The Inner Sisterhood | Page 7

appreciates me, too, and that is a great deal;
for most of the other men act so funny when they are left alone with me!
They nearly always have a solemn, almost scared look--but I really
don't know why! I must confess that I like stupid men; they may not
talk much, yet they seem real eager to listen! Then stupid men always
have such good manners, which, in society, counts for a great deal!
People who have good manners are so safe--they never do any thing
startling! I wish my manners were better--but they are not! After one of
Aunt Patsey's talks on good form, and strict propriety, I try to
improve--regenerate, if possible. I often watch Miss Lena Searlwood,
one of the older girls, who is a great favorite with Aunt Patsey--but it is
no use! She is a self-contained woman, never ill at ease, and who puts
you, and at once, at rights with yourself. She is a most beautiful and
discreet talker! She would rather die, burn at the stake, suffer on the
rack, than tell even the suspicion of a family secret! Aunt Patsey is
always talking her up to me, wishing that I would be only a little bit
like her anyhow. So the other night, at a party, I took special care to
notice the attractive Lena. She is so graceful; quiet grace, ma calls it.
She leaned against a heavy, carved chimney-piece, with dark-red plush
hangings, and she looked for all the world just like a tall, white flower,
slender, beautiful! She was slowly picking to pieces, leaf by leaf, a
pale-pink rose, which she had stolen away from somewhere about her
willowy, white throat. And while she was doing all this--and it took
quite a while, too--she looked full in the face of the man by her side,
that rather good-looking, stuck-up Calburt Young, and said
nothing--absolutely not a word! She did this long enough to make me
almost lose my breath. I could not do a thing like that; it would give me
nervous prostration sure! Yet, I know it is very effective! It was just
like some picture you read about, and it was beautiful, striking, down to
the smallest detail. But situations effective, and details pleasing, are not
in my line, and they are just as much a mystery as improper fractions
used to be when I was a schoolgirl. I hated my school! It was called a
"Young Ladies' Seminary." It was a fashionable, intellectual hot-house,
where premature, fleeting blooms were cultivated regardless of any
future consequence. But I was a barren bush! I never fashion-flowered

into a profusion of showy blossoms. Aunt Patsey said that I did not
reap the harvest of my golden opportunities; but pa, he growled and
grumbled a good deal when the bills came pouring in, but paid them,
and roundly swore that he was glad he had no more fool-daughters to
finish off in a fashionable seminary.
I have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and it gets me in trouble all the
time. I don't mean any harm; but I can't help telling a good thing when I
hear it or see it myself. Now that same Calburt Young can't bear me; he
hates me in good fashion because I made fun of his doleful air, and said
that he had the looks and the manners of a man who had, in a desperate
mood, shot down his sweetheart, concealed the fact, and was suffering
the pangs of deep remorse for the dreadful deed. He heard about it and
got angry! He does look awful gloomy! He says I am crude, very crude,
and put people on edge; and that I am so good-natured, so
good-humored all the time that it reduces less fortunate people into a
state of most desperate defiance--defiance against my everlasting flow
of animal spirits, unchecked by any thing. He told all that to Sophia
Gilder, and Sophia is my bosom-friend; so she told me! Aunt Patsey
has a great admiration for her mother, Mrs. John Robert Gilder, but
says that Sophia, poor girl, is a milk-sop--weak, weak! and taps her
shining forehead knowingly. Auntie has a most alarming way of
disposing of people! I know all about her methods--gracious goodness!
I ought by this time.
About two or three months after I was finished off at the Seminary,
Miss Lena Searlwood gave a little affair in my honor. She called it a
tea--it really was more like a dinner! They do entertain so well! I was
taken home afterward by that Calburt Young--a great privilege I
suppose! He was in a bad humor anyhow; had not seen enough of Miss
Lena! He let me do all of the talking, never once suggesting a new topic,
and