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Title: The heart of an orphan
Author: Amanda Mathews
Illustrator: W.T. Benda
Release date: July 4, 2026 [eBook #79015]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Desmond FitzGerald, Inc., 1912
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79015
Credits: Carol Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF AN ORPHAN ***
[Illustration: “Dear Mother of my hart,----”
Frontispiece]
THE HEART OF AN
ORPHAN
BY
AMANDA MATHEWS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
W. T. BENDA
New York
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.
Copyright, 1912
By Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.
TO
MY GOOD ANGEL
ADA HENRY VAN PELT
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE HEART OF AN ORPHAN 9
THE TRANSLATION OF GIOVANNA 24
“LITTLE SISTER IN CAGE OF GOLD” 37
THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA 53
GIOVANNA’S ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 78
GIOVANNA’S FIRST REMEMBERS 105
GIOVANNA AS THE WRONG PRINCESS 123
GIOVANNA’S COMMENCEMENT 143
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Dear Mother of my hart,----” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“I ran for the letters and put them in your hand” 14
“You took me on your lap like I was a little orphun” 20
“I put on my sylum dress and pined on my hanky” 34
“Dolly’s grand idea was for the Eggsloosifs to give the
orphuns of the sylum a Christmas” 54
“O the teeny gold watch with G on it” 66
“I must hold my horny hand at my back for politeness” 110
“I pulled again and there was the real hand of a man” 156
THE HEART OF AN ORPHAN
_Dear Mother of my hart_,--
I hope you don’t mind my putting that name on you when I aint nothing
to you any more than some little cat you patted once. I don’t know
where you are at and you don’t know where I am at so it don’t matter
much what I call you.
We aint all hole orfuns in this sylum. Lots of us is halfs and the
halfs write to their whichever they got left every wensday. The holes
can write too if they got anybody and a stamp. I am a hole and I aint
got the stamp or anybody so I will take my pen in hand to let you
know I am well and hope you are the same.
This letter will surprise you only you won’t never get it so it can’t
surprise you much. I aint seen you for so long about 3 years I gess.
I was a little girl then do you remember me in the Busy Bee Sewing
Club at the coledge setelment? I sat at the end of the row and got
tangels on purpus so you would come and lift them out. You had a
smile on you like anything and I loved you. So did the other girls
but not like me. I always knew in my hart when it was the day to sew
in the Busy Bee Club.
O I would I had a picksure of you dear one and swete but why do I say
that because I have your picksure in my head. You were not old or
kidish or tall or sawdoff you were just right.
Do you remember that day you went to my house that was a better day
than any since. We laughed because you sat on the busted chair by
misssteak. Do you remember how my mama she coffd and coffd something
awfool. Well she died in 1 year and 3 weeks. There was Tony and
Isabella and me. Tony died in the ospittle poor Tony. My papa died.
It seemed like we had the habbit in our family. I said I wunder if me
or Isabella will die next time. I do not care much for to be an orfun
is a hard life for anybody but I did not die.
Me and Isabella come to live at this sylum but Isabella was pretty
and little so a kind lady took her for her own. I cried and cried
and said to the maytrun O keep her till I get big enufh to adop her
myself but she said no you are too yung. I beged for them to let me
see her not awfun but some times 2 or 3 in a yere but the kind lady
said no I want her to forget you and all her passed. I no not where
the kind lady has her or if she is dead by this time.
Nobody wants to adop me because I am long and black in my hair and
eyes. They do not like orfuns to be long and black. I know because I
heard them say when they never knew I did. Can I help that mama and
papa was daygoes? I guess not. But Isabella the kind lady said was a
little brunet buty so she took her for her own.
Dear Mother of my hart, I heard the maytrun tell the halfs it is not
polite to write about me and nun about you but what can I write of
you when you went away before my mother died and I know not where you
may be.
O dear mother what can I call you more than dear and swete? O dear
dear dear mother I love you for papa and mama and Tony poor Tony and
Isabella the kind lady took her for her own. When a family is only 2
like me and you mother we must love very much don’t you think? I will
close with 9,000,000,000 kisses and some more.
Your long black dawter,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my hart_,
You will be glad to hear your dear dawter is treeted first rayte in
this sylum. It is a Christian sylum, we have prayers every day and
py on satterday. The peaces are small but what does that matter? I
would not like to be a beggar on the street.
There are 95 orfuns counting holes and halfs. The maytrun is not mean
but O I want some person to love me. The maytrun can not do that no
wuman can love 95 orfuns how could she?
We have school but not satterday and sunday for the Lord said let us
take a rest so he hollered it. I like reading but not rithmetick,
what is the good of xampels about money and apples and orunges when
you have nun? I like to draw and sing. I usto hate goggerfry but now
no more for when I study of any place I say who knows but the mother
of my hart is there? When the teacher tells point E. and W. and N.
and S. I say which way do I point at my dear but I get no ans. My
teacher does not like me too much because my temper is bad so is my
writing. We must be as neat as we are able and never speak when at
the table.
Why I made some potry I never knew I could.
Mother of my hart I hate my close. I know that is very bad but how
would you like to look like 95 orfuns? so nobody could tell which one
you are. I am long and black like I said and blue is not my culler. I
feel my legs like any thing and my arms too but I think it is better
than rags. I am thank full I am not a beggar on the street. So I am
great full to the maytrun and the ladys of the board.
I sleep in a dormit I can not spell it with 20 orfuns no 19 it is
no fare to count myself. The girls wash the dishes and spred up the
beds and we have a bath in the tub 2 times a month and our neckeneres
washt ever week.
Sunday afternune is for visitors only nobody comes to visit me. It
aint that candy is not swete to me as to others but a loving word
would give me much more joy but that is not for me. I did not cry
last sunday like I awfun do because I thot of you mother dear dear
dear tho far away. I played you come in the door in your pink dress
the same you usto wear. A lady said onct but not to me she came to
stair at the Busy Bees when we sewed. She said you hadn awt to wear a
dress we could never hope to own but what is the matter with hopeing
any thing? It dont cost nuthing even an orfun can hope. You come in
like I said and when you see me you cried out why if here aint my
little Giovanna and you set down on the bench by me and I lened over
to you with my head and the maytrun says Giovanna have you gotta
crick in your neck and you don’t like her to say that so you go away.
[Illustration: “I ran for the letters and put them in your hand”
Page 20]
If you love me as I love you no nife can cut our love into. I didn
make that a girl told it to me.
We say our prayers at night kneeling by our beds every body at once
like a big song up to God. I prayed Lord bless my dear mother but the
girl next she is a half and she said shut up you hole you aint got
nun so I slapt her good for I got you darlling even if you dont know
it.
All the orfuns are putting up their pens and I must do the same.
Your loving long black dawter,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my hart_,
Since I rote last I had a hard time. I have been out in the cold
crule world. Give me a sylum every time. There was a wuman looking
over the orfuns and she wanted a big one and she found falt with me
for not being bigger now what do you think of that? She wanted some
body to help with the dishes and such she called it light work and
the maytrun said if she would send me to school and not work me hevy
she could have me.
I didn like her looks but I thot praps she would do for sorta plane
mother not the sunday mother of my hart so do not be jellus dear one
I love but you and that is true and our secret.
When I got to her house I never saw such a durty kitshen and she
made me clean it good and her mop was something fearce it smelt like
garbige. I gess she hadn washt her dishes most never. I washt and
washt and I washt and her dish rag it smelt the same.
She had a little boy and he walkt on the floor when it was wet and I
told him no and he kickt me and I slapt him good and his ma slapt me
gooder on the eres.
Finely she said I could go to bed and the sheets was durty and I
cried for back at the sylum but it was far on 2 street cars so I didn
know the way. I cried and I cried but I said whats the use she gotta
take me back if am bad enufh. I will be bad like--no I didn say it
out loud so it was no sware.
The next day I busted dishes like anything I sast her fearce and all
I dun was misssteaks and such. Her little boy was much a frade. She
said she would brake me but she coodn. She said much more I must not
write for it was sware and I can not spell it anyway. She slapt me
100 times on my head and eres but I would not cry. I bit her good and
she screamed. Finely she said you durty brat I take you back where I
got you and I was glad but I said nuthing for fere she wouldn.
The maytrun was not mad on me for she told the wuman I was not vishus
when treeted well. The wuman wanted to trade me for a better orfun
but the maytrun wouldn let her goody!
I seem more near to you mother of my hart now I am back at the sylum.
I lost your picksure outa my head when I was bad. I will be good for
you, darlling, so you can be proud of your dawter. If I have thinks
of you allways praps the thinks will fly to you like little birds. I
will pray God to put wings to them.
Goodby with fond regards, Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Swete mother of my hart_,
Was it a dream you was here today? You lookt a little older and your
dress was gray trimmed in pink. How funy I was that I could not
speak. I guess you said she is a quere one. I was like a dum orfun
they took her off to an other sylum. I was so full inside there
couldn nun of it get out so you thot I did not remember you as if
that could be.
I can not forget any word you said to me. You told you was happy
which makes me glad you bet. You said you had thots of me and ast and
ast till you come where I was. I bleve that was because I had them
thots of you and God gave them wings like I prayed. I am writing all
so you won’t think I am dum like I ack.
Now you are a goner and praps aint coming back for you didn say
nuthing but I ran for the letters safe and tite under my matres and
put them in your hand and you stuft them in your little bag made of
silver chanes and you kist me goodby that is no dream.
[Illustration: “You took me on your lap like I was a little
orphun” Page 21]
Maybe praps you will write me a letter O there wont be a orfun in the
wurld happy same as me! I won’t be eggspecting it and Ile play I aint
watching for the post man and when he comes and gives letters to the
maytrun and she speaks my name Ile play I aint sure she menes me and
Ile say did you call me maam and Ile run with the letter and hide
under my bed in the dormit I can not spell it and Ile read and read.
O you will write wont you dear dear darlling dear mother of my
hart or I guess I will die I want you to so bad.
Your big old long black dawter,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my hart_,
I got spots all over me from bunting in to the furnishure when Ime
trying to know is it true or not. I can’t never tell you how I felt
inside when you took me on your lap like I was a little orfun and my
legs hung down most to the floor and I am too hevy for you.
You said to think you had a dawter like me and you never knew it and
I was awful chokt and couldn find my hanky and you gave me yours and
you needed it too and had to swipe up your tears on the other corner.
I said I guess you will write me a leter and you said letter nuthing
I was your own preshus dawter and should go with you and I cried so
hard you ast me didn I want to go and I was scared for fere you would
leve me agen.
You said my letters was full of puns. I am sorry but I don’t see how
it could be for the maytrun is very care full and kepes dope to kill
them dead.
When ever I think of you down on my knees I flop and I think so awfun
it would be cheeper to just walk round on my knees but it would ware
out my stockings and the maytrun would be mad at me and I can’t bare
to make anybody mad when I am so happy.
O I will be good to you mother of my hart. When you are poor I work
for you. When you get sick I sit all night by your bed. I get crazzy
with the clock and I like nights best for I can sleep or eles ly on
my pillo and make picksures of you in my head.
O don’t be long gone dear angle mother of my hart and don’t let me
be ever away from you one day all my life any more.
Your own dawter,
Giovanna.
THE TRANSLATION OF GIOVANNA
_Preshus angle Mother_--
yes I will be payshunt not to come live by you. I awto be satisfide
when you are somewhere loving me and I am somewhere loving you but I
gotta sorry spot inside that you must be gone so far and long from me.
