ELSIE: A Christmas Story
FROM THE NORWEGIAN OF
ALEXANDER L. KJELLAND
BY
MILES MENANDER DAWSON
CHICAGO
CHARLES H KERR & COMPANY
1894
Copyright 1889 by
Miles Menander Dawson
I.
MADAM SPECKBOM owned a house which was called “Noah’s Ark.” Down in the bright comfortable rooms on the side toward the sun, she lived herself; above lived Miss Falbe with her brother; and up in the garret—there were only two stories—in attic rooms, under the stairs and back of the chimney-pots lived a number of unclean animals which went under the common title, “the gang.”
Madam Speckbom was not only a wise woman; she was literally a klog-kone or quack as well; for she was a doctor or, as the regular doctor called her, a quack.