A Crushed Esthete
A few months ago the daugkter of an East Lockport man, who had grown eomfortably well-off in tlie sinall grocery line, was sent away to a "femal e college," and recently she arrived home for the holiday vacation. The old man was in attendance at the depot when the train arrived, with the old norse in the delivery wagon to convey his daughter and her trunk to the house. When the train stopped, a bewitcuing array of dryjgoods and a widebrimmed nat dashed froni the ear and flung itself into the elderly party's arms. "Why, you superlativo pa!' she exclaimed, "I'm ever so utterly glad to aee you " ïhe old man was soinewkat uunerved by the greeting, but he recognized the sealskin cloak in his grip as the identical piece of property he had paid for with the bay mare, and he uort of squat it up in his arma and plauted a kiss where it would do the most good with a report that sounded above the noisea ol the depot. In a blief space of time the trunk and the attendant baggage were loaded into the wagon, whioh was woon bumping over the hubbles toward liome. tUlXE KXOESSIVELY BKY0N1). "Pa, dear," said the young miss, surveying the team with a critieal eye, "do you consider this quite excessively beyond ?" . "Hey V' retunied the old man, with a puzzled air, "quite excessively beyond what?" "Oh, no, pa; you don't understand me," the daughter explained. "1 mean this wagon and norse. Do you think they are soulf ui 'i- do you think they could be stuidod apart in the light of a symphony, or even a simple poem, and ajpear as intensely ufcter to one on íeturninR home as one could presa f The ohl man twisted untíisily in nis seat and multered something about lie believed it used to bo for an express before he bouglit it to deliver pork in, but the conversation appearecl to be traveling in such a lonesome direction that he pitched the horse a resounding crack on tlie rotunda and the severe jolting over the frozen ground prevented further remarks. "Oh,thereis that lovely and consunimate ma!" screamed tlie returned collegiatess, as they drew up at the door, aud presently she was lost in the embrace of a molherly woman in spectaeles. "Well, Maria," said the old man at the supper table, as lie nipped a piece of bntter off the lump wilh his own knife, "an' how'el yon Hke your school '(" "Well, there, pa, now you're sliou - I mean, I consider it far too beyond," replied the daughter. "It is unquenchably ineffable. The girls are so sumptuously stunning - Iuiean grand - so intense. And theu the parties, the balls, the rides - oh; the past weeks have been one sublime harmony. "I s'pose so- 1 s'pose so, nervously assented the old man, aa he reached for his third cup, "half full"- "but how about your books - readin', writin', grammar, rule o' three - how about them?" THE BULE OF THBEE. "Pa, don't!" exclaiiued the daughter, reproachf ully ; the rule of three ! grammar! It is French and music and painting and the,divine in artthat have made my school life the bos- I mean that have rendered it one unbroken flow of rhythmic bliss - incomparably an exquisitely all but." The grocery man and his wife looked helplessly at each other across the table. After a lonesome pause the old lady said: "How do you like the biscuits, Maria?" "They are too ulter for anything," gushed the accomplished young lady, "and this plum preserves is simply a poeua ia itself." The old m ui rose abruptly from the table md went out of the room rubbiug his head in adazed and benumbed manner, and the mass convention was dissolved. That night he and his wife sat alone by the stove uutil a late hour, and at the breakfast table the next morning he rapped smartly op the plate with the handle of his knife and remarked : "Maria, me an" your mother have been talkin' the thing over, and we've come to the conclusión that this boardin' school business is too utterly all but too much nonsense. Me and her consider that we haven't ed sixty odd consumtnate years for the purpose of raisin' a curiosity, an' i there's goin' to be a stop put to tbis unquenchable l'oolishness. Ñow, after you've finished eating that poem of fried sausage an' that symphony of twisted doughnut, you take an' dust up stairs in less 'an two second3 an' peel off that f ancy gown an' put on a kaliker. an" then come down here an' help your mother waah dishea. I want it distinctly undtrstood that there ain't goin' to be no more rythmic fooliahneas in this house, so long's your superlative pa an' your lovely an' consummate ma's runnin' the ranch. You hear me, Maria?"
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Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat