United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When we are too tired to walk in Homeburg, we have to pay at least fifty cents for a horse from the livery stable, unless some automobile is going our way. Nothing is more pleasant to me than to slip a nickel to a street-car conductor and ride ten miles on it. But when we want to use a telephone, do we go through all this ceremony of dropping a nickel into a set of chimes? Not much.
Outside of Mrs. Wert Payley and one or two school teachers, I don't suppose any Homeburg people have crossed the Atlantic. But half a dozen of our hired girls go every year.
A lot of us had made mud pies with Lyla, and while she hadn't shown any great genius in that or anything else, she was jolly and we liked her, so we tried to rush up and greet her rapturously. Those who didn't do it say it was one of the funniest things that ever happened in Homeburg, but I couldn't see it at the time. I was one of the rushers.
But he was only getting twelve dollars a week in Snyder's Shoe Emporium, and Paynesville, which never tired of putting up dirty tricks on us, hustled around and got him an eighteen dollar job up there after which they came down to Homeburg at the first opportunity with their band to parade Peters before our eyes. It would have been a grand success if they hadn't put Peters in the front row.
"He thinks he's going away in a few minutes," said Sim to Wert Payley, who had heard his name and was now shaking hands with Banks. "Why, the old fat snide, nobody wants to see him outside of Homeburg. He's going to get a free supper to-night. Remember Sadie Warren?" "Remember!" shouted Banks. "What do you think I am? Methuselah? I remember more things than you ever heard of.
Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for social progress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married this summer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three look like the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire.
You see, Mrs. Singer isn't one of us. She came to Homeburg from a large city, and she brought her ideas with her. She's not the kind of a woman, either, who is going to cut those ideas down to fit Homeburg. Her plan is to change Homeburg over to fit her ideas. She's been working at it for fifteen years now, and I must say she's won out in several cases.
That's where it is your solemn duty to envy Homeburg if you never have done it before. And that's why I would be homesick to-day if you had fed me four dinners, Mrs. Jim, and had been a whole covey, or bevy, or flock, or constellation of angels whichever is correct. I don't mean to say that we get any more at Christmas than you do. We enjoy and endure our presents, same as any one else.
That problem has been too much for her. Mrs. Payley, her rival, has had the same hired girl for sixteen years or more; but Mrs. Singer scorns a hired girl. She must have servants, two of them, and while she has a remarkable constitution and has stood up for years under the fight, I don't see how she can keep it up much longer. A hired girl in Homeburg is a very reasonable creature.
It's a town festival, a cross between Home-coming Week and a general amnesty celebration. People come home for Christmas all over the world, but in Homeburg you don't merely come home to your family, you come home to the whole town. A week before the twenty-fifth the clans begin to gather. Usually the college folks come first.
Word Of The Day