Mae Madden | Page 7

touch of warm Dutch
blood. She was tall, almost stately, with a good deal of American style,
which at that time happened to be straight and slender. She was
naturally reserved, but four years of boarding-school life had enriched
her store of adjectives and her amount of endearing gush-power, and
she had at least six girl friends to whom she sent weekly epistles of
some half-dozen sheets in length, beginning, each one of them, with
"My dearest ----" and ending "Your devoted Edith."
As Edith and her mother quietly read, and ate grapes, and lolled in a
delightfully feminine way, voices were heard,--Mae's and
Norman's.
They were in the middle of a conversation. "Yes," Mae was saying,
"you do away with individuality altogether nowadays, with your
dreadful classifications. It is all the same from daffodils up to women."
"How do we classify women, pray?"
"In the mind of man," began Mae, as if she were reading, "there are
three classes of women; the giddy butterflies, the busy bees, and the
woman's righters. The first are pretty and silly; the second, plain and
useful; the third, mannish and odious. The first wear long trailing
dresses and smile at you while waltzing, the second wear aprons and
give you apple-dumplings, and the third want your manly prerogatives,
your dress-coat, your money, and your vote. Flirt with the giddy
butterflies, your first love was one. First loves always are. Marry the
busy bee. Your mother was a busy bee. Mothers always are. And keep
on the other side of the street from the woman s righter as long as you
can. Alas! your daughter will be one."

"Well, isn't there any classifying on the other side? Aren't there
horsemen and sporting men and booky men, in the feminine mind?"
"Perhaps so. There certainly are the fops, and nowadays this terrible
army of reformers and radicals, of whom my brother Albert here is the
best known example."
"What is it?" asked Albert, looking up abstractedly from his book, for
he and Eric had sauntered up the stairs too, by this time.
"They are the creatures," continued Mae, "who scorn joys and idle
pleasures. They deal with the good of the many and the problems of the
universe, and step solemnly along to that dirge known as the March of
Progress. And what do they get for it all? Something like this. Put
down your book, I'm going to prophesy," and Mae backed resolutely up
against the railing and held her floating scarfs and veils in a bunch at
her throat, while she prophesied in this way:
"Behold me, direct lineal descendant of Albert Madden, speaking to my
children in the year 1995: 'What, children, want amusement? Want to
see the magic lantern to note the effects of light? Alas! how frivolous.
Listen, children, to the achievements of your great ancestor, as reported
by the Encyclopedia. "A. Madden--promoter of civilization and
progress, chiefly known by his excellent theory entitled The Number of
Cells in a Human Brain compared to the Working Powers of Man, and
that remarkable essay, headed by this formula: Given--10,000,000
laboring men, to find the number of loaves of bread in the world." Here,
children, take these works. Progressimus, you may have the theory,
while Civilizationica reads the essay. Then change about. Ponder them
well, and while we walk to the Museum later, tell me their errors. Then
I will show you the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland
by P. T. Barnum, jr.' Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her
streamers, "what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century leaders are.
You are devouring our green land, and some of us butterflies would
like to turn our yellow wings into solid shields against you, if we could.
There, I've made a goose of myself again on the old subject. Edith,
there's the lunch bell. Take me down before I say another word."
Exeunt feminines all.

"Where did the child pick up all that?" queried Albert.
"'All that' is in the air just now," answered Norman. "It is a natural
reaction of a strong physical nature against the
utilitarian views of the
day. Miss Mae is a type of--"
"O, nonsense, what prigs you are," interrupted Eric, "Mae is jolly. Do
stop your reasoning about her. If you are bound to be a potato yourself
to help save the masses from starvation, don't grumble because she
grew a flower. Come, let us go to lunch too."
Conversation was not always of this sort. One evening, not long after,
there was a moon, and Edith and Albert were missing. Eric was
following a blue-eyed girl along the deck, and Mae and Norman
wandered off by themselves up to this same hurricane deck again. The
moonlight was wonderful. It touched little groups here