When she had gone he gazed out of the window after her as she walked buoyant and happy through the night.
"Perhaps," softly said the Maker of Joys, "it is the memory of the old days that is sweetest after all."
[VENITA SEIBERT]
Miss Venita Seibert, whose charming stories of German-American child life have been widely read and appreciated, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, December 29, 1878. Miss Seibert was educated in the Louisville public schools, and almost at once entered upon a literary career. She contributed short stories and verse to the leading periodicals, her first big serial story being published in The American Magazine during 1907 and 1908, entitled The Different World. This dealt with the life and imaginings of a little German-American girl, a dreamy, sensitive child, and showing the poetry of German home life and the originality of childhood. The story was highly praised by Miss Ida M. Tarbell and other able critics. Under the title of The Gossamer Thread (Boston, 1910), Miss Seibert brought these tales together in one volume. There "the chronicles of Velleda, who understood about 'the different world,'" may be read to the heart's desire. Miss Seibert, who resides at Louisville, Kentucky, promises big for the future, and her next book should bring her a wider public, as well as greater growth in literary power.
Bibliography. McClure's Magazine (September, 1903); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1910, v. xv).
THE ORIGIN OF BABIES[94]
[From The Gossamer Thread (Boston, 1910)]
Oh, it was a puzzling world. Not the least puzzling thing was babies. Mrs. Katzman had come several times with a little brown satchel and brought one to Tante—a little, little thing that had to be fed catnip tea and rolled in a shawl and kept out of draughts. The advantage of having a new baby in the house was that it meant a glorious period of running wild, for of course one did not pretend to obey the girl who came to cook. Also, there was much company who brought nice things to eat for Tante, who naturally left the biggest part for the children.
Of course God sent the little babies, but how did he get them down to Mrs. Katzman? She averred that she got them out of the river, but this Velleda knew to be a fib, for of course they would drown in the river. Tante said they fell down from Heaven, but of course such a fall would kill a little baby. Gros-mamma Wallenstein said a stork brought them, and for a time Velleda thought Mrs. Katzman must be a stork; but when she saw a picture of one she knew that it was only a bird. Then she decided that the stork carried the babies to Mrs. Katzman's and she divided them around; but Mrs. Katzman's little boy, questioned in the most searching manner, declared that he had never seen a sign of any stork about the premises.