Gala-Days [67]
upper seat, grasped tho railing, and smiled on the angry remonstrants below,--smiled, but STUCK! "Let her go," said the driver in a savage, whispered growl,--not to me, but a little bird told me,--"let her go. Can't never do nothin' with women. They never know what's good for 'em. When she's well wet, then she'll want to be dried." True, O driver! and thrice that morning you stopped to change horses, and thrice with knightly grace you helped me down from the coach-top, gentle-handed and smooth of brow and tongue, as if no storm had ever lowered on that brow or muttered on that tongue, and thrice I went into the village inns and brooded over the hospitable stoves, and dried my dripping garments; and when once your voice rang through the hostelrie, while yet I was enveloped in clouds of steam, did not the good young woman seize her sizzling flat-iron from the stove, and iron me out on her big table, so that I went not only dry and comfortable, but smooth, uncreased, and respectable, forth into the outer world again?
PART VI.
Thus I rode, amphibious and happy, on the top of the coach, with only one person sharing the seat with me, and he fortunately a stranger, and therefore sweet tempered, and a very agreeable and intelligent man, talking sensibly when he talked at all, and talking at all only now and then. Very agreeable and polite; but presently he asked me in courteous phrase if he might smoke, and of course I said yes, and the fragrant white smoke-wreaths mingled with the valley vapors, and as I sat narcotized and rapt, looking, looking, looking into the lovely landscape, and looking it into me, twisting the jagged finger-ends of my gloves around the protruding ends of my fingers,--dreadfully jagged and forlorn the poor gloves looked with their long travel. I don't know how it is, but in all the novels that I ever read, the heroines always have delicate, spotless, exquisite gloves, which are continually lying about in the garden-paths, and which their lovers are constantly picking up and pressing to their hearts and lips, and treasuring in little golden boxes or something, and saying how like the soft glove, pure and sweet, is to the beloved owner; and it is all very pretty, but I cannot think how they manage it. I am sure I should be very sorry to have my lovers go about picking up my gloves. I don't have them a week before they change color; the thumb gapes at its base, the little finger rips away from the next one, and they all burst out at the ends; a stitch drops in the back and slides down to the wrist before you know it has started. You can mend, to be sure, but for every darn yawn twenty holes. I admire a dainty glove as much any one. I look with enthusiasm not unmingled with despair at these gloves of romance; but such things do not depend entirely upon taste, as male writers seem to think. A pair of gloves cost a dollar and a half, and when you have them, your lovers do not find them in the summer-house. Why not? Because they are lying snugly wrapped in oiled-silk in the upper bureau-drawer, only to be taken out on great occasions. You would as soon think of wearing Victoria's crown for a head-dress, as those gloves on a picnic. So it happens that the gloves your lovers find will be sure to be Lisle-thread, and dingy and battered at that; for how can you pluck flowers and pull vines and tear away mosses without getting them dingy and battered?--and the most fastidious lover in the world cannot expect you to buy a new pair every time. For me, I keep my gloves as long as the backs hold together, and go around for forty-five weeks of the fifty-two with my hands clenched into fists to cover omissions.
Let us not, however, dismiss the subject with this apologetic notice, for there is another side. There is a basis of attack, as well as defence. I not only apologize, but stand up for this much-abused article. Though worn gloves are indeed less beautiful than fresh ones, they have more character. Take one just from the shop, how lank and wan it is,--a perfect monotony of insipidity;
PART VI.
Thus I rode, amphibious and happy, on the top of the coach, with only one person sharing the seat with me, and he fortunately a stranger, and therefore sweet tempered, and a very agreeable and intelligent man, talking sensibly when he talked at all, and talking at all only now and then. Very agreeable and polite; but presently he asked me in courteous phrase if he might smoke, and of course I said yes, and the fragrant white smoke-wreaths mingled with the valley vapors, and as I sat narcotized and rapt, looking, looking, looking into the lovely landscape, and looking it into me, twisting the jagged finger-ends of my gloves around the protruding ends of my fingers,--dreadfully jagged and forlorn the poor gloves looked with their long travel. I don't know how it is, but in all the novels that I ever read, the heroines always have delicate, spotless, exquisite gloves, which are continually lying about in the garden-paths, and which their lovers are constantly picking up and pressing to their hearts and lips, and treasuring in little golden boxes or something, and saying how like the soft glove, pure and sweet, is to the beloved owner; and it is all very pretty, but I cannot think how they manage it. I am sure I should be very sorry to have my lovers go about picking up my gloves. I don't have them a week before they change color; the thumb gapes at its base, the little finger rips away from the next one, and they all burst out at the ends; a stitch drops in the back and slides down to the wrist before you know it has started. You can mend, to be sure, but for every darn yawn twenty holes. I admire a dainty glove as much any one. I look with enthusiasm not unmingled with despair at these gloves of romance; but such things do not depend entirely upon taste, as male writers seem to think. A pair of gloves cost a dollar and a half, and when you have them, your lovers do not find them in the summer-house. Why not? Because they are lying snugly wrapped in oiled-silk in the upper bureau-drawer, only to be taken out on great occasions. You would as soon think of wearing Victoria's crown for a head-dress, as those gloves on a picnic. So it happens that the gloves your lovers find will be sure to be Lisle-thread, and dingy and battered at that; for how can you pluck flowers and pull vines and tear away mosses without getting them dingy and battered?--and the most fastidious lover in the world cannot expect you to buy a new pair every time. For me, I keep my gloves as long as the backs hold together, and go around for forty-five weeks of the fifty-two with my hands clenched into fists to cover omissions.
Let us not, however, dismiss the subject with this apologetic notice, for there is another side. There is a basis of attack, as well as defence. I not only apologize, but stand up for this much-abused article. Though worn gloves are indeed less beautiful than fresh ones, they have more character. Take one just from the shop, how lank and wan it is,--a perfect monotony of insipidity;