I usto hate my sylum close but now no more for its gotta pockit to
keep your darling letter in. All day I love it with my hand and all
night with my cheek. It makes a wisper in my pockit and I wisper back
to it. I must be alright with God for him to let you come to me but I
do not see how that can be for I am awfun nawty in my temper.
There is a hole orfun in this sylum with big moufh and little sents
and stufs all in it like a baby. She grabt your letter and I grabt it
back. I most slapt her but it ain’t 2 weeks since I was an orfun my
own self and she gotta be it all her life for a big moufh and little
sents is wurse to adop than long and black like me and I didnt slap
her.
My burthday usto be lost but now I gotta new one and its the day you
took me for a dawter forever and ever Amen. But does that make me now
a baby squawling on my cot? No it is the day when happyness sprowted
in my sowl which the preecher says we all got one to be lost if we
are wicket.
A new big orfun sleeps in our dormitory the maytrun spelt it. She
wears a pompydoor on a mouse she made outa the maps in her joggerfry.
She keeps a flurt book and a whiches dream book under her pillo and
learns the girls of nights to dream and flurt but they cannot flurt
much for their hankys are pined to their close and gloves fans and
parysawls orfuns has nun. I put the sheet in my ears not to lissen
because I know you wouldnt like me to. I could write how I love you
on all the paper in the wurld and not have enufh.
your feckshunate dawter
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angle darling Mother_--
I leve the sylum tomorrow for the boarding school like you want me
to. I am yours to put where you pleaze.
I will tell you all that past today. I had a bath tho it was only the
middel of the week. We allways walk 2 and 2 and we reech all down the
block but this morning it was me with the maytrun and no more. I was
much afrade the orfuns would brake themselves outa the windos where
they lookt and wigled their hands to me.
P. S. They didnt.
We went to a big big big store and I lookt in a glass where I seen
myself all of one peace for the furst time. I guessed I was humly but
not like that. I scrooocht down for my dress to fall more on my legs
but it wouldnt.
A lady made a shampoo on my head and a manycure on my nails. I felt
cheep to let her do for me like I was a baby and I thankt her all
I could and I felt awful nice and funny when it was finisht. The
maytrun smiled and smiled like I never knew she could and she put
dear on me as nobody does on orfuns.
O the close and close she bawt for me with your preshus money! White
pettys like angles must wear and button shoes with tassels. O my toes
wigle wigle how glad they are and I bleve I could go anywhere in 3
jumps. And a red silk dress that wispers wispers all the time like
your letter in my pocket. Mother of my hart dont think I love you
more for the close because I loved you the most I could all ready. I
got so much love for you in me there aint hardly room for my brefh.
I ast the maytrun to let me take my orfun close for a remember what I
usto wear before you took me.
The orfuns lookt and lookt and her of the big moufh and little sents
put her finger on my red dress and I let her. I am not glad for
going. Orfuns is not the wurst compny and this is where you was at 2
times with me. I will be awful good at the school so you will not be
mortyfide on me.
your obeedyent dawter
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angle Mother of my hart_--
this is the night of my furst day at the Eggsloosif School where you
got me put to learn manners and gramer.
I will write some good to prepair you for the wurst. The dining room
is butyfull the lights is in red flowers and the plates is deckrated
with roses and the glasses is made of diamons and there is pink babys
stuck to the ceeling. The Eggsloosifs wear rings and lockits and
bows. They laff laff fast and happy all the time. I lookt at them
very much and was glad you put me so high by your love.
Orfuns pass the food but talk not. Eggsloosifs talk but pass not. A
lady with teeny aprun must tote the food all round the table. The
Principle sits at the end. If anybody is bad she does not speke it
out for Eggsloosifs has tender sowls. She writes it on a peace of
paper and the lady with the teeny aprun gives it to the girl on the
quiet. She brung me one and I thot it must be lessons at dinner so I
read it out loud and it said for me to look how the other girls ust
their spoons and they all lafft and lafft at me to read it out. O it
was no fare! It was no fare! They was mean to laff wasnt they Mother?
I never knew it was on the quiet and I never knew my spoon must fall
backward in my soup. I didnt feel my red dress no more. I felt all
scrooocht down like I had on my orfun close. I was full of cry but I
wouldnt let it out.
Then the lady clered off the table and set it agen with us looking
and not helping nun. That seemed mean. I thot she did so for brekfas
but no it was to ete some more. I couldnt so I wisht the orfuns had
my shair. I tried so as not to be quere but my swallo wouldnt ack.
I never seen when the lady come to me with gravey and I hit it with
my elbow and it spilt on a girls dress and I pollygized the best I
could but she was mad and she said the ideah of you being goose enufh
to adop me and think you could make a lady outa me. I said I aint
nuthing but she is and you let her be. I slapt that girl good on the
cheek. When you slap poorness she will slap back but richness has
histerick awful for her mother never gave her no spanks so this was
her furst blow.
The Principle called me ungreatful protee jay to you or I wouldnt a
dun what I dun. I ans. no mam I am a greatful jay to her no matter
how I ack and she sorta chokt and sent me upstairs to think it over
with my conshents and my conshents will ever say the same it was my
falt to hit the gravey but the slap was not on me it was on her to
put that name to you. When this letter flys where you are at there
will fly the letter of the Principle to tell how bad I was all ready.
I don’t care! I don’t care! O its fearce how I dont care and I got
tear spots all over my red dress.
I guess its no use mother of my hart. I am not worth you should have
such pains on me and thats the true. The ways of poorness is not the
ways of richness the ways of badness is not the ways of goodness. I
aint no more fittn to be your dawter than the orfun of the big moufh
and little sents. But O write to me that you do not hate me in your
hart. Write that I am not all misssteak to you. Write how you kinda
like me a little nawty and unfittn tho I be.
your awful sorry
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Preshus goner angle Mother_--
it is now the night of my furst week at this school and you aint sent
no ans. to my letter.
The Eggsloosifs say I am low to slap a girl so they got tayboo on
me. They never speak to a tayboo cept they have to before a teacher
and if anybody was good to that one they would put tayboo on her the
same. They made a line with chak round my desk that nobody must cross
to come by me. Then they talk how low I am like I had no ears. The
class pote says I am a weed in the middel of the flowers. I never cry
because I wouldnt do them that much good. I just hate them with my
eyes. What’s the good of a Jim suit when the music dont say nothing
to your toes? I am so sorry all days that no lesson can stick to my
mind.
But tayboos and such is not my big wo. I know in my hart you are
sorry you took me for a dawter. I see now the kind you want like
these Eggsloosifs but I got no good start to be that class. I was
not made to be a parlor dawter to you Mother of my hart but let me
be a kitshen dawter. No dishes would be greesy if I wash for you. No
floors would be big and durty if I scrub for you! O dear dear mother
dont throw me away for no good but keep me for a kitshen dawter.
your back door
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Dear lady what usto be my Mother_--
today I was in the class of gramer and the teacher said Giovanna what
is chair and I ans. chair is a noun on which to set and the girls
lafft and I had much mad and shame. I heard out on the street some
one to cry potaytoes potaytoes.
[Illustration: “I put on my sylum dress and pined on my hanky”
Page 35]
It was the voice of Luigi a daygo he peddels by the sylum and he
usto be frends with my father. I run out of that school awful quick.
Luigi did not know me in my Eggsloosif dress and he ast do you want
some potaytoes Miss? Then he knew me and I clum upon the wagon and I
said go fast I wanto lope with you back to the sylum for I hate this
school and all contaned. He whipt the horse round the corner and then
more slow for it skun the potaytoes and I told him all and no lies.
He ans. lopes was no fare to you so he stopt the wagon and down I
clum and a teacher of the school come running and she held me by the
hand like I would lope some more but I wouldnt. The girls lafft
very much and teezed me till I felt sick with shame and mad. The
class pote made a song.
see how low daygoes
run for potaytoes.
I hate that class pote I do indede. I hate all the fokes I got and I
lost all the fokes I love. I will go now and put on my sylum close so
as to be ready for back when the Principle will say you want me to.
That dress would be alright with me if it only had an angle letter
from you to wisper in the pockit but now no more so my good days are
all dun. I guess God knew I was not good enufh to be your dawter for
that he let me to spill the gravey and slap the Eggsloosif so your
love to me all friz up in your hart.
her which usto be your dawter
Giovanna.
P. S. I put on my sylum dress and pined on my hanky like I usto and I
come where the girls was and they lookt and lookt and I said I wear
the kind of close like what I am. I hate you all give me tin spoons
and no tayboo. The girls lookt and lookt some more and lafft not.
Then they was took with much shame on themselves and they pollygized
for what they dun to me. They said I was darling and we cried some
and lafft some and huged and kist very much and all said they ast me
furst to borro my sylum dress for to ware in a play and we huged more
and now I love Eggsloosifs same as orfuns.
O but the best was to get your dear dear dear letter. O to think it
was just a storm mussed up the railroad and you love me ever and
allways the same!
Xcuse the funny spots my tears made them when I thot the chane
between us 2 was busted. Now we can play they are laffs I am so glad!
G.
“LITTLE SISTER IN CAGE OF GOLD”
_Mother Mother Mother_,--
When I make the start with that precous word I do not know to stop. O
I love how you make G on envelops. I allways kiss that G I do indeed.
My new beautiful duster razen tailer soot came in a box today. If God
had not dyed me so Daygo brown at first, Mother, I could look just
like the Eggsloosifs of this school in that duster razen tailer soot.
I cannot help my color but I would be no more Daygo inside because
you are not. This is not mean to my dear parents for they are all
dead and Tony got T. B. in his joynts and died in the ospittle poor
Tony. Isabella was a little brunet beauty and a kind lady took her
for her own and I know not if she is dead also but I think yes for
that is like our famly.
I have a sorry spot in me for what past today. Luigi--you know the
man of fruits and potaytoes who was friend to my father--came to see
me but he never because the maid called the same teacher that ran
behind me the day I loped with Luigi back to the sylum because the
girls put tayboo on me. That teacher has bad ideahs of Luigi that are
no fair because Luigi didnt stand for lopes atall but she wouldnt let
him make more talk in the door but shut it tight.
The class poet name Dolly was sent to the office for wispering which
is by the door so she heard all. She is a real poet because she cant
help it no more than a fitty orfun we had once at the sylum she ran
the maytrun most crazy. Dolly had to write the poetry on Venusses
back or she said it woulda been lost to the world and what a pity.
Venus is a little white saint in the office. Dolly has a nawty
way not respeckfull of her betters but she says when she acts like
badness it is only jeenyus in the fire. Here is the poetry. I dont
like it for not respeckfull of Luigi.
The Daygo shook his earings gold
And begged he might the child behold
The Teacher froze him with her glasses
Sir you keep me from my classes
Avaunt thou son of garlick do!
Giovanna flys too high for you!
P. S. Dolly says such was not the words of that teacher but you
cannot write the true in poetry or it will not stand right on its
ends.
O I have a fraid Luigi will believe I am grown hawty and how could I
when I would be a whole orfun in the sylum this minute just the same
like I was if you hadnt took me out by your love.
Your ownest ownest
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Dear Mother Mother Dear_,--
I guess it was God who got me sent to the office not for badness but
3 pencils. The Principle said listen Giovanna all days that old fruit
peddler friend of yours makes one same song up to this school when
he goes by on his waggon. I listened and shook and shook for it was
Luigi and he made no song but only to play sing in Daygo talk “I know
where is one little bird name Isabella in cage of gold.” He did that
way to tell me because he got such scare on that teacher he hadnt
dare to ring the bell. I beg the Principle please xcuse all shakes
because Isabella usto be my sister and she was a little brunet beauty
and a kind lady took her for her own.
