"When the author was writin' to the secretary of the club she put in a newspaper piece showin' how folks paid a dollar and a half a ticket to hear her read in Cleveland and Si said if anybody was willin' to pay that price to hear an author, and a lady one at that, read her own writin's it was a case of fool and his money bein' soon parted. The secretary hed to come out real blunt and plain and say we allers hed got the best in Bixby Centre for twenty-five cents and we cal'lated we allers should.
"Of course it wa'n't what you would call 'skilled labor,' anyway. She didn't make no pretense hardly; she read straight along, good and clear, but she wa'n't no elocutionist, and she didn't act out anything a mite. In one way she can't hold a candle to that Miss—what's that black-haired girl's name that's cousin to Mis' Tucker of the Lower Corner? Well, anyway, she graduated at a school of oratory, and she's ben here twice an' recited 'Asleep on the Switch' and 'The Maniac.' It comes high, for she has to be drove to and from the deepot, have her supper and breakfast and a dollar in money; but you can't have the same old thing all the year round; folks get tired of it and the house won't be filled.
"Mis' Tucker says her cousin's got real talent, and I guess she has. She's got courage, anyhow, and lungs! They say she took a gold medal the time she graduated. The whole class stood up in a row and recited 'The Maniac,' and she outscreeched all the rest without half trying. Did you ever hear it, Mis' Strout? The girl in the piece is as crazy as a loon, but she don't know it, and at the end of every verse she says,'I am not mad! I am not mad!' Well, this reciter—what is her name now?—I know it as well as I do my own! Her mother was one o' them hombly Muckfords that used to live over on the Flag Medder road. Well, anyway, the rest o' the class jest said 'I am not mad' in the craziest way they could; but when it come her turn they say she put in a screech right in the middle that you could 'a' heard all over the county, and the judges fairly leapt right out o' their seats on the platform. There wa'n't no discussion as to who should have the medal; she earned it and she got it. She's splendid—Eldora Duncombe—that's her name, and I'm glad I've got it at last—but so many of our ladies here sleeps alone in their houses at nights that they told Mis' Tucker they couldn't go hear her cousin any more unless she read quieter pieces; an' she said if she read quieter pieces what would be the good of knowin' elocution?
"This author wa'n't no elocutionist and no screecher neither, but she hed a kind of a takin' way with her after all—I must say that; though Si thought her hair was full red to read in public with. Did you hear how handsome the church looked? If speakers don't like the pulpit we gen'rally move it one side and have a marble-top table with a pitcher of water and a tumbler, and a boquet of verbenias on it; but there was a girl from Lowell summer-boardin' at Mis' Doctor Smith's—Hazel Perkins her name is—an' she'd ben to an Author's Readin', an' she offered to decorate the platform jest like a parlor. It looked handsome, but land, it was queer! I never see such a collection of onnecessary things in my life. Si said it looked to him as if the Old Boy'd ben havin' an auction on it! And the trouble that Perkins girl took, borrowin' from all the neighbors that lived within a mile o' the meetin'-house! Why, I declare, the audience stared so at the decorations they didn't pay no kind of attention to the reader. We ain't got so much furniture round here that we don't know the looks of our neighbors' things pretty well, and everybody was cranin' and gapin' and studyin' to see who'd ben asked to lend and who hadn't. Si told Miss Perkins if she'd 'a' put on a bed and a cook-stove the author could 'a' kep' house on the platform and ben real comfortable.
"There was Mis' Trowbridge's banquet lamp that her children got for a prize, sellin' Magic Soap (and there ain't much magic in it, I can tell you that, unless you mix consid'able elbow grease with it!); I thought it was real good in the Trowbridge children to lend that lamp, for it's the only namable stick o' furniture they've got in the room they call their parlor, and they set great store by it. They'd never lighted it up 'cause they couldn't afford karosene, but anyway Mis' Trowbridge never read a book in her life, I guess, and Dan Trowbridge goes to bed at sundown; Salomy Trowbridge—she's the fourteen-year-old girl—never took her eyes off the lamp the whole evening, and once when it kind o' flared up, and she thought it was goin' to scorch the pink shade, she went right up on the platform and turned it down so't the author couldn't hardly see to read. Almiry Berry's reflecting lamp was on the stage, too, and hanging from it was an ear o' corn gilded, with a thermometer let in where some o' the kernels was took out—it looked real kind o' cute! Widow Buzzell's wicker chair and walnut table set in the centre, and if she hadn't bronzed up the chair with Diamond Paint so't nobody recognized it! Diadema Bascom's foreroom rug was on the floor, and my Batterbug lace tidies on the pulpit chairs. My lunge stood in the back with an African over it, and a couple of sofy-pillows stood up on end. What the Perkins girl wanted it there for beats me, for no author that I ever see would lay down while she was readin', and after it's over she'd be glad to go home and go to bed, I should think. I didn't like it a mite that Miss Perkins put the African over it, for we'd just had it new covered with emmanuel cloth and it looked real handsome and shiny; Si's awful fond of lungeing, and I thought I'd buy something this time he couldn't lunge out! Well, if you have a decoratin' committee I s'pose you've got to give 'em their heads and let 'em decorate; so I didn't say nothin' to Miss Perkins.
