Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/250

 22 2 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��''NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENTS

��BY LUCIA MOSES.

THINGS had gone wrong all day. The sun had not shone for more than a week, and life had become a burden. The children did not know, or seem to care to know, that rivers do not run up hill, or that three fourths of a unit is greater than a half of it. So it was not a matter of surprise to myself that I went home from my pedagogic labors rather — not to put too fine a point upon it — cross. This feeling would doubtless have culminated in a tragedy of utter disagreeableness, had not kind fate interposed in her custom- ary simple and quiet manner. How often does she save us from ourselves, and we suspect not .until we hear our friends sigh, " Thank Heaven."

As I went down the stairs tQ supper, I said savagely to Gratia : —

" Why are rational human beings obliged to eat three horrible • meals ' every day? Why could not some more elevated way of sustaining life have been invented? "

Poor Gratia answered soothingly, " Are n't you tired, dear? "

" No, I am not. But who ever heard of such weather in Christmas week, and no diversion but eating?" thus I replied with emphatic disgust.

Even the cheerful cosiness of the dining-room did not dispel my gloom. There is nothing so fascinating as an ill-humored mood ; the longer you are cross, the better you like it. So when Mary, the servant, asked me if I would have some tea, I snapped out, quite ferociously, " No, I will not. Don't you know I never take tea."

The poor creature beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, saying, " Well, then may I make some dry toast? "

This was a most effectual sop to Cerberus. I would take toast, that perni- cious panacea for all bodily, mental, and spiritual ills. The clouds were lifting a little from my perturbed spirit. Indeed, the very word, " toast," had in it something that savored of warmth and brightness, and my mood disappeared under its magic so quickly that when Mary came back, bringing the thin, crisp, golden-brown squares of toast on a deUcate China plate, " hand-decorated " with a bunch of buttercups and daisies, I was at peace again with myself, and even disposed to look upou supper as the crowning glory of man's inventive genius. But coals of fire were heaped more abundantly on my head when Mary came and more in a frightened, apologetic manner, and silently placed before me a dainty, cut-glass dish filled with raspberry jam. A merciful fate could do no more for a contumacious mortal, so I submitted graciously to being pacified, and acknowledged my gratitude by a mental vow to array fate, or her humble instrument, Mary, in the most gorgeous necktie money could buy.

Now practically and calmly looked upon, raspberry-jam would never inspire the muses to very lofty flight. To most people, jam only means a wearisome dickering on a melting day with a very " near " country-woman who finally comes off victorious with her " Twenty cents a quart, m'arm, and awful cheap at that." Another melting day in a kitchen, whose torments only Dante could have described. An anxious stirring of a " pound for pound " mixture in an enormous porcelain kettle ; the bottUng and the labeling, " Raspberry Jam, 1879;" the final consignment to the Plutean shades of the " jelly closet." The- prosaic observer sees nothing but these commonplace details ; but to one

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