The Principle sent the maid quick to run behind Luigi which she done
and he had a fraid to whoa but he did and sat on the big black chair
in the office and the Principle was not hawty but treated him grand
like he was a payrent of this school.
Luigi tell of sell the orange and the apple in one street of rich. He
tell one house most big and wide and high and wonderfull. He tell the
curtains like vail of Virgin in church of Italy where his madre do
kiss that vail in its corner. He tell one little miss come put back
curtins with her hands to look--little miss dressed in pink silk all
ruffledy like biggest doll in Christmas window. Little miss got long
black curls and face of Isabella. No he not make catch the mistake
for didnt he see her since bambina to play with his own bambinas?
Was he old to have eyes of blind beggar? No it was Isabella--he say
Isabella till he die and no mistake. Then Luigi went away.
The Principle said Giovanna Saterday a teacher will take you to see
your sister. I answer that cannot be for the kind lady wished her to
forget me and all her past. She will never let me in. The Principle
said real hawty but not at me “you got a Bennyfactor now good as her
and a teacher of this school will company you. That is enough.”
So I went back upstairs and the teacher said where are the pencils? I
answer please what pencils? The teacher saw my looks and she thought
I was sick but I wasnt. It was just my thinks of Isabella jumping
round in me. Soon we were dissmist and I ran quick here to my room to
tell you all.
Today is Wensday and I got to live Thursday and Friday before I can
get to Saterday. For it is a rule of this school not to make visits
in the middle of weeks.
O but 3 days is not so long as perhaps never and to think my darling
sister is not dead in her grave like I expected. When God made the
start to be good to me He dont forget a thing.
Your adoring Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angel Mother of my life_,--
It is my joy that to-morrow is Saterday when a teacher will take me
to visit Isabella. Can my little sister forget me in one year? Can
she forget how I held her on our doorstep at the tenement and how I
made curls on her and washed her dress and licked any kid that would
teeze her and ate myself the most spoiled sides of apples which Papa
gave us that could not sell? He was a man of fruits like Luigi but
more stile for he had a stand and no waggon. Can she forget how she
slept with me and the bannannas and I all times put more blankit to
her and not to me? But if she has gone and forgot all I will not have
mean feels at her because she was little.
But O Mother the Eggsloosifs all say that kind lady was crule and
selfish to separate 2 sisters like she done and its the true. She was
jellus that Isabella would love anybody else but her. Now perhaps my
baby sister has gone and lost her love for me out of her heart and
all by the fault of that kind lady. The priest says on Sunday that
hate is wicket but I cant help to hate hate hate her hard and fierce.
If she has woe I care not for look at the woe she made to me. I didnt
ask her to adopt me the long brown old thing nobody could want but
you and I dont know how you did but I begged her only to let me see
Isabella 2 or 3 × in a year because God put her to me for a sister
but she wouldnt. I have no sure she will let me in for I know her
hawty and jellus as she is but she cannot help I should walk by her
house and look for Isabella at the window. But I hope in no window to
see that kind lady for the hate I got on her.
Now I will shut her out of my head and only keep in my thoughts of
Isabella.
It is bedtime but my eyes dont want to sleep for my thinks of
Isabella and they do too so I can get quicker to Saterday. When I
say my prayers and my goodnight to you by my bed I will say also
goodnight my baby sister in cage of gold. I love down to Isabella
Mother like I love up to you. I pray God will not let her feckshun
for me get lost out of her.
Your O so happy Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Only Mother of my Soul_,--
We found the place me and the teacher. It was a palace that house but
O mother by the front door was big bow of black. I know what means
black bows for we had them all times in our famly not so big but 25
dolars is no cheap funrals and must make stile for the naybors and
the man takes the bow the minute the cawfin is gone out of the door
but for funrals of 15 dolars he wont lend his bow to nobody.
I shook and shook and say I might a known Isabella would be dead for
my family is like that but the teacher answer it would not be so
black and big for a child. I said no she was little and curly and I
felt some better but queer for it is sorry anybody must die. The
teacher rang the door bell and the maid came and her eyes were pink
with weeps. She told that the lady didnt want to see nobody because
she was dead. The teacher asked could we speak to the child Isabella
and the maid said no she was asleep after much crys but she let us in
a room by the door with gold chairs and talked like wispering.
She told how Isabella was to that lady her apple in the eye and never
did she want the child one minute not by her side and Isabella was
all times fechshunate with her and sweet in her temper. The lady
bought her clothes always to put her beauty in other dress like a
doll. The little girl sing like bright angel up in the sky and the
lady have every day expensif teacher of voice to come. Upstairs was
big room of prettys just for her to play and the lady usto take her
to stores and when Isabella point her finger to anything it got
bought awful quick.
O Mother the shame I felt in me to think of my wicket hate and her so
good to put Isabella like a princess in the green book you gave me.
The maid spoke more to wisper as she tell how the lady went dead in
the night when Isabella didnt know and in the morning she which her
name is Vicktoria led the child to look fairwell and Isabella cry
and cry with grief and kiss her Bennyfactor and beg her to wake up
and speak but the lady couldnt for she was dead. Then Vicktoria took
Isabella away and she cry very much but now she sleep her nap and
forget her woe.
The teacher said “letersleep.” She said also “This girl is her sister
name Giovanna.” The maid looked surprised like she seen a booger
man in the dark. She tell how she got some words the lady gave her
for me before she died. “Vicktoria find that girl of hungry eyes
sister to my Isabella and beg her forgive a selfish woman who was so
lonesome she wanted some person to love her most and not love worse a
sister or anybody.”
I chokt and chokt and reached for my hanky. I said “O tell her for
me--” but what was the good to say anything with the black bow on the
door and her deadngone? The teacher said better for us to go now and
we so went.
Mother I wish you could hold me on your lap tonight like I was
little as Isabella. I got such shame on my hate of my sister’s good
Bennyfactor seems as if it will burn me up. O if I could just beg her
please excuse my nawty hate all gone! Look Mother how I hated these
darling Eggsloosifs at first. But this is worse for the Eggsloosifs
are not deadngone.
Now Isabella is back to orfun and I spose they will send her again
to the sylum. She must have forgot all her orfun ways like ugly
dress and no cake and nobody to call dear on you. It will be better
than for her little hands to reach for breakfast in cans of garbige
but she will not have those thinks of comfort. She will have thinks
instead of the princess she was in the house of her Bennyfactor. I
have a fraid she will die of grief and differents. Mother I know in
my conshents what I ought. It is to go and be her in the sylum so she
can come here and be me. That is my duty. I am a mean selfish pig
sister if I dont and her so little and tender and no more ust. I can
stand to give her my shiny bed of brass and my deserts and my duster
razen tailer soot. I can stand to give her the Eggsloosifs dear
though they be to me and Dolly my precious chum and the teachers and
the Principle. But when I think to give you to Isabella, Mother of
my heart, O how can I do that? All of me just holds tight to you and
dont want to let go never!
Please write very quick and say your good thinks what I must do and
perhaps by that time I wont mind quite so awful.
I know God dont want no prayer tonight out of any person wicket like
me to hate that Bennyfactor lady so I will make none.
Giovanna of the bad heart.
* * * * *
_Wonderfullest Mother in the big world_,--
Today I was doing my practice and to think how that piano is full of
scales and will the postman bring your darling letter and when can I
see Isabella. The maid came and said company in the recepshun room
and I told her Mary you mean another girl because companys I never do
have in my long life but she said Miss Giovanna it is 2 company to
ask for you. So I went.
O the feelings that did jump in me when I see it was Isabella with
Vicktoria! My sister is longer in the legs and curls. Her dress black
for sadness but plenty of stile and no hanky pinned on. Vicktoria
was dressed in sadness also. That is a way of richness. Poorness is
just as sorry to lose a piece of the famly but must cry in same dress
red or pink except to borrow of naybors black vails and skirts not to
shame the dead one at its funral.
I looked and looked and Isabella looked and looked. Vicktoria said
Miss Isabella kiss your sister and she did very polite and we looked
more and more. A teacher came and said the children need lonesome for
break the eyes. Giovanna take her to your room which I done.
We never did break our eyes like that teacher said but we made the
start and Isabella let me hug her like crazy and she was glad and
loved me the same like she usto. I showed her your picture and told
her of your goodness and she said that was just like her Mama and
her pretty face all fussed up to weep but I kissed her and talked
her back past the sylum to the doorstep of the tenement and she
remembered how a mean kid squoze his orange in her eye on purpose and
how I whailed that kid and she laughed. She did not want to go so
soon with Vicktoria but Vicktoria said it was time.
I never knew how anybody could make wills for people to mind when
that person is deadngone. That Bennyfactor lady make a will about
Isabella to go to a school in other city where the Principle of that
school usto be girls with her and that Isabella have lessons to sing
and bynby sail to Italy for the best. So Isabella will be some lost
to me again but not bad for now we can have stamps.
And O Mother Mother, I have no duty to give you to Isabella and go
back to the sylum! I got a glad in me big as a house for that! I have
no duty not to be the same
Long brown Giovanna of your heart.
THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA
_Mother of my thankful heart_,--
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and the Principal said in chapel for us to
count our bennyfits up to God. That was easy like anything because
when he gave you to me seems like he said “Giovanna, here is all your
bennyfits in one package.”
Our school turkey was big as a little ash barrel and the dinner so
many courses it was like a week of meals tied together.
I fell awake in the middle of Thankful Night and first believed me to
be back in the sylum for the many girls in white nightys. But when I
saw those nightys all embroidery and my shiny bed of brass and one
girl to toast marshmallows on the steam heat I knew the difference
and was glad. Dolly my poet chum now rooms with me by both our wish.
Dolly stood on her bed making her arms act like the priest’s and
whispered a speech most out loud to say she had been taken with an
idea in her sleep very grand even noble.
[Illustration: “Dolly’s grand idea was for the Eggsloosifs to
give the orphuns a Christmas” Page 54]
The Eggsloosifs laughed much and whispered “Here! here!” and sat
on our beds and floors to listen and passed chockylet creams. Only
one was sleepy and said pickle that idea but the rest put shame and
pillows on her. I asked “Dolly, is it a new poem?” and she answered
“no but better for a poem is just litteryture and this idea is all
true izem.” I asked “What’s izem Dolly?” but she never explained.
She made more speech but low for teachers wake easy. She said there
is us pampered darlings of our doting parents and there’s orfuns who
are Miss Fortune’s wafes and poor things. Her grand idea was for the
Eggsloosifs to give the orfuns of the sylum a Christmas like they
never dreamed could be in this world. The girls jumped themselves
up and danced in their bear feet for glad of my chum’s noble idea and
I never loved Eggsloosifs quite so hard as that minute.
Dolly put me in her speech to name me cyclopede of orfun lore who
must understand their habits and for me to all times speak up.
One girl said the orfuns could use her tree the next day after
the day after Christmas. I said did they truly want the cyclopede
of orfun lore to speak up? They answered “Yes, lay on mack duff.”
I shook some in my bed but lay on like they said and explained
how orfuns must be ever grateful for trees but all years to have
Christmas not on the hollyday but after other persons have finished
tastes like cold potatoes to their souls.
The girls said this must be no cold potato Christmas. They decided to
beg their parents to sellybrate their presents at home Christmas Eve
and to let them eat early Christmas Day so as to fetch the orfuns to
the school before dark and all so promised except one girl that lives
far off in the geography.
Another girl said “Lets give the orfuns turkey dinner before the
tree,” but some complained so many relayshuns wait for presents they
could not put that much allowance onto orfuns.
