that adding insult to injury!77

  The writer of the article in question says that women have dragged the novel down by reason of their liking for “the cheaply heroic type of hero.”78 Masculine heroes have to be made to fit feminine ideals. He says that if a writer dares to depict a man as he really is – for instance, the Tommy of Barrie’s Tommy and Grizell79 – the feminine critics rise up in bitter denunciation.

  Well, all I can say is, that if Barrie’s “Tommy” is a faithful delineation of the average man, as he really is, heaven help the poor creature. Men must be far sillier and more egotistic than – not than I’ve always thought them, because I have a very good opinion of them, after all – but than what Aunt Janet always declares they are, and she is a professed man-hater.

  I could say lots more about this, but I won’t. I will refrain.

  This is one of Polly’s trouble-saving devices. She says she invented it herself, and as I never heard of it before, I daresay she did. I was patiently and laboriously threading ribbon through the interminable holes of some beading when Polly came in and looked me scornfully over.

  “Well,” she said, “I can’t write absurdities for the papers as you do, but I have more gumption about everyday matters than you have, Cynthia. See here! Fasten a small shield pin in the end of that ribbon and you can slip it through that beading with much less weariness to the flesh.”80

  I meekly followed her advice, and found it good, so I hereby pass it on.

  Here is a conundrum for you all. “What verse in Genesis proves that the people who lived in those days used to do sums on the ground?”81

  I’ll tell you the answer next week, if you haven’t found out for yourselves before then.

  [Bad Luck and Bad Advice]

  Saturd
ay, 16 November 1901

  BY SPELLS THIS WEEK IT HAS LOOKED AS IF WE HAD JUST about come to the end of our fine weather, hasn’t it? And oh, the grumbling that I’ve heard! Really, we human creatures are never satisfied. No matter how many weeks and weeks of fine weather we have when just one rainy day comes look out for scowls and growls.

  To be sure, a rainy day in the city is rather grimy and grubby. Out in the country it is really pleasant – if you don’t want to go anywhere. When I’m out there I like the rain. I like to see the little valleys all brimful of mist and the rain coming down in slanting lines over the tops of the spruces and making little dimples in the pools and great, widening rings on the pond. I like to hear it, too, tinkling among the boughs or rat-tatting against the windows. When I waken in the night I like to hear it pattering on the roof – that is to say, if the roof doesn’t leak, as it did one time last summer when Polly and I were spending a fortnight in an old upcountry farmhouse. The rain came right down on us and we had to get up in the “mirk midnight”82 and chivy around to pull our bedstead out of the way. Then the old thing kept drip-dripping all night until our nerves just went to pieces. You’ve no idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling from the ceiling on a bare floor with a mushy little thud makes in the dead of night. It sounds like ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing you know.

  November is the month when shooting stars are in vogue. For the last two years we have been promised an especially fine display because the “Leonids” were due.83 I suppose something went wrong with celestial machinery because they didn’t turn up. This year the astronomers are looking for them with undiminished faith, but meteors seem to be like comets – rather tricky folk to pin your belief to.