“Papa,” murmured the poor thing, “I’m gettin’ awful pokey, and my clothes don’t seem to set well in the back. My days are full of ungratified longin’s, and my nights don’t get any better. Papa, I think society needs turnin’ inside out and scrapin’. I haven’t got nothin’ to aspire to—no aim; nor anything!”
The desolate creature spilled herself loosely into a cane-bottom chair, and her sorrow broke “like a great dyke broken.”
The writer lifted her tenderly upon his knee and bit her softly on the neck.
“Gloriana,” said he, “have you chewed up all that toffy in two days?”
A smothered sob was her frank confession.
“Now, see here, Glo,” continued the parent, rather sternly, “don’t let me hear any more about ‘aspirations’—which are always adulterated with terra alba—nor ‘aims’—which will give you the gripes like anything. You just take this two shilling-piece and invest every penny of it in lollipops!”
You should have seen the fair, bright smile crawl from one of that innocent’s ears to the other—you should have marked that face sprinkle, all over with dimples—you ought to have beheld the tears of joy jump glittering into her eyes and spill all over her father’s clean shirt that he hadn’t had on more than fifteen minutes! Cady Stanton is impotent of evil in the Grile family so long as the price of sweets remains unchanged.
His Railway
The writer remembers, as if it were but yesterday, when he edited the Hang Tree Herald. For six months he devoted his best talent to advocating the construction of a railway between that place and Jayhawk, thirty miles distant. The route presented every inducement. There would be no grading required, and not a single curve would be necessary. As it lay through an uninhabited alkali flat, the right of way could be easily obtained. As neither terminus had other than pack-mule communication with civilization, the rolling stock and other material must necessarily be constructed at Hang Tree, because the people at the other end didn’t know enough to do it, and hadn’t any blacksmith. The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted the most seductive charm of the scheme. After six months of conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly the devil put it into the head of one of the Directors to inquire publicly what the road was designed to carry. It is needless to say the question was never satisfactorily answered, and the most daring enterprise of the age was knocked perfectly cold. That very night a deputation of stockholders waited upon the editor of the Herald and prescribed a change of climate. They afterward said the change did them good.