The story came to me through my friend, Mrs. Katherine Biff. Mrs. Biff is a widow. Her profession–I will not slight her beautiful art by a lesser word–is that of cook. She cooks for my cousin, Elinor, and it was during one of Elinor’s absences in Europe that Mrs. Biff had her experience in Altruria, […]

Sist’ Esmeralda Humphreys was not present at the meeting of Zion Hard-shell Baptist Church. It is questionable whether there had been any such meeting had she been likely to attend, since how to dispense with the ministry of Sister Humphreys was its object, and the sister was a woman of power. But she had gone […]

A STORY OF THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1896 I sat so far back in the gallery that my opinion of my delegate friend dwindled with every session. Nevertheless my unimportant seat had its advantages. I could see the vast assembly and watch the throbbing of the Republican pulse if I could not hear its heart-beats. […]

A knock sounded on the principal’s door. “That’s Florence,” she thought; and she sighed in the same breath. The principal had secretly liked Florence Raimund, the best of her two hundred girls, for three years; and, sometimes, she suspected that Florence knew it. Miss Wing sat at her desk. It was a large desk of […]

There was a skeleton in Mrs. Margaret Ellis’ closet; the same skeleton abode also in the closet of Miss Lorania Hopkins. The skeleton–which really does not seem a proper word–was the dread of growing stout. They were more afraid of flesh than of sin. Yet they were both good women. Mrs. Ellis regularly attended church, […]

“I joined a woman’s club in the Federation a little over two years ago,” said Mrs. Hardy. “I didn’t know what was the object then; and to tell you the truth, I am no wiser now.” “You know as much as I,” was her neighbor’s reply, politely given, the neighbor, however, feeling no real interest, […]

Not long since the writer had occasion to pass through the scene of this story. It would be hard to find anywhere a more pleasant and prosperous land. Fertile fields and shady country roads and pastures where sleek cattle are contentedly grazing; great stacks of green alfalfa; farmhouses with flowers and vines, as well as […]

The golf links were picturesque; spreading along the shore or climbing through the heart of the island set in the great river; here and there a vista of the huge bulk of the arsenal-shops; walled over the river by the hills behind opulent, bustling little cities, the fair greens jeweled by the sun and dappled […]

The flies and the sun! The sun and the flies! The two tents of the division ward in the hospital had been pitched end to end, thus turning them into one. The sun filtered through the cracks of the canvas; it poured in a broad, dancing, shifting column of gold through the open tent flap. […]

The widow Darter’s house was set on a hill. It was a story-and-a-half cottage, of stucco, to which sun and wind and frost had offered their kind offices, mellowing pleasantly its original glare of white. In summer a trumpet-vine draped the ugly little piazza which Emmy’s “art-needle work” had helped build, and which she and […]

THE Louders lived on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, in the Lossing Building. There is a restaurant to the right; and a new doctor, every six months, who is every kind of a healer except “regular,” keeps the permanent boarders in gossip, to the left; two or three dressmakers, a dentist, […]

IT was while Harry Lossing was at the High School that Mrs. Carriswood first saw Tommy Fitzmaurice. He was not much to see, a long lad of sixteen who had outgrown his jackets and was not yet grown to his ears. At this period Mrs. Fitzmaurice was his barber, and she, having been too rash […]

AFTER the week’s shower the low Iowa hills looked vividly green. At the base of the first range of hills the Blackhawk road winds from the city to the prairie. From its starting-point, just outside the city limits, the wayfarer may catch bird’s-eye glimpses of the city, the vast river that the Iowans love, and […]

A SILVER rime glistened all down the street. There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough […]

THE note-book of Mr. Horatio Armorer, president of our street railways, contained a page of interest to some people in our town, on the occasion of his last visit. He wrote it while the train creaked over the river, and the porter of his Pullman car was brushing all the dust that had been distributed […]

IT was the Christmas turkeys that should be held responsible. Every year the Lossings give each head of a family in their employ, and each lad helping to support his mother, a turkey at Christmastide. As the business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it is now well up in the hundreds, […]