Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Jamesons

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Grandma Cobb was always dressed in a black silk gown which seemed
sumptuous to the women of our village. They could scarcely reconcile
it with the statement that the Jamesons had lost their money. Black
silk of a morning was stupendous to them, when they reflected how
they had, at the utmost, but one black silk, and that guarded as if
it were cloth of gold, worn only upon the grandest occasions, and
designed, as they knew in their secret hearts, though they did not
proclaim it, for their last garment of earth. Grandma Cobb always
wore a fine lace cap also, which should, according to the opinions of
the other old ladies of the village, have been kept sacred for other
women's weddings or her own funeral. She used her best gold-bowed
spectacles every day, and was always leaving them behind her in the
village houses, and little Tommy or Annie had to run after her with
a charge not to lose them, for nobody knew how much they cost.

Grandma Cobb always carried about with her a paper-covered novel and
a box of cream peppermints. She ate the peppermints and freely
bestowed them upon others; the novel she never read. She said quite
openly that she only carried it about to please her daughter, who had
literary tastes. "She belongs to a Shakespeare Club, and a Browning
Club, and a Current Literature Club," said Grandma Cobb.

We concluded that she had, feeling altogether incapable of even
carrying about Shakespeare and Browning, compromised with peppermints
and current literature.

"That book must be current literature," said Mrs. Ketchum one day,
"but I looked into it when she was at our house, and I should not
want Adeline to read it."

After a while people looked upon Grandma Cobb's book with suspicion;
but since she always carried it, thereby keeping it from her
grandchildren, and never read it, we agreed that it could not do
much harm.

The very first time that I saw Grandma Cobb, at Caroline Liscom's,
she had that book. I knew it by the red cover and a baking-powder
advertisement on the back; and the next time also--that was at the
seventeenth-of-June picnic.

The whole Jameson family went to the picnic, rather to our surprise.
I think people had a fancy that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would be
above our little rural picnic. We had yet to understand Mrs. Jameson,
and learn that, however much she really held herself above and aloof,
she had not the slightest intention of letting us alone, perhaps
because she thoroughly believed in her own nonmixable quality. Of
course it would always be quite safe for oil to go to a picnic with
water, no matter how exclusive it might be.

The picnic was in Leonard's grove, and young and old were asked. The
seventeenth-of-June picnic is a regular institution in our village. I
went with Louisa, and little Alice in her new white muslin dress; the
child had been counting on it for weeks. We were nearly all assembled
when the Jamesons arrived. Half a dozen of us had begun to lay the
table for luncheon, though we were not to have it for an hour or two.
We always thought it a good plan to make all our preparations in
season. We were collecting the baskets and boxes, and it did look as
if we were to have an unusual feast that year. Those which we peeped
into appeared especially tempting. Mrs. Nathan Butters had brought a
great loaf of her rich fruit cake, a kind for which she is famous in
the village, and Mrs. Sim White had brought two of her whipped-cream
pies. Mrs. Ketchum had brought six mince pies, which were a real
rarity in June, and Flora Clark had brought a six-quart pail full of
those jumbles she makes, so rich that if you drop one it crumbles to
pieces. Then there were two great pinky hams and a number of
chickens. Louisa and I had brought a chicken; we had one of ours
killed, and I had roasted it the day before.

I remarked to Mrs. Ketchum that we should have an unusually nice
dinner; and so we should have had if it had not been for Mrs. H.
Boardman Jameson.

The Jamesons came driving into the grove in the Liscom carryall and
their buggy. Mr. Jacob Liscom was in charge of the carryall, and the
Jameson boy was on the front seat with him; on the back seat were
Grandma, or Madam Cobb, and the younger daughter. Harry Liscom drove
the bay horse in the buggy, and Mrs. Jameson and Harriet were with
him, he sitting between them, very uncomfortably, as it appeared--his
knees were touching the dasher, as he is a tall young man.

