The Talkative Wig

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

When the good vicar came to see Alice, as he did every day, she met him with me all nicely done up in a paper in her hands, and asked him if he would be so good as to take me to the hair dresser who had advertised for hair, make the best bargain he could for her, and, with the proceeds, get the few necessaries for commencing her small school. The good man cheerfully promised to do so, took the parcel from Alice, and carried it to his own house.

And so I bade farewell to dear Alice, and her neat cottage, and her sweet children. I was parted forever from that innocent head that had cherished only good and pure thoughts. I was no longer to be dressed by her dear hands. I was never again to shade and adorn her lovely face, nor fall in ringlets around her sloping shoulders, nor ever tremble again with the beatings of her gay and generous heart, as I often had when she let me fall over her neck and shoulders.

Nothing that ever had life in it could be insensible to such a sorrow as this. How I envied the few locks she kept around her precious forehead! How I wished that scissors had never been invented!

The good curate, faithful to his promise, took me to the hair dresser in London, according to the direction in the advertisement; and, before opening the paper which contained me, told him the story of Alice, of her trials, and of her excellent character and conduct, of her present need, and of her purpose to support and educate her children by her own efforts. He told him that there never was such a beautiful head of hair, and that he hoped he would be willing to give something handsome for it.

When the old clergyman opened the paper, and exhibited me to the hair dresser, he took me out as fondly as if I had been a baby, and shook me so as to make the ringlets curl again, but they would not.

I felt the difference between the old man's hard fingers, and rough shake, and the soft touch of the dear Alice.

"Is it not beautiful?" said the old man.

"It is well enough," said the dealer. "I shall have to make a man's wig of it. The curls will all boil out."

You may imagine my horror at these words; and, as for the poor vicar, he seemed thunderstruck.

"If I had any money to spare," said he, "I would buy this beautiful hair myself, and have it framed with a glass over it, and hang it up in my best parlor, with that blue ribbon that looks so like her; it's as handsome as a picture; and then her dear children should have it at my death."