The Jamesons

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

I wondered if Flora Clark had said anything. I heard afterward that she had not, but I saw at once that she was endeavoring to wreak a little revenge upon Mrs. Jameson. By a series of very skilfull and scarcely perceptible manœuvres she gently impelled Mrs. Jameson, without her being aware of it, into the seat directly in front of the stove. I knew it was not befitting my age and Christian character, but I was glad to see her there. The heat that night was something terrific, and the fire in the stove, although we had made no more than we could help, had increased it decidedly. I thought that Mrs. Jameson, between the stove at her back and the hot water in her health food, would have her just deserts. It did seem as if she must be some degrees warmer than any of the rest of us.

However, who thought to inflict just deserts upon her reckoned without Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson. She began stirring the health food, which she had brought, in her cup of hot water; but suddenly she looked around, saw the stove at her back, and sweetly asked Mrs. White if she could not have another seat, as the heat was very apt to affect her head.

It was Harriet, after all, upon whom the punishment for her mother's thoughtlessness fell. She jumped up at once, and eagerly volunteered to change seats with her.

“Indeed, my place is quite cool, mamma,” she said. So Mrs. Jameson and her daughter exchanged places; and I did not dare look at Flora Clark.

Though the kitchen was so hot, I think we all felt that we had reason to be thankful that Mrs. Jameson did not beseech us to eat health food as she did at the picnic, and also that the reading was over for that day.

Louisa, when we were going home that night, said she supposed that Mrs. Jameson would try to improve our literary society also; and she was proved to be right in her supposition at the very next meeting. Mrs. Jameson came, and she not only read selections from Browning, but she started us in that mad problem of Shakespeare and Bacon. Most of the ladies in our society had not an intimate acquaintance with either, having had, if the truth were told, their minds too fully occupied with such humble domestic questions of identity as whether Johnny or Tommy stole the sugar.

However, when we were once fairly started there was no end to our interest; we all agonized over it, and poor Mrs. Sim White was so exercised over the probable deception of either Bacon or Shakespeare, in any case, that she told me privately that she was tempted to leave the literary society and confine herself to her Bible.

There was actual animosity between some members of our society in consequence. Mrs. Charles Root and Rebecca Snow did not speak to each other for weeks because Mrs. Root believed that Shakespeare was Bacon, and Rebecca believed he was himself. Rebecca even stayed away from church and the society on that account.

Mrs. Jameson expressed herself as very much edified at our interest, and said she considered it a proof that our spheres were widening.

Louisa and I agreed that if we could only arrive at a satisfactory conclusion in the matter we should feel that ours were wider; and Flora Clark said it did not seem of much use to her, since Shakespeare and Bacon were both dead and gone, and we were too much concerned with those plays which were written anyhow, and no question about it, to bother about anything else. It did not seem to her that the opinion of our literary society would make much difference to either of them, and that possibly we had better spend our time in studying the plays.