But an Eggsloosif named Bessie made to answer “Lets ask the Principal
if we have no deserts on our dinners from now to Christmas perhaps
she will give us turkey dinner for the orfuns.”
The girl of sleepy replied “That is easy now to say when we have
just finished mints pie and plum pudding and cake and ice cream and
raisins and nuts all in one Thankful dinner but a month of no deserts
would be terrible and must reduce us all to skinnybone.” The other
Eggsloosifs made laughs on her and more pillows and said no deserts
was allright with them for orfuns’ sake.
Dolly poeted when she never knew she was going to.
“Dear cyclopede of orfun lore,
O wont you please to tell us more?”
So I told how the presents of orfuns are most times the same for all.
You look at your present and then 3 or 4 dozen orfuns hold the same
in their hands and if you let go of it you can tell no more if it is
really that one except yours was not broken and the one you now got
is so.
The Eggsloosifs had serious looks on them and said all gifts must be
different. They sang to me Dolly’s poetry.
“Dear cyclopede of orfun lore,
O wont you please to tell us more?”
So I told that if not the same then orfun presents must be already
busted prettys of richness. In my sylum Christmas one time I got a
doll like I prayed by my bed very beautiful except she missed one
foot and one hand and one eye and a crack in her cheek. I tried to
think onto her all that was missed but I never could so I played
instead how she had been whaled by a cruel father but was now a whole
and adopt by me to love better for her misseds and whales.
Dolly hugged me and all promised no gifts must be busted and sang
Dolly’s poetry at me again to speak up more.
I answered “This next is too much for orfuns but O the ache I usto
have in me for a present tied in tisshoe paper with a red ribbon! I
ached and ached and ached for that like a pain to take medicine with
a spoon for cure.”
All exclaimed tisshoe paper with red ribbon must be wrapped round the
gifts like for relayshuns or anybody.
I said I must wear my orfuns clothes for them not to see me that usto
be orfun now in dress of richness. Dolly made her arms act like 6
priests for telling all to wear orfun dress same as me and look like
wholes. The Eggsloosifs cried “O lets! lets! lets!” and the girl who
lives far in the geography said she would write her family to let her
stay and have cold potato Christmas at home after all had finished so
she could wear a sylum dress.
But I said that is no fair because orfuns want to stare at pretty
clothes and not come here to see like their own selves in the
lookinglass.
Dolly was taken with another idea so big it made her most crazy--that
was to put the pretty clothes on the orfuns’ backs to keep. She asked
me how many orfuns and I answered I believed the orfuns to be about
the same thickness of Eggsloosifs and she declared one girl must
dress one orfun perhaps not new but good and pretty.
All got excited and forgot teachers and the Principal opened the door
in a keemono. Dolly disappeared under the blanket but her head was
wrong way round to her feet on the pillow.
The Principal went to look haughty but her eyes laughed and the girls
begged her in which she came and they told her all. She said we might
make Christmas for orfuns and econymze by no deserts for orfun turkey
but now to bed and not catch our deathycolds which all so done very
happy.
It is my turn to practice scales on the piano so I will say goodbye,
darling bennyfit Mother of me.
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angel Christmas present Mother_,--
We have so much orfun business in this school we almost cannot do our
practice and lessons. The girls all secured easy the dresses but now
have much trouble to find the right orfun which fits in the dress.
All Saturdays go committys of Eggsloosifs to the sylum for measuring
orfuns but just with their guess not to spoil the surprise.
Dolly begged her dress off an Aunt with a little girl cousin. It is
navy blue silk deckrated with ruffles so her orfun must be 7 like the
dress. She picked out a whole named Lizzie to fit it fine so that is
not her grief and woe but it comes of asking Lizzie what she wants
for presents and Lizzie begged “O please a Mama and a Papa.” Dolly
has that kind of heart to promise first and then wonder if she can
so now she’s got to anyway and it puts her most crazy. If Lizzie
could just be the pretty kind but her compleckshun is pale trimmed
with freckles and her teeth are some gone and not grown in yet. Her
hair is red pigtales. Her nose skwints up a little but not enough to
notice much and she has a good blue eye and a feckshunate dishpishin.
Dolly names her hair tisshen but the Eggsloosifs laugh and say no,
plain carrots. They all times advise Dolly to raffel her off at
the tree with tickets but my noble chum will ever answer “Heethen
creatures! raffel off your own orfuns if you want to but my Lizzie
never do I raffel! I will find her sootybell parents or adopt her
myself.”
It’s a tight secret only Dolly lets me tell just you she’s got the
parents of Lizzie all picked but they don’t know it yet and Dolly has
awful scares to imagine how they will act when the news gets broke
on them. It is an Aunt and Uncle not the one she begged the dress
off of but another named Winnyfred and John with no child and rich
like anything. Dolly makes little tacks on their hearts like to say
“What is home without an orfun?” But her Uncle will ever answer “When
orfun comes in at the door piece flies out of the window” which is a
mistake for Lizzie is not the kind to break the window like Dolly’s
Uncle thinks.
This does not discourage my poet chum. She has a skeem to fix all
Christmas night at the tree. The Eggsloosifs will invite their
relayshuns and the halfs their whichever they got lefts and the
maytrun will company the wholes. Dolly says anybody must give thanks
for presents and never look like it is not the best thing they want
in the big world so she will give Lizzie to her Aunt and Uncle for
a present and them to Lizzie for a present and all live happy ever
after and three off her list. I tell Dolly a present can be no fair
like a lady in our tennyment O awful poor and a daygo organist made
a present to her little boy of a sick monkey that must all days eat
cream and bannannas. Dolly says the cases are different but she will
ask the Principal so I may be satisfied.
Mother I had to choose the orfun of big mouth and little sense
because nobody else could like her looks and ways but I know what
feels you have to be that kind no person wants. She is most my size
and will fit in my plain brown rainy dress or my red silk. The
Principal says in chapel “mind your conshents” so I asked mine which
dress? One conshent says “Shame Giovanna selfish pig girl, think how
that orfun put her finger to that red silk dress at the sylum the
day it was bought and said ‘pretty pretty’ and now with that dress
on her she will be happy up to the sky and believe she is an angel.”
And then another conshent will speak “Ungrateful one to give away
the so beautiful dress of red whistling silk the first bought you by
your darling Bennyfactor Mother that whistles all the time of her!
What can it whistle to that orfun of big mouth and little sense?” Now
Mother what do I make with those conshents? Our letters must go far
so it will be done before I get your advice to tell what conshent I
shall mind.
O if you could visit me that would be my Christmas present of the
whole world but you say that cannot happen. I will try and not make
too much sadness to myself for that because when I am your daughter
every day is Christmas for my thinks of you.
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my Christmas heart_,--
There stays just your me tonight in this school of many girls. All
the Eggsloosifs sellybrate Christmas Eve at home except her that
lives far in the geography and she went to Dolly’s tree not to notice
homesick aches in her soul like she got simptums.
Dolly invited me so hard she most got mad on me not to go but I never
could for lonesome. Here I have no lonesome but glad instead because
you said in your preciousest letter of all that this Eve I could know
you were writing to me. Last Christmas I was mixed with many orfuns
but felt like sollytude. This Christmas I got such company as nobody
ever had that together we write to each other. Last Christmas at the
sylum I received a work basket with two spools and thimbel but no
surprise for they were all on the maytrun’s bed when I swept her room
and no names just any basket to whatever orfun. The maytrun named
me ungrateful to cry but Mother how could Christmas be glad when my
surprise was lost?
I usto not think so much of Santa Claus as some to treat richness all
times better than poorness but I learned off a kid on our doorstep
at the tennyment that there isn’t any. So its no fair to blame a
person who never was anybody and I believe a really truly Santa Claus
would act like his photograf looks and not forget the stockings of
poorness--
[Illustration: “O the teeny gold watch with G on it”
Page 67]
The _s_ of poorness has the long tale because in that minute the maid
knocked with a bundle for me. This is my thoughts to open that box.
O! O! O! O! O! O! O! To think you put in prettys for me to give to
all the names in my letters. Dolly will jump and dance at the nugget
buckle. Luigi will put a smile on him like anything to see the yellow
pipe. O Mother never before in my long life did I give a present to
any person. For somebody to look on me with present looks that will
be my all new joy with this first Christmas to be your daughter.
In the boxes corner stayed a little package in tisshoe paper tied
with red ribbon. O the teeny gold watch with G on it in pearls and
a pearl pin to fasten it on top of my heart! O Mother it never can
be me that usto be orfun Giovanna to own that watch! It must be a
fairy dream and I will wake up in the sylum to say “What a dream I
dreamed!” Always your presents talk to me of you or look at me with
your looks but this watch speaks most of all not to stop in day
or night or get tired. I say to it “Little angel watch she is the
Mother of my--” And that watch so smart ticks back “heart, heart,
heart, heart.” No other watch could be smart like this of pearly G
and teeny golden hands.
O but it makes me feel twice as dreadful about your Christmas present
you won’t get from me for an awful long time like next summer. If you
are thinking this minute I forgot your present that is not the true
but despare and most wear out my brains that is the true and now what
looks like no gift.
I was going to buy you a pretty with the money you sent for a swetter
but the Principal said in chapel to take the money of your parents
to buy them gifts what love in that? Give them what costs you effort
and self denial. And she talked more to say never give debty presents
just because you owe them or hopeful presents to get one back. Dolly
raised her hand and asked “What if somebody needs a present which
they don’t want?” The girls giggled to guess she meant Lizzie. The
Principal replied “Decide that yourself with love and tact. Young
ladies you are dismissed to your classrooms.”
Dolly says love and tact and the Principal and a quarter which fell
heads up are all on her side to give Lizzie to her Uncle and Aunt at
the tree. She made a poem for her parents out of her own poetry but
I cannot poet for you Mother because it must fall on one out of the
sky or its no good. A musical girl dedycated her parents many staffs
full of tunes but I could only make you some scales what are notes
upstairs and downstairs and that would be no present. A very smart
girl in lessons was to give her prize if earned which made me worse
despare for many girls shorter in their skirts are longer than me in
their grades which must put shame on you and the prize for spelling
is past my hope so how could I think to earn a prize except for
stupid and faults?
Friday was the last day of this school turn, and the Principal gave
out the prizes with many cheers from all and her of smartness earned
the one for grammar which was a poetry book. At last the Principal
said there was one more prize to decide by vote of all the girls
which pupil had got most better in manners by trying hard. O Mother
that prize was given to me and not by fair because no other girl here
was ever orfun so I had the head start in backness. I was so scared I
almost could not hold out my hand and to walk back to my seat I did
not know where it stood with the Eggsloosifs to clap clap their hands
so much. By and by when I opened the package the Principal asked me
why I look so disapointed. I answered “It is very beautiful and never
did I earn it but what can my Mother make with a Girl’s Memory Book
of School for a Christmas present?” She explained that if I wrote it
full of memorys for you Mother it would be a piece of real daughter
present same as Dolly’s and the musical girl’s and her of smartness.
But it is my grief and woe you will not get it in time for Christmas
because I cannot write in it memorys that are not to happen yet but
must wait till they happen.
I have decided to give away my red silk dress because my Christmas
conshent says “Giovanna you got such lots and that orfun so little.”
O my little darling watch! It now ticks “You got to stop, you got to
stop” because the electric will be off in one minute and so goodnight
Darling Mother from little watch and me.
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my Merry Christmas Heart_,--
The candles are just blown out on the orfun tree and I took a pink
one not much burnt to put in the teeny silver candlestick Dolly gave
me so I can write to you after electric is off. I believe this candle
likes to burn itself up for that because it waves round its little
flame as if to speak “Giovanna remember me to your Mother.”