Caroline Liscom did not come, and I did not wonder at it for one.
She must have thought it a good chance to rest one day from taking
boarders. We were surprised that Mrs. Jameson, since she is such a
stout woman, did not go in the carryall, and let either her younger
daughter or the boy go with Harry and Harriet in the buggy. We heard
afterward that she thought it necessary that she should go with them
as a chaperon. That seemed a little strange to us, since our village
girls were all so well conducted that we thought nothing of their
going buggy-riding with a good young man like Harry Liscom; he is a
church member and prominent in the Sunday-school, and this was in
broad daylight and the road full of other carriages. So people stared
and smiled a little to see Harry driving in with his knees braced
against the dasher, and the buggy canting to one side with the weight
of Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson. He looked rather shamefaced, I thought,
though he is a handsome, brave young fellow, and commonly carries
himself boldly enough. Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her
costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite appropriate. However,
I suppose that she was not to blame, poor child, and it may easily
be more embarrassing to have old fine clothes than old poor ones.
Really, Harriet Jameson would have looked better dressed that day in
an old calico gown than the old silk one which she wore. Her waist
was blue silk with some limp chiffon at the neck and sleeves, and her
skirt was old brown silk all frayed at the bottom and very shiny.
There were a good many spots on it, too, and some mud stains, though
it had not rained for two weeks.

However, the girl looked pretty, and her hair was done with a stylish
air, and she wore her old Leghorn hat, with its wreath of faded
French flowers, in a way which was really beyond our girls.

And as for Harry Liscom, it was plain enough to be seen that, aside
from his discomfiture at the close attendance of Mrs. H. Boardman
Jameson, he was blissfully satisfied and admiring. I was rather sorry
to see it on his account, though I had nothing against the girl. I
think, on general principles, that it is better usually for a young
man of our village to marry one of his own sort; that he has a better
chance of contentment and happiness. However, in this case it seemed
quite likely that there would be no chance of married happiness at
all. It did not look probable that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would
smile upon her eldest daughter's marriage with the son of "a good
woman," and I was not quite sure as to what Caroline Liscom would
say.

Mr. Jacob Liscom is a pleasant-faced, mild-eyed man, very tall and
slender. He lifted out the Jameson boy, who did not jump out over the
wheel, as boys generally do when arriving at a picnic, and then he
tipped over the front seat and helped out Madam Cobb, and the younger
daughter, whose name was Sarah. We had not thought much of such
old-fashioned names as Harriet and Sarah for some years past in our
village, and it seemed rather odd taste in these city people. We
considered Hattie and Sadie much prettier. Generally the Harriets and
Sarahs endured only in the seclusion of the family Bible and the
baptismal records. Quite a number of the ladies had met Mrs. Jameson,
having either called at Mrs. Liscom's and seen her there, or having
spoken to her at church; and as for Grandma Cobb, she had had time to
visit nearly every house in the village, as I knew, though she had
not been to mine. Grandma Cobb got out, all smiling, and Jacob Liscom
handed her the box of peppermints and the paper-covered novel, and
then Harry Liscom helped out Harriet and her mother.

Mrs. Jameson walked straight up to us who were laying the table, and
Harry followed her with a curiously abashed expression, carrying a
great tin cracker-box in one hand and a large basket in the other. We
said good-morning as politely as we knew how to Mrs. Jameson, and she
returned it with a brisk air which rather took our breaths away, it
was so indicative of urgent and very pressing business. Then, to our
utter astonishment, up she marched to the nearest basket on the
table and deliberately took off the cover and began taking out the
contents. It happened to be Mrs. Nathan Butters' basket. Mrs. Jameson
lifted out the great loaf of fruit cake and set it on the table
with a contemptuous thud, as it seemed to us; then she took out a
cranberry pie and a frosted apple pie, and set them beside it. She
opened Mrs. Peter Jones' basket next, and Mrs. Jones stood there
all full of nervous twitches and saw her take out a pile of ham
sandwiches and a loaf of chocolate cake and a bottle of pickles. She
went on opening the baskets and boxes one after another, and we stood
watching her. Finally she came to the pail full of jumbles, and her
hand slipped and the most of them fell to the ground and were a mass
of crumbles.

Then Mrs. Jameson spoke; she had not before said a word. "These are
enough to poison the whole village," said she, and she sniffed with
a proud uplifting of her nose.

I am sure that a little sound, something between a groan and a gasp,
came from us, but no one spoke. I felt that it was fortunate, and
yet I was almost sorry that Flora Clark, who made those jumbles, was
not there; she had gone to pick wild flowers with her Sunday-school
class. Flora is very high-spirited and very proud of her jumbles, and
I knew that she would not have stood it for a minute to hear them
called poison. There would certainly have been words then and there,
for Flora is afraid of nobody. She is a smart, handsome woman, and
would have been married long ago if it had not been for her temper.

Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to gather up the jumbles; she just went
on after that remark of hers, opening the rest of the things; there
were only one or two more. Then she took the cracker-box which Harry
had brought; he had stolen away to put up his horse, and it looked to
me very much as if Harriet had stolen away with him, for I could not
see her anywhere.

Mrs. Jameson lifted this cracker-box on to the table and opened it.
It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. She
laid them in a pile beside the other things; then she took up the
basket and opened that. There was another kind of a cracker in that,
and two large papers of something. When everything was taken out she
pointed at the piles of eatables on the table, and addressed us:
"Ladies, attention!" rapping slightly with a spoon at the same time.
Her voice was very sweet, with a curious kind of forced sweetness:
"Ladies, attention! I wish you to carefully observe the food upon
the table before us. I wish you to consider it from the standpoint
of wives and mothers of families. There is the food which you have
brought, unwholesome, indigestible; there is mine, approved of by the
foremost physicians and men of science of the day. For ten years I
have had serious trouble with the alimentary canal, and this food
has kept me in strength and vigor. Had I attempted to live upon your
fresh biscuits, your frosted cakes, your rich pastry, I should be in
my grave. One of those biscuits which you see there before you is
equal in nourishment to six of your indigestible pies, or every cake
upon the table. The great cause of the insanity and dyspepsia so
prevalent among the rural classes is rich pie and cake. I feel it my
duty to warn you. I hope, ladies, that you will consider carefully
what I have said."

With that, Mrs. Jameson withdrew herself a little way and sat down
under a tree on a cushion which had been brought in the carryall. We
looked at one another, but we did not say anything for a few minutes.

Finally, Mrs. White, who is very good-natured, remarked that she
supposed that she meant well, and she had better put her pies back in
the basket or they would dry up. We all began putting back the things
which Mrs. Jameson had taken out, except the broken jumbles, and
were very quiet. However, we could not help feeling astonished and
aggrieved at what Mrs. Jameson had said about the insanity and
dyspepsia in our village, since we could scarcely remember one case
of insanity, and very few of us had to be in the least careful as
to what we ate. Mrs. Peter Jones did say in a whisper that if Mrs.
Jameson had had dyspepsia ten years on those hard biscuits it
was more than any of us had had on our cake and pie. We left the
biscuits, and the two paper packages which Mrs. Jameson had brought,
in a heap on the table just where she had put them.

After we had replaced the baskets we all scattered about, trying to
enjoy ourselves in the sweet pine woods, but it was hard work, we
were so much disturbed by what had happened. We wondered uneasily,
too, what Flora Clark would say about her jumbles. We were all quiet,
peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too
fast. Taking it altogether, we felt very much as if some great,
overgrown bird of another species had gotten into our village nest,
and we were in the midst of an awful commotion of strange wings and
beak. Still we agreed that Mrs. Jameson had probably meant well.

Grandma Cobb seemed to be enjoying herself. She was moving about, her
novel under her arm and her peppermint box in her hand, holding up
her gown daintily in front. She spoke to everybody affably, and told
a number confidentially that her daughter was very delicate about
her eating, but she herself believed in eating what you liked.
Harriet and Harry Liscom were still missing, and so were the younger
daughter, Sarah, and the boy. The boy's name, by the way, was Cobb,
his mother's maiden name. That seemed strange to us, but it possibly
would not have seemed so had it been a prettier name.

Just before lunch-time Cobb and his sister Sarah appeared, and they
were in great trouble. Jonas Green, who owns the farm next the grove,
was with them, and actually had Cobb by the hair, holding all his
gathered-up curls tight in his fist. He held Sarah by one arm, too,
and she was crying. Cobb was crying, too, for that matter, and crying
out loud like a baby.

Jonas Green is a very brusque man, and he did look as angry as I had
ever seen any one, and when I saw what those two were carrying I did
not much wonder. Their hands were full of squash blossoms and potato
blossoms, and Jonas Green's garden is the pride of his life.

Jonas Green marched straight up to Mrs. Jameson under her tree, and
said in a loud voice: "Ma'am, if this boy and girl are yours I think
it is about time you taught them better than to tramp through folks'
fields picking things that don't belong to them, and I expect what
I've lost in squashes and potatoes to be made good to me."

