“My dear Mama,
“I am very sorry for touching that stinking little cat. I’ll try to-morrow and Teusday if I can do as happy and as well without touching Dawny. I had once before my birthday a little holiness in my heart and for two days I was trying to keep it in and I exceeded a little in it but alas one day Satan tempted me and one day I kept it out of my heart and then I did not care what I did and I ware very bold. One day the week after that I tried without touching Dawny and I thought myself every bit as much happy but I was tempted tempted tempted another day: but I hope to-morrow morning I may be good Mama and that there will be one day that I may please Mama
“Your affectionate daughter
“Nannie Fox.”
The crime of which this is an expression of repentance is obscure. That the repentance was not untinged by indignation with the temptation is obvious; but why should she not have “touched Dawny”? I am reminded of a companion incident. A small boy, of whom I have the honour to be godmother, was privileged to come upon a cache of carpenter’s tools, unhampered by the carpenter. He cut his fingers and was sent to bed. In the devotions which he subsequently offered up, the following clause was overheard,
“And please God, be more careful another time, and don’t let me touch Willy Driscoll’s tools.”
A very just apportioning of the blame. My cousin Nannie put it all upon Satan, who was the more fashionable deity of her period.
I remember that my aunt Florence Coghill sat up for the whole of one night, verifying from her Bible the existence of the devil; a fact that had been called in question by a reprobate nephew. She came down to breakfast wan, but triumphant, and flung texts upon the nephew, even as the shields were cast upon Tarpeia.
Martin had many stories of her mother, which, alas! she has not written down. Many of them related to the time when they were living in Dublin, and with all humility, and with apologies for possible error, I will try to remember some of them. Mrs. Martin was then a large and handsome lady of imposing presence, slow-moving, stately, and, in spite of a very genial manner, distinctly of a presence to inspire respect. It was alleged by her graceless family that only by aligning her with some fixed and distant object, and by close observation of the one in relation to the other, was it possible to see her move. (One of the stories turned on the mistake of one of her children, short-sighted like herself. “Oh, there’s Mamma coming at last!” A pause. Then, in tones of disappointment, “No, it’s only the tramcar!”)
Martin once wrote that “the essence of good housekeeping is to make people eat things that they naturally dislike. Ingredients that must, for the sacred sake of economy, be utilised, are rarely attractive, but the good housekeeper can send the most nauseous of them to heaven, in a curry, as in a chariot of fire.”
It must be admitted that neither artistic housekeeping, nor even the lower branches of the art, were my cousin Nannie’s strong suit. It is related of her that one day, returning from a tea-party, she remembered that her household lacked some minor need. Undeterred by her tea-party splendour of attire, she sailed serenely into a small and unknown grocer’s shop in quest of what she needed. The grocer, stout and middle-aged, lolled on his fat bare arms on the counter, reading a newspaper. He negligently produced the requirement, received the payment for it, and then, remarking affably, “Ta ta, me child!” returned to his paper.