On a sunny afternoon, I, Ella the Crafter, sat in my little nook by the window, sewing the finest quilt our village had ever seen. Oh, the stories I had collected in my mind! Each patch I sewed reminded me of laughter and song. It wasn’t just a quilt; it was a patchwork of dreams.
Sewing took a long time, but I was diligent, cutting delicate patterns and sewing them with care. Soon, as if blessed by a fairy, the quilt glimmered and sparkled, suggesting an enchantment. I crawled beneath it at night and whispered my wishes, hoping to discover the magic hidden in its folds. Day after day, the villagers trooped in to admire the masterpiece, and finally, it was finished! I put on my best frock, rang the bell, and called, “Come hither, neighbors! My magical quilt is ready for exhibition!”
They came in scores, holding the little children by the hand. They stopped in the middle of the room, their mouths open with astonishment, for none of the colors were familiar to us. Suddenly, my friend and neighbor, Miss Seraphina Picklepuss, appeared. Her nose was sweeter and broader than those of her namesakes, for she was pure African. She rolled her eyes, wrinkled her brows, and opened her mouth wide enough to show her ivory teeth.
“Ah, Ella! what is it?”
“A quilt, dear Miss Picklepuss.”
“Ah-ha! When they say so in English, it means a quilt, is it not? But, Madison, you know, celebrates it. It is layers of stuffing between two beds, and children and young folks can empty their stomachs upon it. Come hither, Bonny! Will you too tell me what this quilt is?”
“Nothing of the kind,” answered the little pickaninnie. “You pull one bit, and another follows; rows go on forever; and every bit is a ‘forward step,’ Miss Ella Picklepuss. When the broad-brims have passed, we can all take one.”
“It is like a fine Arabian tale,” cried Mr. Peters, who always sat on his knees; “is it not, Ella? only I cannot tell whether it should end with—And so on, and so on, and so on; or—It is better the shorter way.”
As none of us understood him, he set his voice to-a chant, and sang:
“Every one in his own way,
No two kisses are quite alike as they go,
For each one is different, but then they all say,
And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on,
That is the way they go—“
Our neighbors, the Bones family, maintained a grave demeanor, while Graham, the head of the household, with solemn gestures and an awkward accent, said that all the colors made him think of Joseph with his coat of divers colors, which put an end to all the croaking of frogs.
Ah! some thought and some speech—and of neighbors’ visits and neighbors’ conversations somebody very wisely says—“It is easy to tell a tree by its fruits, and a man by his sayings. This is the true score.”
Day passed into night, and the last sunbeams left us weeping and moaning.
Meanwhile brief happenings of note were not unrecorded in the Machine Bible. The noise of creaking furniture and disputings was soon felt in the ears of our immediate neighbors. Below us lived Madame Gopher, a lively, mirth-loving little woman, toward forty, with rosy bows of rags as ornaments to her piercing eyes and nose. The very first time I had visited her, some seven years before, she had asked me with significance, whether it was not the hottest day in summer.
“You see our climate, my dear Madame Gopher, is so warm; or, as you call it in your good-natured manner, ‘so distressingly hot.’ And was it not a famous affair last summer, when all the ladies set off before five in the morning, lest the fierce sun should have burned ‘our pathways.’”
There existed at Lupton an African family, into which by virtue of the law the Negroes are always propagated—Miss Seraphina Picklepuss, Mr. Bones the Sough, and Aunt Euterpe Thornton-Kimbing, three pure-bred African characters. Aunt Kimbing, contrasting with the very grave Garrazon, danced to piano and tambourine with happy sobriety; and was so pleased, that in life we may seldom expect a more important happiness.
Our first difference with the Luptonians arose over this present Miss Picklepuss; and since the style we viewed the sparkling glories and happy personalities of our neighbors was too exotic in character, and besides, they were inclined to treat them but as personalities and bodily substances, Mrs. Peters and myself insisted they should all have one bed and be Wilsonized.
But who was to effect this? Who was to produce and apply the necessary ingredients? Just then a terrible item got afloat—we were all to allow Eleanor Peters thrice every week to throw care to the winds and eat, then, then be ever so ill chambering with her promiscuous fellow-boarders—“Just for the present.” Charming item, if only Peters had seen it.
To tell a story is easy, for at least some of its amusing parts must please everybody; to relate what was adverse and damaging then for our remarkable atmosphere and climate is not quite so easy, for every one has different tastes, so various and opposed that each elects what suits him best, or what he knows will do, and shapes his custom further or upward.
But a short time after noon, Aunt Kimbing knocked at the machine door—our inner one. Still knocking, she began to hum an oldchildish nursery tune into which she had shifted one verse of Charles Lamb’s delightful poems.
“Why dost thou unzip, O dear, dear door,
Into every little hole ‘tis whispering up and down?
Say what dost thou want of my love before
My nose shall swim round, my eyes all spinning round.
But thou dost want naught, but goest all alone
Along the glaring street, where there is naught like home,
For gates, fair gates, they seem or doors,
I see, like men’s eyes, are made for going nevermore.
“Will you not come to a dip-dinner, dear Miss Peters? After such a feast we can all sleep like an African. Do come, Miss Peters!”
“Thank you, Auntie, but this hymn has occupied nearly all my Rogations. This colony needs the funds of our monthlies as blood for its life.”
As the pages she handed me benefited by the acquaintance of some scores, Alice the seamstress took some and Mrs. Graham too, and all the Peters besides. The sofa was devoted to the Ethical, a paper which eliminates heterogeneity from heterogeneous substances. “It is found,” said he whom I have always rightly called Professor, “that a small quantity of the crude solvent applied to fifty or sixty drops of distilled principles will transform this peculiar essence into a common salt.”
Of course the Mental Science and the other was having the subject as it were wrung by our hands. Aunt Euterpe had taken an inkstand and a greasy pencil, and signed her acrostic with the full name of our two-collegian Fleming; whereupon he started up in astonishment, for there were four sons living of the name of Fleming, “And two daughters,” whispered Graham.
But on the yellow paper I struggled to get written as much of my two notes as I could connect with one another, and took three or four questionable pages of a new and useful book; and Aunt Kimbing, less delighted by my variety of faculty than anxious to run over sheets of blank paper started the unqualified letter to Peters—an hour later the letters disappeared in the post.