The Eggsloosifs all rushed back today quick as possible after their
deserts to dress themselves orfun style. Such laughs never were heard
in the real kind. Then came the jenuine orfuns and O the looks on
them to behold the immitashun orfuns! That orfun which usto make tall
her pompydoor with the maps out of her geography said if she had
known she was invited just to other sylum she never woulda come.
The Eggsloosifs took each one her orfun to her room and dressed her
all sweet and pretty and stylish like a girl of richness with two
parents. One orfun said to her Eggsloosif “I thank you but keep this
dress to your own self because you look worse poor than me.” And the
father of that Eggsloosif is a 1000000air.
Mine which was her of big mouth and little sense all times touched
the red silk with her finger and repeated “My red dress, my red
dress” like my watch ticks and I was glad to see her love it that
hard.
Dolly’s Lizzie turned not pretty but so Dolly named her quaint and
said that was more distinggay. Lizzie asked “Will my new Mama like me
better in this dress?” And Dolly kissed her and pinned a card on her
“Merry Christmas to dear Aunt Winnyfred and Uncle John from Dolly.”
But Lizzie never saw Dolly wring her hands to me on the quiet to show
what scares she got on herself.
Mother when all was finished the orfuns made immitashun Eggsloosifs
like the Eggsloosifs made immitashun orfuns--I guess because the
Eggsloosifs in dress of poorness acted like fixed grand for a party
and the orfuns could not forget so quick their scroocht down
feelings even in dress of richness.
Next was the turkey dinner with the orfuns in the chairs and the
Eggsloosifs to act like maids. All their swallows could work fine and
they were very satisfied except Lizzie teased to sit between her Mama
and Papa but Dolly told her they were not yet come.
After turkey dinner all went to the big hall of the Christmas tree
and there stayed the parents and relayshuns and whichevers. Dolly
looked so pityfull for her feelings on Lizzie a kind old man thought
she was a jenuine and tried to give her a dollar in her hand but she
explaned no thank you.
The janitor played he was Santa Claus and passed the presents and O
the joy and surprise of those orfuns most paralized them. I gave mine
a doll because her sense is younger than she is and it seemed as if
she couldn’t hug it enough and I was glad.
But poor little Lizzie looked like weeps and said to Dolly “Where
is my Mama and Papa like you promised?” My chum led her pretty near
to her Uncle and Aunt where they sat and whispered to Lizzie which
they were and ran to hide behind the tree. Lizzie stept close and
close till Uncle John said “Whose little girl are you?” and she
answered “I am yours, Papa,” and the surprise that Uncle had on him
was wonderful. Aunt Winnyfred spoke “What nonsents! Run to your Mama,
child,” but she answered “You are my Mama.”
Uncle John looked on her card and exclaimed “O that Dolly!” Aunt
Winnyfred explaned to Lizzie how she did not want a little girl and
all was mistake.
Lizzie got that kind of disapoint which hurts so bad you don’t cry
the first minute and they thought she was satisfied but she fell
herself down on the floor and her grief and woe were dreadful and she
all times talked in her cry “O my Papa don’t want me! O my Mama don’t
want me!”
Dolly ran to comfort her but she would take no comfort. Aunt
Winnyfred stood up and spoke, “Let us go! this is very painful! Dolly
you must be punished!” But Uncle John answered “Why not take her
along and look her over? Anyway she said first she was mine.” Aunt
Winnyfred talked back “Just because you sat on that side so she came
first to you.” So Uncle John carried her but Aunt Winnyfred held her
hand.
The little candle is most gone and so is my first merry Christmas
but I got plenty of merryness this time to catch up on all I missed
before.
O Mother what a long chain you started by your goodness to me. The
Eggsloosifs tied some more to that chain by this wonderful surprise
on the sylum; Aunt Winnyfred and Uncle John made another piece to
adopt Lizzie. And I never did a thing to make it longer but perhaps I
can some day. That is my wish.
I have just one more minute to say Merry Christmas so with that
I will stop my letter. Merry Christmas, Mother! Merry Christmas,
Isabella! Merry Christmas, orfuns! Merry Christmas, Eggsloosifs!
Merry Christmas, all the people in the big world! Merry Christmas,
dear God up in heaven!
Giovanna.
GIOVANNA’S ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
_Mother of my Italian heart_,--
Such wonderful bran news I got today for you and me to be glad
about--the teacher spoke it right out to all the class of geography.
She said that Dago is just the disrespeckfull for Italian and she
names Italians grand and wonderful with songs in their throats and
pictures in their eyes and hands to make statyous. And Mr. Columbus
who discovered America was a Dago! So Americans needn’t feel set up
over us because where would they be this minute if he never had?
Besides they are all named after Mr. Amerigo, another Italian man who
put them first on any map or they must have got omitted out of the
geography and then think how mortifide they would have felt!
So Mother, it is not mean for me to be Dago and need not put shame on
you as I always supposed it must indeed. It was my guess to myself
you had hopes to erase all my Dago part in this school except my
looks which are very brunetty and no powder can help that because
I tried and it showed on top of my brownness like chalk on the
blackboard and the Principal said “Giovanna, go wash your face; I did
not believe you were that silly kind of girl.” So I cried and washed
hard and threw away that powder box awful quick but explained not to
the Principal because it would have been like telling a secret of
yours and mine, Mother, to explain and I never did. Now you don’t
need powder to stay on me any more.
O Mother, my proudness is up to the top of the highest mountain
in the red atlas! I wish I could go and tell all the folks in
our tenement that they are no more Ginneys but very grand and
respecktable Italians and must have no shame on themselves for that
but all glad and hawty.
I had thoughts of asking you to change my name to Jane but now I
rejoyce to be
Your Italian daughter,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my Dago heart_,--
There was a reception in this school today very grand from three
to five. O the surprise that happened on me right in the middle of
this reception! If I gave you 1,000,000 guesses and 3 more you could
not tell who came and not invited, for how could I think to invite
rellytives never seen in my long life and most forgotten and also
believed by me to stay in Italy shaped like a rubber boot and washed
by many seas?
I was sitting some behind a screen and the music talked of you and
my love as I never can write in my letters because it would take
words I do not know. I wore my new pink silk which is that kind to
try to stick to my fingers as if it says it likes to be my dress and
the best beautiful sign of your love.
Dolly came and pulled me by the hand to the window quick as we could
go for the many ladies not to step our feet on their elegant trains.
There stayed Luigi on his wagon full of oranges and bananas. An
Italian woman sat by him not his wife for I know her looks and a girl
about my bigness. Down in front of the seat was a boy not so big and
another girl not so big as the boy and another girl with curls not so
big as that girl and a baby in the Italian woman’s lap which she gave
Luigi to hold while she clum out and pulled down all the rest except
the boy who jumped himself off and stufft two bananas in his shirt
not seen by Luigi. Then Luigi pointed with his whip to the door of
our school and drove away very quick like he still had scares on that
teacher.
Wrinkeldy and poor was the Italian lady with a little square shawl
on her head. The girl of my bigness was dressed pretty but curyous.
Her black velvet corset was on top of her white waist. She wore a red
skirt and an apron crost by many stripes. The toes of all the littler
ones looked out of their shoes and no wraps on their thinness. I had
a big sorry for them in my heart.
Then Dolly was called by her Mother to play a piece on the piano for
some person in the music room.
Very soon that family off Luigi’s wagon stood in our hall and all
stared at them like they were brickyards and not people. I had no
dream who they could be, but Dago must ever go to Dago so I went.
When I walked close to her of the wrinkeldy face and little shawl,
she screecht “Giovanna! Mia cara! Mia cara!” and hugged me long long
in her arms and many times kissed my cheeks and hugged me more and
more and tears ran down in her wrinkles.
I let her hug and kiss me, Mother, but I shook and shook and wished
not to be so much kissed with all to stare and stare as they done.
Nobody hugs like that in receptions which are not any good form place
for jenuine feelings like hers but just touch your fingers and talk
politeness. The feelings that Italian lady had on me were terrible
and I could not understand what for with this the first time I ever
walked in her sight.
By and by she calmed off a teeny bit and held my face with her hands
and looked and looked and said she was my Aunt Maddalena.
I was embearest dreadful and sorry to make her such dizzypoint but I
begged her please excuse me not to be her niece and her not to be my
Aunt Maddalena.
The girl of my bigness had eyes black and looks proud like anything.
She spoke American but slow and funny and full of try as if her
tongue could just walk and not run.
“Why notta your Aunt?”
I answered “It is the true that my Mama who died had a sister named
Maddalena and she usto tell me how they cried and hugged much when my
Mama started for America in the big ship, but this lady never can be
my Aunt.”
That girl asked again, “Why notta your Aunt?”
I explained just like my Mama that died usto tell me plenty of times.
“My Aunt Maddalena is so beautiful in looks that artiss men make
her picture with many paints. Nobody in her village can dance the
tarantella like my Aunt Maddalena; any person will travel a mile
and be glad to see the steps of her teeny feet. She wrote a letter
how she marrys my Uncle Nicolo who sings long songs and walks on the
grapes to make them wine. By and by she wrote another letter that she
has a baby girl, cousin to me named Concetta. Then no more letters or
else lost. Now you understand why this Italian lady is all mistake
and no Aunt.”
That girl spoke again awful proud.
“Little fool! Can she no getta old? When young she was moddle for
artiss men and this dress I wear now is her moddle dress because my
dress gotta the holes. Your Uncle Nicolo no come today, he hunts the
work. You think that baby girl Concetta no getta big never? I am
Concetta and this is your Aunt Maddalena.”
Then I believed she spoke the true and I was more embearest like I
would die with all my thinks tip side up and no chance to get them
fixed. My voice came out of me little and funny.
“I am very pleased to meet you.”
“Notta so!” said Concetta awfuller proud. “You no wanta us! One year
in America we look look ask ask for you. Now I wish we never hadda
found you! You gotta the shame of us and I hate you!”
I did not answer that Concetta but I led them to chairs which were
very quick plenty when they walked near. It is the rule not to just
have your own talk with your rellytives at a reception but you must
make presents to them of your schoolmates. I did not mind that rule,
Mother because of the feelings I had for the Exclusives to look on my
cousins so wretcheddy and my Aunt Maddalena all poor and wrinkled up.
I was trying to swallow down my cry when our dear Principal came and
saylooted my rellytives fine and polite as if they were the best in
elegant trains instead of short in the skirts and big in the shoes
as my Aunt, only Concetta hid her hands under her apron crost by many
stripes. What sort of manners was that?
The boy begged me, “Swipe a feller some cake. Say, do you guys have
ice cream?” I made the start to get him some but Concetta said,
“Notta swipe--better he starve first,” so I sat still and swiped not.
I wanted to make good from talk with my rellytives but it was skarce
in me. Pretty soon Concetta said to her Mother in Italian that no
longer must they put shame on Giovanna with her grand friends so they
went and fine riddants to that Concetta.
O Mother, what is the good to call Italians grand and wonderful and
then all to stare at them like brickybacks when they stand in your
hall? How can they have that glad the teacher says they may for the
songs in their throats and the pictures in their eyes and their
hands to make statyous when they got those scroochtdown Dago feelings
on themselves (not counting Concetta) and you got the same on them to
be their rellytives? My Italian proudness is all spoiled.
Your unhappy
Jane.
* * * * *
_Dearest and Best_,--
I am writing to you in my cloak and my hat is still on my head
because my feelings fizzed and fizzed all the way home from the call
on my Italian rellytives and will not stay shut up in me one more
minute.
