People of the Whirlpool

People of the Whirlpool - From
The Experience Book of a
Commuter's Wife

The Project Gutenberg eBook, People of the Whirlpool , by Mabel
Osgood Wright
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: People of the Whirlpool
Author: Mabel Osgood Wright
Release Date: March 13, 2004 [eBook #11561]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEOPLE OF
THE WHIRLPOOL ***
E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Mary Meehan, and
the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

PEOPLE OF THE WHIRLPOOL
FROM THE EXPERIENCE BOOK OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE
BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
1903

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ON THE ADVANTAGE OF TWINS

CHAPTER II
MISS LAVINIA'S LETTERS TO BARBARA

CHAPTER III
MARTIN CORTRIGHT'S LETTERS

CHAPTER IV
WHEN BARBARA GOES TO TOWN

CHAPTER V
FEBRUARY VIOLETS

CHAPTER VI
ENTER A MAN

CHAPTER VII
SYLVIA LATHAM

CHAPTER VIII
THE SWEATING OF THE CORN

CHAPTER IX
A WAYSIDE COMEDY

CHAPTER X

THE WHIRL BEGINS

CHAPTER XI
REARRANGED FAMILIES

CHAPTER XII
HIS MOTHER

CHAPTER XIII
GOSSIP AND THE BUG HUNTERS

CHAPTER XIV
THE OASIS

I
ON THE ADVANTAGE OF TWINS
_February 2_. Candlemas and mild, gray weather. If the woodchuck
stirs up his banked life-fire and ventures forth, he will not see his
shadow, and must straightway arrange with winter for a rebate in our
favour. To-day, however, it seems like the very dawn of winter, and as
if the cloud brooms were abroad gathering snow from remote and chilly
corners of the sky.
Six years ago I began the planting of my garden, and at the same time
my girlish habit of journal keeping veered into the making of a "Garden
Boke," to be a reversible signal, crying danger in face of forgotten
mistakes, then turning to give back glints of summer sunshine when
read in the attic of winter days and blue Mondays. Now once again I
am in the attic, writing. Not in a garden diary, but in my "Social
Experience Boke" this time, for it is "human warious," and its first
volume, already filled out, is lying in the old desk. Martin Cortright
said, one stormy day last autumn when he was sitting in the corner I
have loaned him of my precious attic retreat, that, owing to the

incursion of the Bluff Colony of New Yorkers, which we had been
discussing, I should call this second volume "People of the Whirlpool,"
because--ah, but I must wait and hunt among my papers for his very
words as I wrote them down.
My desk needs cleaning out and rearranging, for the dust flies up as I
rummage among the papers and letters that are a blending of past,
present, and future. All my pet pens are rusty, and must be replaced
from the box of stubs, for a stub pen assists one to straightforward,
truthful expression, while a fine point suggests evasion, polite
equivocation, or thin ideas. Even Lavinia Dorman's letters, whose
cream-white envelopes, with a curlicue monogram on the flap, quite
cover the litter below, have been, if possible, more satisfactory since
she has adopted a fountain stub that Evan gave her at Christmas.
There are many other things in the desk now beside the hickory-nut
beads and old papers. Little whiffs of subtle fragrance call me
backward through time faster than thought, and make me pinch myself
to be sure that I am awake, like the little old woman with the cutabout
petticoats, who was sure that if she was herself, her little dog would
know her,--but then he _didn't!_
I am awake and surely myself, yet my old dog is not near to recognize
me. This ring of rough, reddish hair, tied with a cigar ribbon and lying
atop the beads, was Bluff's best tail curl. Dear, happy, brave-hearted
Bluff with the human eyes; after an honourable life of fifteen years he
stole off to the happy hunting grounds of perpetual open season, quail
and rabbit, two years ago at beginning of winter, as quietly as he used
to slip out the back door and away to the fields on the first fall morning
that brings the hunting fever. For a long while not only I, but neither
father nor Evan could speak of him, it hurt so. Yet by a blessed
dispensation a good dog lives on in his race, and may be renewed (I
prefer that word to _replaced_) after a season, in a way in which our
best human friends may not be, so that we