as her pride. She'll sell you things you don't want, which is as near
begging as graft is to politics, and she'll wear second-hand clothes and
take home cold bread pudding from the hotel--but she will not be a hired
girl and go to Europe in the summer and marry into an automobile. Once
she did consent to become Mrs. Singer's second girl. Mrs. Singer was
desperate, and after a long defense Mary consented on condition that she
be called the "up-stairs maid." But she only lasted three days. Mary
could have drawn five dollars a week and Mrs. Singer's clothes, which
would have fitted her. But Mary couldn't take orders--not that kind. She
came back to take orders from us for a patent glass washtub or something
of the kind--and we sighed wearily.

V

HOMEBURG'S LEISURE CLASS

_It is not as large as New York's but it is twice as ingenious_

Confound it, Jim, I wish you hadn't told me that your friend Williston
never worked a day in his life! You don't know how it disappointed me.

Why? Because I don't know when I have met a man whom I liked so much at
first sight as I did Williston. He suited me from the ground up. I never
spent a more interesting afternoon with any one. No matter what he did,
he interested me--I enjoyed watching him handle his cigar as well as I
did hearing him tell about his Amazon adventures. Says I to myself:
"Here is a man whose friendship I will win if I have to live in New York
all my life to get it." And then you had to go and spoil it all.

Oh, yes, I know it's just my backwoods way of looking at things. I'm not
saying what I do as a boast. I'm making a confession of it. I know why
Williston doesn't work. It's because he owns a piano box full of bonds
left by his late lamented pa, and when he was educated, the word "work"
was crossed out of his spelling-book in red ink. And I'm not saying that
he isn't a fine fellow. He's intelligent and witty and companionable and
forty other desirable things. But he won't work. Somehow that sticks in
my vision of him. It reminds me of the case of Mamie Gastit, who was the
prettiest, best-dispositioned, and most capable girl in Homeburg, but
who had a glass eye. We didn't hold it up against her, but it made us
awfully sad. There were plenty of Homeburg girls who would have been
decorated by a glass eye. Why did Providence have to wish it on the
finest girl in town?

You say it is no crime not to work in New York? Bless you, I know it. In
fact, loafing i