All days I felt as if there was a string on my soul and Aunt
Maddalena was pulling it and I knew Dago must go to Dago. The
Principal said a teacher might company me this afternoon which she so
done.
O Mother, rellytives are no good but to make grief and woe! I wish
mine were back in Italy like a rubber boot washed by many seas,
I do indeed. No, I would save out Aunt Maddalena because love is
sprouting in my heart for her and how she does not look all homely
as at first. And the baby with eyes like chockylet creams, it is a
dear baby. Giuseppe is a newsy and newsys are ever desprit characters
and usto pull my braids, but Giuseppe has not done it yet and he has
a hello grin on him so you got to like him anyway and I do not wish
away my cousin Giuseppe. Marietta next to Giuseppe is very good and
quiet and pityful to be so thin and pale and nobody could wish her
away. Assunta between Marietta and the baby has long black curls and
dimples, and I ached to hug and hug her but I never could for the
eyes of Concetta kept me all friz up on my bench so I sat still and
hugged not.
Aunt Maddalena would have embrased me the same as at the reception
but Concetta had to put in her Italian talk “Have care, little
Mother, for the fine clothes of our grand lady cousin.”
All the time of this visit I felt as if my heart was a pincushion
and every word of Cousin Concetta stuck another pin in that cushion
for the hate she got against me. She asked me in her own talk why
I brought that teacher to show her how poor they live. Was it not
enought for me to know it myself and come where I was wanted by
nobody?
They are terrible poor, Mother, and live way upstairs in the
back tennyment with no window to look on the street but just at
clothes-lines and for furniture some big and little benches such as
my Uncle could make with boards loose from the back fence if he got
them first and not the neighbors to burn and a little old busted
stove and a bed very ricketty and the plaster to fall off in many
spots.
They must take coats home to finish just for some cents each one.
Aunt Maddalena sewed like crazy and Concetta the same hard and fierce
and Marietta pale and pityful must sew and little Assunta pulled the
bastings and minded the baby. She cried to go sit on the doorstep and
Aunt Maddalena shook her, not for mad but because tears would drop on
that coat of fine cloth and ruin them all.
Uncle Nicolo is a man of ditches in America because we walk not on
our grapes to make them wine, and when he cannot get ditches to dig
he is out of work which is dreadful and all must finish more coats.
He walked in at the door and I saw him for the first time ever. He
bowed polite to the teacher and me and shook our hands. He did not
laugh nor sing long songs nor take his piccolo out of his pocket as
my Mama that died said he had those habbits but sat on a bench with
his head to hang down in front and his hands to fall between his
knees.
The teacher spoke with him very friendly and he told her O if he had
fifty $ to buy a fruitstand of an Italian man who must take his poor
sick wife back to Italy to die in the arms of her old Mother, then
the family could live fine and not finish the coats. After telling
this Uncle Nicolo fell back into his sorry thinks and talked no more.
Giuseppe was gone to sell his papers, the teacher could not speak all
the time about nothing, Aunt Maddalena in English can only smile and
smile, the little girls were too bashful and the baby too young and
Uncle Nicolo too sad and Concetta too mean to talk so nobody did.
By and by Aunt Maddalena begged me to tell of my Mama that died and
all our family, but I have lost the habbit to speak Italian and was
afraid to say it funny and full of mistakes for Cousin Concetta to
laugh so I answered “Aunt I cannot.”
Then Concetta went and made this lie, “Little Mother, our grand lady
cousin has forgot she was ever poor like us. Do not make her the pain
to remember.”
O Mother, that was mean and mean and mean! I hated Concetta to say
that lie of me, so I begged the teacher please let us go and we went.
I will never go back to see them any more--I’m all finished up with
them forever and forever world without hen!
Goodbye Aunt Maddalena, dear Aunt no more ugly but good and sweet.
Goodbye Giuseppe of the hello grin. Goodbye poor little Marietta so
pityful. Goodbye Assunta with the Isabella looks and curls. Goodbye
baby of the big eyes like chockylet creams. Goodbye Uncle Nicolo. I
hope you get plenty of ditches to dig and can buy that fruit stand.
I do indeed. Goodbye Cousin Concetta with your manners like snow to
freeze me and your words like mustard to burn me.
Mother darling, I feel some unfizzed and I just have time to put away
my hat and coat before the supper bell.
Goodbye from
Jane.
* * * * *
_Dear Mother_,
Your letter hurt fierce and awful but I guess it’s what the Principal
calls a merryted reebuke. You say you have no daughter Jane and want
none of that name if my last letters are her kind to write. You
tell the great dizzypoint you got in me to be so snubbish and your
surprise that I can so quick forget the feelings I usto have in my
soul when the Exclusives were hawty with me the same. O how you put
big big Selfish on me to fuss all times at my own mortifide and not
considder the mortifide of my rellytives at the reception to find
themselves such differents. In the call also you feel Scorn for me
as a horrid silly Prig not to talk Italian with my dear Aunt. And my
Mama that died--how dreadful she must have felt to lean over in her
Heavenly seat and see me act like that to her used-to-be-beautiful
sister and I guess God has His oppinion of me too.
The repentants I got on all the family is big as a house but it don’t
reach to my Cousin Concetta--no ma’am it don’t! Her I must ever hate
as she does me and she made its start when I never did. Last night I
had trouble with my prayers all on account of her. This morning when
I woke I felt as if I had caught meazles in my soul for my thinks of
her.
Yes, ma’am, I will go spend the whole Saturday to visit those
rellytives I thought never to see again in my long life but Dago must
go to Dago and that’s the true. Yes, ma’am, I will help finish the
coats. Yes, Mother, to please you, I will love that Cousin of my
bommynation just this Saturday, since you say that on Sunday I have
your permission to hate her again if I can’t help it.
This is your first time to scold me, Mother, and it felt like spanks
on my soul, but O you put such love and forgiveness at the end and
now to be all confessed and promised up, why I feel more daughterish
than ever.
Your never-more Jane
But always
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Mother of my happy love_,--
On Saturday morning the Principal was to shop herself a new dress but
she took me first to the house of my Aunt. They were terribly busy.
This time the coats belonged to boys and all must sew sew like crazy
to get finished that day for the rent. Poor little Marietta most
fell off her bench with sleepy because all had sewed in the night.
Giuseppe was gone to sell his papers and Uncle Nicolo to hunt his
ditch to dig with little hope for ditches are scarce and many beg for
shovels.
I said “Concetta, today I love you, give me a coat to sew.” She tost
her head and mocked me back. “Very kind the grand lady Giovanna to
love her poor cousin and sew a coat, very very kind! I thank you.” I
did not get any mad but I just thought how mad I would be tomorrow
for her to speak that way. I took a coat to finish off the pile but
I sewed clear through and the stitches showed and Concetta must
stop and pull them out. She said awful cross “Thank you, fine lady
Giovanna, for the splendid help which will put us back three coats to
get over. Why don’t you stay with your grand friends and let us be?”
I was much mortifide but not mad today or tomorrow because I had a
big sorry on myself to put them back three coats by my fault.
When it was dinner time Concetta said “We have only polenta because
this is the day of the rent. I fear our grand Cousin will starve.”
I answered “My Mama that died usto talk of polenta how good, so
polenta is all right with me.” We had no tablecloth, just a big dish
of polenta which is corn pudding made out of mutton. Giuseppe came
and saylooted me with his hello grin but no words. O Mother, when
I tasted that polenta I thought what will I do what will I do not
to offend more Concetta because so fierce I did not like it that
scarcely could my swallow act and besides there was not plenty for
all. In that minute Giuseppe winkt his eye on my side and I slipt my
share to him under the table which he ate with much joy and me the
same that he should.
Very quick was finished the polenta because it was not much and all
must hurry hurry to finish more coats. I begged very humble to try
again and Concetta let me most scornful but I finished one all right
and felt proud but there was no time for proudness, just grab another
and another. At first it was like play to try to get through quick as
the rest which I could not for even Marietta would beat me by both
sleeves. I liked to wonder what was the color of hair now growing on
the boy whose Papa would buy him this coat but soon no more because
I got a little ache in my back which spread and spread and my arms
ached fierce and my feet got asleep and my neck full of cricks. The
black color would come off on my hands to make them horrid and ugly.
I was hungry like I would starve and all my bones were full of pains
but I had shame to stop first, so it was grab another and another
till it seemed as if I had to sew down a long long road with no end
but just coats and coats until I died.
O Mother, all at once I lost my Giovanna feelings and caught Concetta
feelings instead. It was as if I was not me but her all poor and
tired and ever sewing and hungry and sleepy and anksyus. I could see
me, Giovanna, sitting there in the good clothes of your love clean
and fed up and lazy and smarty and selfish and crittykle. O Mother, I
hated me and not her so fierce that I cried to think how mean I was
and all times putting it on her.
Concetta got big astonish to see my cry, but said real sweet as I
never knew she could “Notta more sew--you tired, no? You stop now.”
Then I tried to explain and we all stopped and hugged and Concetta
embraced me most of all and said I was not proud and hawty like she
thought and for me to forgive and I hugged back most crazy with glad.
Uncle Nicolo came in and Concetta begged him to play the piccolo so
they might dance to sellybrate. It is a fine father who can always
have music in his pocket that his children may dance. I told Uncle
Nicolo how my Mama that died said the neighbors called him Mr.
Piccolo instead and he laughed a little for the first time in America
I guess by his looks.
Isn’t it funny that my feet have not forgot the tarantella learned
from my Mama that died while my head forgets many capitals of States
in vacation? So Concetta and I were fine in love and danced it to
each other like our Mothers usto, only Uncle Nicolo would have his
sad thoughts again and forget to blow.
The Principal stood in the door and Dolly with her because Dolly had
met her in a store and wanted to come. They begged and begged and
coaxed and coaxed until Aunt Maddalena took her little shoes out of a
chest and nobody could dance the tarantella like her. She looked old
but danced young just as when all would walk miles to see the steps
of her teeny feet.
O Mother, what do you think our dear Principal said--that her grand
wonderful actress friend who visited us once at the school wants
to learn the tarantella because she must dance it in a play named
“Ibsen’s doll’s house” and nobody could teach her to do it like my
Aunt Maddalena and the actress lady will pay Aunt Maddalena plenty of
money to be taught. In that minute I got back my Italian proudness to
think of that way-way-up-to-the-sky actress lady taking lessons off
my Aunt.
O and Uncle Nicolo can buy that fruit stand and he was so glad he
sang a long song which the Principal named grand opera. All the time
he sang Dolly was scribbling with her pencil on the cuffs of my white
waist but not so anybody would notice her much and then she whispered
to me “Don’t send my limmyricks to the laundry.”
Next Uncle Nicolo played like he would break his cheeks and we all
danced. Even the Principal made some whirls with Marietta.
We parted in joy and now I am home back at the school and happy
happy! And I have looked in Dolly’s closet but I can’t find any
limmyricks not to send to the laundry. I know all her clothes and she
never said she wore any or what color.
Here is the poetry off my left cuff.
“There was an Aunt Maddalena
Whom Giovanna never had seena
She’s wrinkled and old
But her heart is fine gold
So her looks don’t count for a beana.”
Here is her poetry on my right cuff.
“There was a proud Cousin Concetta
Whose eyes were black as the jetta
She seemed full of hate
But that’s all a mistake
She’s so darling we’re glad to have metta.”
That’s the true just as if it wasn’t poetry, but all the rellytives
in this big world dont = one precious darling Mother always first in
the heart of
Giovanna.
