Thomas Jefferson hearn to me, he wuz a honest boy by nature, and my teachin’s have struck in deep. He is a honest lawyer, and as I say folks come milds and milds jest to look at him. As it has turned out he is a success outside as well as inside.
And Miss Green Smythe wants him to take her case dretfully. Good land! she’s been in the law for years, her children have turned out real bad, and she’s turned out sort o’ curous herself. She is a great society woman, and has enormous success in that direction; why, she has been, so I have been told and believe, to nineteen parties in one night, she gives immense receptions, and has got diamonds as big as eggs almost (bird’s eggs, I cannot lie, I do not mean hen’s eggs). Yes, she has had great success in that way, but she has had dretful poor luck with her children.
She has got a husband somewhere, I spoze. I believe that I hearn once of somebody who had seen Mr. Green Smythe one day settin’ on the back doorstep of her city house. But she always has two or three young men danglin’ round, and she never sez a word about her husband. Somebody said to me one day that it seemed kinder queer that nobody ever see Mr. Smythe, but I sez:
“Oh, she most probable knew where he wuz; she most probable knew that he wuz settin’ out there at the back door.”
I will stand up for my sect when I can, but I don’t approve of her acts not at all; if I had a husband I should want one, and if I didn’t have a husband I shouldn’t want one, and I should want it fixed so I should know jest how it wuz.
But as I say, her children have turned out dretful, and most everybody thinks that it wuz the way they wuz brung up that made ’em turn out so. She left the hull care of ’em to hired nurses and servants, and they wuz mean, some of ’em, and neglected ’em sometimes, and sometimes learnt ’em by precept and example to be as mean as they wuz.
Why, a woman told me, and a likely woman, too, though I won’t mention any names, as I am afraid she wouldn’t like it if I did, but I will say that I always could depend on every word that Alvira Sampson said.
Well, she told me she called Miss Green Smythe’s attention to the way her children wuz bein’ dealt with by her help, and she said all the answer Miss Green Smythe made wuz to look kinder dreamily at her and wonder whether she had better have yellow or pink candles in her reception room at her next party; she wuz gittin’ up a Charity Ball for motherless children. And I told Alviry that Miss Green Smythe had better include her own children in the charity, for they wuz jest about the same as motherless.
And this certain woman said she tried to draw her attention agin to the needs of her own offspring, and agin Miss Green Smythe looked dreamily up and sez, “I am so ondecided whether to wear pale rose colored chiffon or cloth of gold on the night of the party.” And then that certain woman said she gin up the idee of gittin’ her mind onto her own children’s welfare, she didn’t say another word to her about it, and I believe her, for Alvira won’t lie.