We all waited, breathless, and Mrs. Jameson put on her eyeglasses
and looked up. Then she spoke sweetly.

"My good man," said she, "if, when you come to dig your squashes, you
find less than usual, and when you come to pick your potatoes the
bushes are not in as good condition as they generally are, you may
come to me and I will make it right with you."

Mrs. Jameson spoke with the greatest dignity and sweetness, and we
almost felt as if she were the injured party, in spite of all those
squash and potato blossoms. As for Jonas Green, he stared at her for
the space of a minute, then he gave a loud laugh, let go of the boy
and girl, and strode away. We heard him laughing to himself as he
went; all through his life the mention of potato bushes and digging
squashes was enough to send him into fits of laughter. It was the
joke of his lifetime, for Jonas Green had never been a merry man, and
it was probably worth more than the vegetables which he had lost. I
pitied Cobb and Sarah, they were so frightened, and got hold of them
myself and comforted them. Sarah was just such another little timid,
open-mouthed, wide-eyed sort of thing as her brother, and they were
merely picking flowers, as they supposed.

"I never saw such beautiful yellow flowers," Sarah said, sobbing and
looking ruefully at her great bouquet of squash blossoms. This little
Sarah, who was only twelve, and very small and childish for her age,
said sooner and later many ignorant, and yet quaintly innocent things
about our country life, which were widely repeated. It was Sarah who
said, when she was offered some honey at a village tea-drinking, "Oh,
will you please tell me what time you drive home your bees? and do
they give honey twice a day like the cows?" It was Sarah who, when
her brother was very anxious to see the pigs on Mr. White's farm,
said, "Oh, be quiet, Cobb, dear; it is too late tonight; the pigs
must have gone into their holes."

I think poor Cobb and Sarah might have had a pleasant time at the
picnic, after all--for my little Alice made friends with them, and
Mrs. Sim White's Charlie--had it not been for their mother's obliging
them to eat her hygienic biscuits for their luncheons. It was really
pitiful to see them looking so wistfully at the cake and pie. I had a
feeling of relief that all the rest of us were not obliged to make
our repast of hygienic bread. I had a fear lest Mrs. Jameson might
try to force us to do so. However, all she did was to wait until we
were fairly started upon our meal, and then send around her children
with her biscuits, following them herself with the most tender
entreaties that we would put aside that unwholesome food and not risk
our precious lives. She would not, however, allow us to drink our own
coffee--about that she was firm. She insisted upon our making some
hygienic coffee which she had brought from the city, and we were
obliged to yield, or appear in a very stubborn and ungrateful light.
The coffee was really very good, and we did not mind. The other
parcel which she had brought contained a health food, to be made
into a sort of porridge with hot water, and little cups of that were
passed around, Mrs. Jameson's face fairly beaming with benevolence
the while, and there was no doubt that she was entirely in earnest.

Still, we were all so disturbed--that is, all of us elder
people--that I doubt if anybody enjoyed that luncheon unless it was
Grandma Cobb. She did not eat hygienic biscuits, but did eat cake and
pie in unlimited quantities. I was really afraid that she would make
herself ill with Mrs. Butter's fruit cake. One thing was a great
relief, to me at least: Flora Clark did not know the true story of
her jumbles until some time afterward. Mrs. White told her that the
pail had been upset and they were broken, and we were all so sorry;
and she did not suspect. We were glad to avoid a meeting between her
and Mrs. Jameson, for none of us felt as if we could endure it then.

I suppose the young folks enjoyed the picnic if we did not, and that
was the principal thing to be considered, after all. I know that
Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson enjoyed it, and all the more that
it was a sort of stolen pleasure. Just before we went home I was
strolling off by myself near the brook, and all of a sudden saw the
two young things under a willow tree. I stood back softly, and they
never knew that I was there, but they were sitting side by side, and
Harry's arm was around the girl's waist, and her head was on his
shoulder, and they were looking at each other as if they saw angels,
and I thought to myself that, whether it was due to hygienic bread or
pie, they were in love--and what would Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson and
Caroline Liscom say?

