Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/141

 up and the mother shot out doors, ornamentin' the outside with shiffon and jewelry and knowin' nothin' of what is goin' on inside.

It is pitiful, and in ninety cases out of a hundred the mother is the one to blame. Why, good land! she is inside in the first on 't, and there is nothin' to hender her from keepin' inside but ignorance, carelessness, neglect, lack of sympathy, or lack of time. In Tamer's case it wuz mostly lack of time as I have shown. The elopin' females and Dejected Denizens of the Dungeon Keep kep' her too busy, them and her basiler menigitis and sinevetus and sangeletus and perinitus and etc., etc., etc., and her domestic duties, some on 'em which she wuz to blame for undertakin', and I told her so. She had a new hired girl whose real name wuz Hannah, but who thought it would be more romantick to call herself Arabeller, and she made a specialty of the "beller," she wanted it pronounced Arabeller, and Tamer Ann, thinkin' that it would be real romantick to have a hired girl by that name, she jined forces with her, and by the time I got there the name Hannah wuz forgot, seemin'ly, and Arabeller wuz the name.

Well, Arabeller wuz a girl I wouldn't have inside my house. She wuz big and fat, and I never see her face when it wuz what I called clean, and her dirty lookin' hair, kinder drab color, wuz all covered with hair oil and scented with bergamont. What her complexion would be if it wuz washed clean I didn't know, and spoze I never shall, but as it wuz it looked muddy and grimy, and wuz all covered with black heads and pimples, and coarse powder. She wore, in the afternoon, her cheap, gaudy dresses in a train draggin' round the house, and cheap, high-heeled shues, settin' table and washin'