ttin' a good deal of mail but I never mistrusted how much
until she showed me her box for kindlin' fires next winter. Why, she
says it's beyond all belief! The right end of the box has got the papers
as was n't worth nothin' an' the left end has got them as is really
valuable. Well, after I'd looked at the box we set down an' she told me
the hide an' hair of the whole thing. She says at first she got letters
from everybody under the sun askin' her her opinions an' views, some
about things as she never heard of before an' others as to things as she
considers a downright insult to consider as she might know about. But
she says views an' insults don't really matter much, after you reach her
age, so she let those all go into the box together an' thought she'd
think no more about it. She says there was only just one as she really
minded an' that was the one about her switch. Seems she was n't decided
about even wearin' her switch to the convention, for she says it's very
hard to get both ends of a switch fastened in at the same do-up an' one
end looks about as funny as the other, stickin' out, but she says you
can maybe imagine her feelin's when a man as she would n't know from
Adam wrote her a letter beginnin', 'Hello, hello, why don't you have
that dyed?' an' a picture of him lookin' at a picture of her very own
switch with a microscope! She says she never was so took aback in all
her life. There was another picture on the envelope of the man at a
telephone an' he'd got all the other delegates' switches done an'
hangin' up to dry for 'em an' she says she will say as the law against
sendin' such things through the mail had certainly ought to be applied
to that man right then an' there. She says it's years since she's got
red from anythin' but bein' mad, but she was red from both kinds of
woman's feelin's then an' don't you forget it. But laws, she says
switches is child's play to what another man wrote her about his
garters. Not her garters but his garters, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop. Would
you believe that that other man had the face to ask her point-blank if,
while she was in town, she'd be so kind as to give five minutes to
comin' an' lookin' at his garters!--at _his garters_! He said they
hooked onto his shoulders an' he just wanted a chance to tell her how
comfortable they was. Well, she says the idea of any man's garters bein'
of any interest to a widow was surely most new to her, an' it was all
she could do to keep from wr