Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1915 — Folk We Touch In Passing THE GAME OF PLAYING LADY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Folk We Touch In Passing

THE GAME OF PLAYING LADY

By Julia Chandler Manz

“Let’s play Lady,” suggested Little Girl to her Friend-From-Acros-the-Way who had come over to spend the morning with her.

“You can have the side porch for your house, and I’ll have the front porch. I’ll be my mother and you be yours, and we’ll dress up,” she went on to plan, while her Friend-From-Across-the-Way nodded her approval. Now the father of Little Girl is a physician to human bodies with an aim to keep them in good health, while the mother or the eight-year-old bit of femininity stands much in the same capacity to the Little Girl’s mind, and heart, and body, all of which she is supposed to keep healthy and clean. As to this we shall see. As everybody knows she is an always willing enough mother when it comes to promoting Little Girl’s pleasure, so that the child had'no difficulty in securing the necessary grown-up clothes that she and her Friend-From-Across-the-Way might impersonate their mothers. When they were all rigged out the game began. Little Girl took possession of the front porch and her Friend-From-Across-the-Way the one at the side of the doctor’s spacious house. "Now,” called Little Girl, when she lad set the tea table on the front porch, “it’s time for you to come over." So, her Friend-From-Across-the-Way gathered up her trailing skirts, mimicked the walk of her mother, and came for a visit to the small impersonator of Little Girl’s mother, who offered her visitor tea and crackers with all the grace of the Doctor’s Wife. And while they sipped the fragrant beverage prepared for them by Little Girl’s mother they drew tbeir chairs close in order that they might carry their imitation of the keepers of their young lives out in smallest detail. “I saw from the paper that Wilson didn’t behave half as cowardly as everybody thought he would when he went to the chair for killing his sweetheart,” remarked the little hostess with all the seriousness with which

she had heard her mother talk the murder &nd its resultant trial and conviction over with the mother of her Friend-From-Acrcss-the-Way, and the Doctor's Wife, who was busy about the living room, stopped to listen. “I was disappointed that he confessed,” said the Friend-From-Across-the-Way. “It wasn’t half as exciting as the New York gunmen,” she sighed regretfully, and Little Girl took up the cue and went through the notorious trial with surprising understanding. From the discussion of murders and executions the mimics drifted into gossip of the neighborhood. “You know the Bains fight like cats and dogs. He’s a perfect brute. She left him once, and everybody said she was a fool to come back to him. I know I would not live with a man who was not good to me,” announced Little Girl, who was so deep in pursuing the sort of conversation in which her mother indulged that she

did not see the Doctor’s Wife standing beside the window, stricken dumb by the game of "Playing Lady.” Nor did the mother interrupt until the sordid conversation came to an end with an exclamation from the Friend-From-Across-the-Way, who suddenly announced to Little Girl that she didn’t believe she liked “Playing Lady” after all, whereupon they adjourned to Little Girl’s Room to rid themselves of their cumbersome trappings and engage in the little girl’s game of playing dolls. The Doctor’s Wife sat quite still in the chair by the living-room window. It seemed to her that she never would move from tile spot again. And as she sat there the September sunlight filtered through the trees and enveloped her, bringing thoughts of all the wonderful, beautiful things there are in life. She thought of the woods, the flowers there; specially the goldenrod that was even now waving its yellow spirals in the sunlight on the hill; of the little green leaves and the brook that winds its way at the foot of the great oak where she played in the long ago yesteryear when she was a child. She, too, had played Lady and mimicked her own dear mother, with her sweet and gentle manner and her charitable tongue that knew how to be still when gossip was in the air, and never was known to recount the gruesome details of hideous murders, in the presence of her child. “Little children are mirrors reflecting the words and thoughts and actions of their mothers,” the Doctor’s Wife had once heard her own mother say in reproving a friend for gossiping in the presence of a child. “Think and talk of noble things in the presence of the young, and such things will become a part of their character-building,” again she had heard Little Girl’s grandmother once tell the man who accompanied her through life, and as memory thus unrolled the years, the Doctor’s Wife saw herself in Little Girl’s game of Playing Lady, and was seized with' a sudden nausea. “Oh, I am ashamed!” she murmured, as she went to find Little Girl. Because gossip and the discussion of crime had not yet become a part

of the woman’s character, but were as yet a habit only; and because God somehow gives it to mothers ti> know just what to do, the Doctor’s Wife gathered Little Girl into her arms and began very gently the undoing of the harmful influence of ignoble converse tions. Her reproof of Little Girl lay on in her own confession to the child o. a habit which she promised should b broken then and there and forever. And she kept her word.

From the Discussion of Murders and Executions, the Mimics Drifted to Gossip of the Neighborhood.