United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?" "Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury." As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly approaching a scowl. "Oh!" he replied, "did you?
MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote the old lady: "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that wicked Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo.
To an empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal of man a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not too clever." "That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as Brown tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What shall our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance in his nature.
I have always felt singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle could not bear them. Of course one does not like to think of their fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to do much of that sort of thing nowadays." "So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up the letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
They afforded a still stronger example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them also to the boys. "The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?" "She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered MacShaugnassy.
Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the military, also." "By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What reason does she give?" "That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance so divinely," answered Jephson, shortly. "Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am astonished." Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say?
"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when you saw all that," said MacShaugnassy. "So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was with me at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the procession until it had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other. "'Oh, it's impossible, said Ethelbertha to me. "'But that was my hat, I said to Ethelbertha.
The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it. Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
Said Jephson, who has a practical mind, approaching at times the commercial: "The question is not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes." "That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get from her the old lady's view.
Word Of The Day