GIOVANNA’S FIRST REMEMBERS
_Angelickal Mother of my gloryous new times_,
Such a hurry I got to put my first remembers in this letter because
to-morrow we girls must fix them in compositions to oblige the Chair
of Professor Sighkology who lectured to us in Assembly and I cannot
make secrets with that Chair away from you who must ever be the Queen
of all my deepmost thinks.
A senior said Professor Sighkology’s smile was Heavenly, but Dolly
answered it was so impursynal it fell down between the desks. I never
noticed which way flew his smile for wondering what sort of magic
Chair to read my writing and put red ink on top of my mistakes. I’d
like to see it only to feel that Chair staring at me without eyes
would be worse than the evil eye of the old shoeman--I’ll tell about
him when I get to his spot in my letter.
The girls are Odearing something dreadful about this composition
(except Dolly who says hers will then be ready for her byography) but
they don’t really mind--it’s just their Odear habit. Boosted up here
as I am by your love and my orphan feelings not forgotten, I don’t
see how they can fuss and fuss at nothing, I don’t indeed. But then
a beggar of the street might peep in at the asylum window and hear
the orphans Odear the same and say “What have those orphans all safe
and fed got to Odear about?” and wonder at them just as I do at the
Exclusives of this school.
No other girl here could make news to her mother of her first
remembers since they had them together which we never could the ones
I got now, because if I had been your daughter from the beginning
all these first remembers would have been diferents. Anyway no
daughter could belong any fiercer than I do now, _could_ they Mother?
My days are trimmed up and deckorated with my thinks of you. And when
I tell you these remembers we will belong some more for you to know
all that passed with me in my years before I sewed by your side at
the College Settlement where we used to take our first start with
each other.
And even if we didn’t begin so early to belong, I hope we can finish
up together and have our funerals the same afternoon. Sometimes I get
scares in my bed to wonder if, you being older, God expects you to
die first, but please live to be an aged lady and I won’t mind dying
some young not to be left orphan again.
How strange that Dolly and I were babies in the world at the same
time and her with a nurse of white cap and apron to ride her in the
Park and embroidery dresses and her rattle silver, so no angel could
guess she would ever be chums with the brown tenement baby which
grew up me. And you, Precious Mother, were in the world too and God
had you waiting for me like a grand surprise hid way back on the top
cubboard shelf.
Dolly read a book out of the library so her composition is very
intelleckchewel. She writes about her infantyle conceps but they were
too much style for a Dago tenement kid so I am very sure I had none.
O Mother, wouldn’t it be fun if we could remember way far backer than
we can and not forget how it feels to be teeny in laps and pull hair
and talk guggy guggy? But no--we must grow to some bigness before
memory sprouts in us.
Dolly’s earlyest reckylection is shook in church for badness to
go sit on the pulpit steps and hug and kiss her new hat with the
minister up there preaching how wicked is vanity. Can’t you just see
her looking dear and cute and funny like anything?
I will tell you my own very firstest remember I got. I never knew
there was any me in this world until the day the saloon burned across
our street. All stands in my head just like a picture only myself I
cannot see though I feel I am in the middle of it and little to hold
on that way to the back of the chair where my Papa lifted me up to
look. He was an awful handsome man of big black mustash. I can see
very plain my Mama that died and hear her prayers of scare that our
house would not burn also. All the front of that picture is blazing
fire close close till it seems as if I could reach it with my hands.
I had not then my “dawn of conshus fear” but jumped and danced on the
chair like a little crazy with joy of the big red and yellow flames.
Dolly’s best scare was on a ghost which never skooted in at the
window all white with eyes green and ringing its hands and moaning
fierce to fly her off into the dark, but of nights she lay on her
little bed expecting and expecting that ghost which the nurse said
would come if she did not go quick to sleep, and she could not for
scare of the ghost. It was all just a wicked lie of that nurse so she
could run talk with her bow over the fence.
[Illustration: “I must hold my horny hand at my back for
politeness” Page 110]
My first afraid was on that old Dago shoeman. He pozest the evil eye
and always plenty of work because the neighbors had scares of what
would fall on them if another should mend their shoes. He sat close
to the door in his little shop where I must pass on errands to the
grocery. My Mama that died hung a charm about my neck to keep off
his bad looks; also she showed me how to make horns with my hand but
I must hold my horny hand at my back for politeness. With the charm
and horns I felt safe when I was in the house just going to start,
but soon as I heard his hammer tinky tinky I would go slow and slow
grabbing my charm and making my horns and shake and shake and whisper
little prayers and creep soft on my tippy toes till I was half past
and then run like crazyness.
Dolly says her scare was worse than mine because the old shoeman
stayed in his shop and didn’t go flopping round into windows. I told
her but he was really in the world and the ghost was not, and she
answers that’s the eyedentickle reason for the ghost to be worst.
I never dreamed that richness living upstairs and downstairs in its
house could think of anything to want and not get it and there Dolly
and I had the same wish which was a new baby in the family, girl for
choice. Poorness got waited on up in Heaven and richness didn’t, so
my going-to-be-chum Dolly had to stay an only like she was.
I wish she could have had hers too. She needed it worse than me
because I was not quite an only on account of Tony. I never noticed
when he came. He was in our house not so big as I when I first
thought about him. He was too big though to make a good baby and
wouldn’t play it anyway. All the girls my size on the tenement
doorstep had babies to tend, so it was no good form to be without and
I must ever play old maid which is very stupid with no children to
lick. It was only nice when the hand organ would come to our block
because a baby is awful heavy to dance with for several tunes while
an old maid can dance all tunes very free and glad.
My best friend was named Katy. She was proud to be Irish and no Dago.
Her father was a man of pollyticks who could shake hands with the
alderman just whenever he pleased, and the alderman got him a job to
sweep the dirt of the streets into a great big dustpan with a long
handle. Katy was so haughty for that she would not be much friends
with Dago kids but with me yes, because we had the other front
tenement to look on the street and lived in good style with always
something to pawn when there was not money enough for the rent. So
she liked me at home but not at school--there she walked at recess
with her arms around the Irish and not me. But after school she was
my friend again and said the rest in our tenement were ginneys and
could not sit on the top step along with us.
One day when Katy got home from school she found a bran new baby in
her house and she was stucker up than ever because it was a sister
which is more stylish than brothers and it was blonde white with
teeny gold curls like no other baby in that tenement. I was its old
maid Aunt and must hold it most all the time while Katy was busy
chasing kids off the top step.
I loved Katy’s baby so fierce I had most forgotten to want one of
my own when Isabella came in the night and the next morning I heard
her cry in Mama’s bed and was crazy glad and ran to look but such a
dizzypoint fell on me for her to be little and red and blackfuzzy and
Katy’s baby so beautiful. O Mother, I write this with red shame on
my cheeks to think of me so mean and wicked but I must tell you all
even if it makes you have a black spot of dispizement for me in your
soul _I tried to trade babies with Katy_! I offered her all my hair
ribbons and my red beads and even my badeye charm but she said not on
her sweet life for mine was the common Dago kind so if you dropped
her on the steps you couldn’t tell again which one she was and so
little I would be getting ten pounds more baby.
God was good to me as I never deserved not to let her trade since
her baby died and I would have been left without any little sister
and serve me right for my evil heart. I saw that dear baby just the
day before in Katy’s house and I thought it not to be sick as they
said with its cheeks so pink, but the next tomorrow it was dead.
The Chairs asks which is your beautifullest remember and that is
mine--Katy’s baby lying on the table among its candles, its face all
over clean at once and dressed in white embroidery like richness. It
seemed as if it must wake up in surprise and reach for those teeny
blue shoes such as it never dreamed on itself. The look on its face
was just as though an angel was whispering creepymouse in its ear.
I cried more than Katy which she said was no fair and I kissed many
times its little hands like cold snow. They took it away with grand
style and much weeps out loud and three carriages and a white hurse
and a bouquet of genuine flowers bigger than it, a present from the
alderman which must have cost plenty.
Isabella had grown some bigger by that time and her curls had started
only they were still black and not gold. When the funeral proceshun
was gone, I went again upstairs and hugged her not to be dead and
cold and whispered did she forgive her wicked sister to try to trade
and she guggled “yes” and I cried some more into her apron for my
little Irish niece deadngone to the semitary.
Katy returned from her funeral very sad and hawty. I offered her
Isabella to hold for comfort but she sobbed “no, thanks, her own or
none” and she let everybody sit by her side on the top step. I saw by
such politeness her heart to be broke intirely as she said it was.
Katy’s family moved away pretty soon because the alderman fixed her
Papa with a better job to drive a big sweep-the-streets machine of
nights and they went to a grand Irish tenement with a bathtub and
foldup bed in the parlor glorybe.
I truly love this school, Mother, but not more than I loved the
First-Grade in that time. It was fine to be the monitor to all
the pencils in my row and the teacher’s petticoat rustled grand
and silken down the aisle and her smile was hardly ever off her
face--just when some boy was mean. My hand would most wave itself
broke to say the words on the blackboard and I loved to sing
“Twenty froggys went to school
Down beside the Russhen pool.”
I went home different ways to find that pool but none on our block
was Russhen, just all Dago with men hitting little balls and no
froggys to see.
You must have been the Dolly kind of little girl, Mother and O
so fine and wonderful! Please please write your youthfullest
rememberants to me in your next precious letter. My Mama that died
used to tell me about when she was a little girl in Italy. She would
get glad to talk of Italy--how it is warm, fresh and light, the
neighbors sing like the fountins; fig and olive trees grow thick
there as the garbige cans of America. We would dance the tarantella
very happy but pretty soon it would make worse her cough and then
she would cry and say how cold, sad, dark and ugly is this country
and all times like Good Friday. She was a very good kind of Mama and
where she was that place seemed ever sweet and shiney unto me.
The curious chair wants to know how we made our first start to feel
grownup. Dolly says her shoes keep climbing higher and higher up her
ankels and her skirts keep falling down lower and lower. When they
meet she will be a young lady.
I must have stayed kiddish forever to wait for that because my
dresses not like Dolly’s would get shrinker and shrinker and my legs
would grow longer and longer so my shoes and skirts must get more
apart for boys at school to holler “broomsticks! broomsticks!” as I
hated them to so holler.
I guess my grownup feelings sprouted in me one tragicky winter full
of woe when Papa’s fruit would freeze and freeze and lose him plenty
of money and we got all pawned out and had to move back into an old
behind tenement very dark and cold so I was glad Katy was gone not
to see. The cough of my Mama that died got awful worse and no fire
seemed to warm us with the little coal we had and Tony sat by the
stove and wouldn’t play anything but lame boy and his knee was bad
but he never said it was real--only his play. It was a good thing I
was eight that birthday to do the work. My Papa fixed a box by the
stove and a box by the cubboard so I could reach and also put our tub
on to wash, only Isabella always tried to fall in that tub and be
drounded. I had no time for doorsteps and anyway it was too cold.
The walk-in districk nurse came every day to put a new bandige on
Tony’s knee and fix Mama what comfy she could. One morning I put
Mama and Tony’s breakfast on the box by the stove while I filled
the teakettle and Tony never noticed and put his foot in it and I
slapped him--my poor little lame brother with a bandige on his knee!
O Mother, when he was awful sicker in the hospital I begged him to
slap me back but he wouldn’t, so that slap I put on Tony must stay on
me till I die.
And I can’t have the delishus dinner I got now in a basket and take
it to Mama and Tony to make them glad. When persons are in some other
place perhaps you can get there to walk enough, but you cannot walk
to them in a new time after theirs is all past and finished up.
I know that winter was when I got the habit of growing up for the
nurse to say as she did “you poor little old woman!”
