V.
PUTTING ON AIRS:
OR, HOW I TRIED TO WIN RESPECT.
Reader—young reader, for I take it for granted you are young, though if you should not happen to be, it does not matter—I have about three quarters of a mind to let you know what I think of the practice of putting on airs. The best way to do the thing perhaps, will be in the form of a story, and a story it shall be—a story about a friend of mine who is sometimes called Aunt Kate, and who has been known to call herself by that name.
It is true that some of the incidents in this story are not much to my friend's credit. But I am sure she cannot blame me for mentioning them to you; for she gave me the whole story, and I shall tell it almost exactly in her own words. Are you ready for it? Well, then, here it is:
Reader, have you ever been from home? Of course you have. Everybody goes from home in these days; but in the days of my childhood such an event was not a matter of course affair, as it now is. Most people stayed at home then, more then they do now—the very aged, and the very young, especially.
When I was a child, my parents sometimes took me with them, when they went to visit their city friends. These journeys used to excite the envy of all my young companions, none of whom, if I recollect right, had ever been to a city. But times have changed even in my native village; and the juvenile portion of its inhabitants begin their travels much earlier in life now, than they did then.
But the first time I went from home alone—that was an event! Went alone, did I say? I am too fast. My father saw me safely to the place where I was to go, and left me to spend a few days and come home in the stage.
When he left me, he gave me a bright half dollar, for spending money. Now would you give anything, my little friend, to know how I spent it? If you had known me in those days, you could have easily guessed, even if not much of a Yankee. I bought a book with it, of course. I thought I could not purchase anything to be compared with that in value. Since then I have learned there are other things in the world besides books, although I must own that I still cling to not a little of my old friendship for them. How long seemed the few days I was absent from my father's house. I had seen a great deal of the world, I thought, during that time. There seemed to be an illusion about it—a feeling as if I had been from home for weeks; and when I returned, and found some of the good things upon the table which were baked before I left home, I thought they must be very old—very old indeed.
"I should like to know how long you think you have been gone," said some member of the family.