United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'It is very hard, she said; 'how fancy shops try to spoil all one used to be able to do for one's friends. The purses, and the penwipers, and the needle-cases that were one's choicest presents in my youth, are all turned out now smart and tight and fashioned, but without a scrap of the honest old labour and love that went into them.
That was the way he went on. And now he sat down by her writing-table, and was taking things up and examining them while he talked. He never, never forgot the expression of a certain brass porcupine that was somehow a penwiper; it seemed to belong to a world gone mad, where everything was something else, where porcupines were penwipers, and his wife For suddenly his tongue had stopped.
The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs.
"Penwipers," said his friend. "Ha, ha! What else do I make?" "You do something," he returned, pointing to a corner of the little bench, "with straw; but I don't know what." "Well done, you!" cried the person of the house. "I only make pincushions and penwipers, to use up my waste. But my straw really does belong to my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?" "Dinner-mats?"
Word Of The Day