"On the piano was my marble statue of Abraham Lincoln, and Mis' Emerson's pair of tall vases that Huldy Packard sent her from Indiana. Miss Perkins had filled 'em full of goldenrod, but when Judge Thomson come and seen 'em standin' on his wife's new upright pianer he said he couldn't have that nohow; so when the audience was seatin', and before the Readin' began, Miss Perkins had to empty the water out o' the vases and stick peacock feathers in 'em; and then when the author come her cousin was with her, and she didn't like the peacock feathers 'cause they was unlucky; so poor Miss Perkins hove 'em out the winder and set the vases on the pianer upside down. They're awful hombly, anyway, and they look 'bout as well empty as full, an' standin' 'em bottomside up don't hurt the pattern any.
"The Perkins girl went out on the church steps and cried, she was so hoppin' mad, and when I slipped out o' the back pew to see if I could borry a piece of ice to put in the author's pitcher I see Freedom Cobb, that's home from Dartmouth College, tryin' to comfort her. She don't know that he courts Mis' Doctor Smith's boarders right along summer after summer. Mis' Smith couldn't hold 'em, her meat's so tough, if Freedom didn't kind o' keep 'em contented courtin' of 'em! I was sorry for her; but there, it wouldn't 'a' done to spill water down into the Thomsons' new pianer the way we done into the one we hired from Edgecombe Falls. Mis' Thomson only let us have hern on condition that we wouldn't ask Clarence Cummins to play on it. He's had lessons for three years, and then, anyway, he's naturally strong in his fingers and powerful muscled all over. You'd certainly think he wouldn't leave a key on the instrument when he gits warmed up. He's a great favorite with the deef, and we've got a lot o' deef folks at Bixby Centre.
"Did you hear anything said about the minister's introduction? That's kind o' queer; the Congregationalists was real proud of his remarks. Of course there's most every sect represented in the Winter Night Club, and then there's some of the members that wouldn't know a sect if they seen one in the middle o' the road, though they do call this a Christian country. We said if the entertainment was held in the Baptist church our minister had ought to make the opening remarks. We've got a real smart man in Mr. Hobson; some think he's too old, but there! we was about wore out with young students during them four years when we didn't have no settled pastor. Si says to me: 'I declare I'm tired o' settin' in meetin' Sunday after Sunday and hearin' the law laid down to me by them half-fledged boys. Let's have a minister that's feathered out,' said he, 'even if we hev to pay a little more!'
"Well, Mr. Hobson's makin' the introduction didn't leave anything for the Methodist minister to do, and his wife was as mad as hops, but we pacified her by askin' him to give the author a vote of thanks after the Readin', and by puttin' her on the reception committee that met the author at the deepot. The Perkins girl wanted the deepot decorated with goldenrod, but the president of the club said we'd got to leave something to do in case the folks that wrote 'Paradise Lost' or 'Pilgrim's Progress' should come to Bixby to read. So we had the winders washed and the stove blacked, put a new chimbly on the lamp and carried the fly-paper into the telegraph office, and Si said the deepot looked as if 'twas goin' to be married; but the author swished right through it and never looked at the stove nor the winders, so we had our labor for our pains.
"The weather looked a little mite lowery at noon, and Mis' Stevens was afraid she'd have to git out her covered carry-all to go for the author, but the sun came out and it breezed up real nice just after three o'clock. I don't think Mis' Stevens was ever uglier or contrarier in her life than she was that afternoon, but we excused her, for she was most tired to death. Her hired girl is sick, and she'd ben helpin' her cook up flour-food for the author, sellin' tickets over to the Centre, and finishin' a worsted-work 'God Bless Our Home' to hang over the spare-room bed. Si said he guessed the comp'ny would find out before she left that house that God done the only blessin' it was likely to git, and he was about right. She didn't like it a mite because Mis' Doctor Smith shook hands with the author first, and it was kind o' forth-puttin'. Mis' Stevens is the president of the Baptist and Mis' Doctor Smith of the Congregational Ladies' Aid, and most of the quarrelin' and pull-haulin' in the churches is between them two societies. They aid the church consid'able, I s'pose, but they do hender each other awf'ly; I'll say that for 'em!