Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, by Alice Caldwell Hegan

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Title: Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

Author: Alice Caldwell Hegan

Posting Date: July 26, 2009 [EBook #4377]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 20, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.

MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH

BY

ALICE CALDWELL HEGAN

NEW YORK . . MCMII

Copyright, 1901, by

THIS LITTLE STORY IS
LOVINGLY DEDICATED
TO MY MOTHER, WHO
FOR YEARS HAS BEEN
THE GOOD ANGEL OF
"THE CABBAGE PATCH"

CONTENTS

MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

WAYS AND MEANS

THE "CHRISTMAS LADY"

THE ANNEXATION OF CUBY

A REMINISCENCE

A THEATER PARTY

"MR. BOB"

MRS. WIGGS AT HOME

HOW SPRING CAME TO THE CABBAGE PATCH

AUSTRALIA'S MISHAP

THE BENEFIT DANCE

MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH

CHAPTER I

MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

"In the mud and scum of things
Something always always sings!"

"MY, but it's nice an' cold this mornin'! The thermometer's done
fell up to zero!"

Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were
not sticking out through the boy's coat that she wore, or her teeth
chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs.
Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy
lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles. When Mr.
Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried his
faults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she always
laid stress on the fine hand he wrote. It was the same way when
their little country home burned and she had to come to the city to
seek work; her one comment was: "Thank God, it was the pig instid of
the baby that was burned!"

So this bleak morning in December she pinned the bed-clothes around
the children and made them sit up close to the stove, while she
pasted brown paper over the broken window-pane and made sprightly
comments on the change in the weather.

The Wiggses lived in the Cabb