When that came, Benny almost always gave me a jog with his elbow or foot. Once he stuck a pin into my arm, which made me jump so that Deacon Saunders, who sat behind, waked up with a loud snort. The deacon was always talking about the sermons being "powerful in doctrine." When Benny asked Betsy what doctrines were, she told him to "let doctrines alone;" that they were "pizen things, only fit for hardened old sinners."
There are many delightful articles which must be merely alluded to in passing, as the "Old Salem Shops," by Eleanor Putnam, so delicate and delicious that, once read, it will ever be a fragrant memory; Louise Stockton's "Woman in the Restaurant" I want to give you, and Mrs. Barrow's "Pennikitty People;" a chapter from Miss Baylor's "On This Side," and the opening chapters of Miss Phelps's "Old Maids' Paradise;" also the description of "Joppa," by Grace Denio Litchfield, in "Only an Incident." There are others from which it is not possible to make extracts. Miss Woolson's admirable "For the Major," though pathetic, almost tragic, in its underlying feeling, is, at the same time, a story of exquisite humor, from which, nevertheless, not a single sentence could be quoted that would be called "funny." Her work, and that of Frances Hodgson Burnett, as well as that of Miss Phelps and Mrs. Spofford, shine with a silver thread of humor, worked too intimately into the whole warp and woof to be extracted without injuring both the solid material and the tinsel. To appreciate the point and delicacy of their finest wit, you must read the whole story and grasp the entire character or situation.
Mrs. E.W. Bellamy, a Southern lady, published in last year's _Atlantic Monthly_ a sketch called "At Bent's Hotel," which ought to have a place in this volume; but my publisher says authoritatively that there must be a limit somewhere; so this gem must be included in--a second series!
There is so much truth as well as humor in the following article, that it must be included. It gives in prose the agonies which Saxe told so feelingly in verse:
I am impelled to write this as an awful warning to young men and women who are just entering upon life and its responsibilities. Years ago I thoughtlessly took a false step, which at the time seemed trivial and of little import, but which has since assumed colossal proportions that threaten to overshadow much of the innocent happiness of my otherwise placid existence. What wonder, then, that I try to avert this danger from young and inexperienced minds who in their gay thoughtlessness rush into the very jaws of the disaster, and before they are well aware find they are entrapped for life, as there is no escape for those who have thus brought their doom upon themselves.