III

MRS. JAMESON IMPROVES US

It was some time before we really understood that we were to be
improved. We might have suspected it from the episode of the hygienic
biscuits at the picnic, but we did not. We were not fairly aware of
it until the Ladies' Sewing Circle met one afternoon with Mrs. Sim
White, the president, the first week in July.

It was a very hot afternoon, and I doubt if we should have had the
meeting that day had it not been that we were anxious to get off
a barrel as soon as possible to a missionary in Minnesota. The
missionary had seven children, the youngest only six weeks old, and
they were really suffering. Flora Clark did say that if it were as
hot in Minnesota as it was in Linnville she would not thank anybody
to send her clothes; she would be thankful for the excuse of poverty
to go without them. But Mrs. Sim White would not hear to having the
meeting put off; she said that a cyclone might come up any minute in
Minnesota and cool the air, and then think of all those poor children
with nothing to cover them. Flora Clark had the audacity to say that
after the cyclone there might not be any children to cover, and a few
of the younger members tittered; but we never took Flora's speeches
seriously. She always came to the sewing meeting, no matter how much
she opposed it, and sewed faster than any of us. She came that
afternoon and made three flannel petticoats for three of the
children, though she did say that she thought the money would have
been better laid out in palm-leaf fans.

We were astonished to see Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson come that very
hot afternoon, for we knew that she considered herself delicate,
and, besides, we wondered that she should feel interested in our
sewing circle. Her daughter Harriet came with her; Madam Cobb, as
I afterward learned, went, instead, to Mrs. Ketchum's, and stayed
all the afternoon, and kept her from going to the meeting at all.

Caroline Liscom came with her boarders, and I knew, the minute I saw
her, that something was wrong. She had a look of desperation and
defiance which I had seen on her face before. Thinks I to myself:
"You are all upset over something, but you have made up your mind
to hide it, whether or no."

Mrs. Jameson had a book in her hand, and when she first came in she
laid it on the table where we cut out our work. Mrs. Liscom went
around the room with her, introducing her to the ladies whom she had
not met before. I could see that she did not like to do it, and was
simply swallowing her objections with hard gulps every time she
introduced her.

Harriet walked behind her mother and Mrs. Liscom, and spoke very
prettily every time she was addressed.

Harriet Jameson was really an exceedingly pretty girl, with a kind of
apologetic sweetness and meekness of manner which won her friends.
Her dress that afternoon was pretty, too: a fine white lawn trimmed
with very handsome embroidery, and a white satin ribbon at the waist
and throat. I understood afterward that Mrs. Jameson did not allow
her daughters to wear their best clothes generally to our village
festivities, but kept them for occasions in the city, since their
fortunes were reduced, thinking that their old finery, though it
might be a little the worse for wear, was good enough for our
unsophisticated eyes. But that might not have been true; Harriet
was very well dressed that afternoon, at all events.

Mrs. Jameson seemed to be really very affable. She spoke cordially
to us all, and then asked to have some work given her; but, as it
happened, there was nothing cut out except a black dress for the
missionary's wife, and she did not like to strain her eyes working
on black.

"Let me cut something out," said she in her brisk manner; "I have
come here to be useful. What is there needing to be cut out?"

It was Flora Clark who replied, and I always suspected her of a
motive in it, for she had heard about her jumbles by that time. She
said there was a little pair of gingham trousers needed for the
missionary's five-year-old boy, and Mrs. Jameson, without a quiver of
hesitation, asked for the gingham and scissors. I believe she would
have undertaken a suit for the missionary with the same alacrity.

Mrs. Jameson was given another little pair of trousers, a size
smaller than those required, for a pattern, a piece of blue and white
gingham and the shears, and she began. We all watched her furtively,
but she went slashing away with as much confidence as if she had
served an apprenticeship with a tailor in her youth. We began to
think that possibly she knew better how to cut out trousers than we
did. Mrs. White whispered to me that she had heard that many of those
rich city women learned how to do everything in case they lost their
money, and she thought it was so sensible.

When Mrs. Jameson had finished cutting out the trousers, which was in
a very short space of time, she asked for some thread and a needle,
and Flora Clark started to get some, and got thereby an excuse to
examine the trousers. She looked at them, and held them up so we all
could see, and then she spoke.

"Mrs. Jameson," said she, "these are cut just alike back and front,
and they are large enough for a boy of twelve." She spoke very
clearly and decisively. Flora Clark never minces matters.

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