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A plain gold link cuff-button would take all the shine out of those pearl ones with diamond settings. Those tan shoes would be exactly the articles to work into the heart of a Brooklyn school-ma'am on a two weeks' visit to Lake Ronkonkoma. I think I caught a glimpse of a blue silk sock embroidered with russet lilies of the valley when you improperly drew up your trousers as you sat down.
Nice doin's for the school-ma'am! Nice prospect for George." Mrs. Holt hissed like a copperhead, which was a harmless little creature compared with her, as she scraped, and slashed, and dismembered the chicken she was preparing to fry. She had not been able, even by running into each store in the village, and the post office, to find one person who would say a word against Kate.
But the Hen was the limit: she looking and acting like the school-ma'am she said she was, and yet tangled up in a bar-room with a lot of gamblers and such as Kerosene Kate and old Tenderfoot Sal and Carrots and then bringing the two ends together by talking one minute like he was used to East, and the next one wanting to set up drinks for him and telling him she knowed all there was to know about gun-handling and how at lion-hunting she was just hell!
The opposite of this, the disposition to set correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar diction, known as "school-ma'am English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage, all the picturesque, imaginative, and forceful employment of words is sacrificed." There you have it!
Very beautiful the town-bred "school-ma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty fellows, superb fellows, too, physically, with bare red arms and leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and dainty.
Corwin and Rufe did as little as possible; and if the school-ma'am, poor lady, had to work pretty hard all morning, she subsided when it was over into much the same dazed beatitude as all the rest. Her special corner was the parlour a very genteel room, with Bible prints, a crayon portrait of Mrs.
He had stooped low to this Yankee school-ma'am, lower than he had ever stooped to a woman. Usually, while he played at loving, women grovelled; for was he not a Cresswell? Would this woman recognize that fact and respect him accordingly? Then there was Zora; what had she said and hinted to Mary? The wench was always eluding and mocking him, the black devil!
Sarah Gurridge leaned towards her companion with a confidential movement of the head. The two grey heads came close together. The school-ma'am whispered impressively "'Maid who angers faithful swain Will shed more tears and know mere pain Than she who loves and loves in vain." Hephzibah laughed tolerantly. Sarah's earnestness never failed to amuse her.
So it was all arranged, and the next letter which went from Maude to J.C. carried the intelligence that his betrothed was going "to turn country school-ma'am, and teach the Hampton brats their A B C's," so at last he said to Mrs. Kelsey and her niece, between whom and himself there was a perfectly good understanding, and to whom he talked of his future prospects without reserve. Mrs.
Affairs had come to a crisis; my condition was about as bad as it could possibly be. Whatever was going to become of me? Why, in the name of all common sense, had I ever come to New York? Why was I not content to remain a country school-ma'am, in a place where a country school-ma'am was looked up to as something of a personage?
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