Then one day very sudden it was spring and warm by the sun and some
grass trying to grow itself in a crack of the sidewalk and Tony went
outdoors with his new crutch. That day the walk-in nurse helped me
like a sick one into a pink dress terrible short with a big spot
where Isabella spillt her mackyrony on me but the best I had. She
led me to a beautiful house like no tenement because its rooms had
not beds or stoves but pictures and prettys and many parlors which
must be bigger and grander than the glorybe parlor of Katy. Some
children were firing little pillows full of beans at a hole--so silly
I thought and beans good to eat.
Then the walk-in nurse opened a door and that was the door to all my
joy. Many girls sewed in a club and one hollered very mean “I know
her--that’s Giovanna Long-legs,” and all laughed. My wish was to cry
and run home, but O the wonderfulest enchantingest lady which was you
hugged me with your arm and put shame on those girls and asked me did
I want to sew doll rags? I was embearest dreadful but answered “no,
please I am too old.” Your smile was truly Heavenly as you gave me a
dress to make for Isabella and put me close by your side. That was
the day my love for you got planted in the ground of my heart.
But, Mother, I could not have sat there and sewed so happy if I had
known God was planning all those funerals for our family. And if
any angel had whispered in your ear that day how the funny little
new Dago kid of the long legs would get to be your ownest ownest
daughter, I think you would have told that angel “Guess again and
don’t be abzurd!”
Now in this letter you got me from the start and I am for keeps and
keeps and keeps
Your Giovanna.
GIOVANNA AS THE WRONG PRINCESS
_Adorablest Mother_,
My times in this school get better and better and now my tiptopest
joy of all is that I am to act in a real play. The Principal divided
us girls into program groops and my Dolly chum is writing O a gorjous
drama just out of her own thinks for our groop to give next month.
First Dolly read a book from the library how to make plays, but that
book only gave her much discurage and her head to ache therefore
she decided younity and atmosphear are too much style for a school
play and not to have them in hers. So she writes it absolootly by
inspuration same as poetry only worse for long and often which is
terrible. That inspuration falls on her in the middle of nights and
just in front of dessert and once when climbing the trapeeze so she
lost her hold, but on the floor stayed her play notebook and when the
gym teacher came running to see how bad she was hurt, there she lay
to scribble, scribble like crazy and never knew her bumps until they
turned their bumpy color. O Mother, how wonderful is genius!
The Age of Dolly’s play is Middle because then all persons wore
costumes instead of clothes and were romantic every minute. Dolly
adores romance which it is her grief and woe to be now so scarce and
most extinkt. The Principal likes that time because petticoats were
good form for gentlemen, so the King girl can be real modish in a red
kimono trimmed by bands of cotton decorated with ink blots, and the
other mail characters will keep on their long cloaks so their gym
suits won’t show.
Dolly can’t dyvulge the plot yet because the characters are so
opstreperus that whatever she writes them to do they fuss back at her
to fix it all different. She says that’s because, being the children
of her brains, they must take after her in temperment. But we girls
coaxed and teased her most crazy till she consented to give us just
an introduckshun no more to those desperit tempermental characters.
Dolly will act the Right Princess as the playwrite must ever be
leading lady or no fair, and I am the Wrong Princess which is the
next best part for being her chum. The rest are the King, Queen,
Noble, Prince of the Long Feather, Cruel Jailer, Wicked Witch, and
four Hop-livelys who must be sometimes pezzents (which means not
birds but the poor and humble obliged to dust with their aprons the
chairs of nobility) sometimes kitchen sculpins and sometimes pop-up
ghosts.
Dolly says the Wrong Princess gets taken for the real kind at first
but by and by she is expozed and found out to be nothing but a half
orphan of the Wicked Witch. Already I love my part because to be
any princess whatsoever will be magnificent like I never dreamed. I
try hard with my manners, Mother, I do indeed, but they are not the
teeniest bit enough good for even the wrong kind of princess. I must
just watch them now like cats and mice not to put shame on you by the
rudeness of my princess ways. But the half orphan piece of my part I
guess I will understand to act as some girl of two parents might not.
I knew a little girl in another dormitory of our asylum who was fairy
once at a genuine theater and she told how in a play you are always
fine and wonderful like makebelieve come true only she always wished
it wouldn’t be over so dreadful quick.
O Mother, I go upstairs and downstairs in all the rooms of this
school so happy to think on my character in Dolly’s drama that
scarcely can my feet walk and not skippity skippity as would be no
proper princess manners. I love Dolly more than I ever did, which was
lots already, to see her write in her play notebook those good grand
words for me to speak. It is diffycult not to feel haughty when I
think that a backward like me has genius for her chum.
Your joyful-up-to-the-sky
Wrong Princess.
* * * * *
_O Mother Dear and Only Comfort_,
I most wish I was an old old lady dead in my peaceful grave so Dolly
would get repentants on herself for her perfiddy and she calls
perfiddy on me the same when I perfidded nothing and she all. Now we
are no more chums and never can be in our long lives.
Dolly had promised, when the play was finished up, to read it first
to me like a secret, so last night after supper I ran with her very
happy to our room, and O dear! O dear! how I wish that inspuration
had never dropped on her. When she began to read we were the
lovingest friends and when she stopped we were the hatingest enemies.
The play makes its start with the King and Queen discovered on top
of their thrones talking about their believed-to-be child, the Wrong
Princess--how vile and evil is her dishpishum and how dark her
looks--just like me. Her name is Zeerooty as any girl so wicked must
have her name spelled with Z to hiss like the snakes in her black
heart.
The King says “Adzooks! cheer up, Mrs. Queen. This is the day the
Noble Prince of the Long Feather comes to be her sooter. He will
marry her away from us and good riddants to our Zeerooty.” The Queen
has scares the Noble Prince won’t like the blackness and tempers of
Zeerooty and says weddings in the dark are real stylish among her
set, but the king only zooks some more.
Dolly must read hard and fast to finish before the electric light
would go off, so she never looked at me to know the feelings
sprouting in my soul. I kept myself still and spoke not with hopes
the King and Queen were some mistaken and me not to be so mean as
their thinks.
Then in the play a Hop-lively announces the Noble Prince of the Long
Feather who enters the stage followed by the other three Hop-livelys.
When all finish their politeness, that Zeerooty comes along tagged by
Dolly dressed in her white silk with a big black patch basted on its
front breath to show how poor and dispized she is because believed
to be just the child of the Wicked Witch and given to Zeerooty for
a sort of slave since the Witch has got everybody spelled so they
don’t know that Zeerooty is her own black brat and Dolly the Right
Princess.
Zeerooty never notices the Prince and all those Hop-livelys though I
don’t see how she can help it and not be blind. She saucys her Mama
Queen and kicks her Papa King on his foot. Then she discovers the
Prince and has much astonish for that. She likes him fine and her
manners are quick honeytaffy. She puts out her hand for him to kiss
like she is the sunflower of the world, but scarcely can the Prince
kiss that hand for his looks of love on Dolly.
Zeerooty perceeves those looks and goes back to acting like scandles.
She throws her gloves, hat, and hanky on the floor for Dolly to pick
them up and slaps her on the cheek.
O that slap was the worst ever to go from me to Dolly in her drama!
It is the true, Mother, I slapped Dolly my first day in this school
because I spilled the gravy on her and she put the name goosey to you
for thinking I could get made into a lady. But that is so long past
and see how we have been chums ever since the girls took the tayboo
off me and now for her to go put that slap in her play when I thought
it all forgiven up--O Mother, it hurt so bad I couldn’t even speak
that first minute like once when I caught my finger in the door.
When Dolly read on, our electric study lamp went to bobbing itself
round in funny ways and throwing out long strings of light into my
eyes.
In the second act, Dolly is discovered dusting and dusting those
thrones and the Prince tells her how sweetysweet she is and that
Zeerooty so bominable which is the true--I could put no blame on him
for that. He wants to marry Dolly instead of me and her young heart
beats for him alone. Then I, which is Zeerooty come on and catch
them in their actions. I stamp and yell so fierce all the court rush
there with scares of fire. Zeerooty demands to have the Noble Prince
boiled in oil with chilly sauce, mean old thing that I am! The King
answers boiling a guest would be inhospittable and no good form and
make war with his parents but to our lowest dunjun let him go until
he can love Zeerooty and he is halled off by the Cruel Jailor while
Dolly weeps into her hanky.
After that things are truly awfuller than they can be Dolly tries
to rescew the Noble Prince and gets caught and dunjuned herself by
the cruel Jailer, so it looks like all is over with the lovery pair.
But the Cruel Jailer gets a tender spot in his tough breast and the
Wicked Witch falls into her own kettle and then her spells don’t work
and Zeerooty is found out to be the Wrong Princess and Dolly the
Right One. Dolly is let to marry the Noble Prince of the Long Feather
and Zeerooty is put out the castle gate scratching firce all the
Hop-livelys who got the job to reject her and screeching swears of
“Zounds! Zounds!” like the cat vickson she is to the last and no lady!
When she finished reading, my used-to-be chum actually asked if my
part wasn’t just grand? I felt as a volcano when it is volcanoizing.
I told her my opinion of that despizable old black snubbish Zeerooty
mean as mud. I asked her what sort of mad she had kept hid away in
her heart all our months of being chums that she could make me such
a part to slap Dollys in her play and saucy mothers and kick fathers
and boil princes like a cannible heathen?
Dolly just laughed and said Zeerooty was dandy and a real actress
would know her for a splendid part.
I answered I was awear that while I might be Dago black and lean
like broomsticks and used to be a slapper when I came, I was one no
more but had learned better in this school where my Mother put me
for such manners not to stay on me any more as the manners of that
Zeerooty whom I hated and detested and bominated like a poison weed
and never would I play myself to be her!
Then Dolly got mad at me like I already was at her, only she had no
cause as she can ask her consceince and let it tell her what she did
first to me--not counting that way-back slap.
Dolly exclaimed that genius never gets its dews this side of the
silentomb, so she don’t expect it, but to think I could take such an
ignoranty pursonal view of Zeerooty. She asked if after she wrote
special for me that almost starry part did I really refuse to be it?
I answered “Yes, I refuse forever and ever and all the time after
that to be Zeerooty.” Dolly said “This breaks the chain which binds
us” and I spoke back that chain to be already busted when she read
me about that mean slapping Zeerooty thing she wrote to put me into.
Dolly answered she would never never speak to me again and I told her
I would not to her in all my long life and we both cried on our beds.
When we must get up to undress, Dolly took off the nugget bracelet I
gave her Christmas and put it on my bureau and me the same on hers
with the silver candlestick she gave me.
So now I lost my chum all on account of that Zeerooty. I never
expected to slap any girl again but I would Zeerooty if she were only
in the world to receive my slap. And I won’t play her! I won’t! I
won’t! I wont!
Your mad and Sorry
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angel Mother All I Got_,
It is now three days that Dolly and I don’t speak any more than
frozen icicles and I most wish I was one to fall down and break
into little pieces and be finished. My heart is so heavy, it’s like
carrying the coal-hod at the asylum to get upstairs with it to my
room. Dolly and I both got the proudness not to tell what our mad is
about so the other girls guess much but know nothing.
O Mother, if I had never been born, what troubles I would have
missed, most of all this cold mad lonesome to be a deafndumb with
Dolly studying on her side of our room a deafndumb also, and she my
used-to-be-dearest next to you.
If Dolly would only say she is sorry she wrote that Zeerooty on me I
could forgive her in a minute, but she never will. And I don’t blame
Dolly, Mother, as I do Zeerooty her own self. You know how Dolly told
that those characters would fuss back at her and dicktate how they
wanted to be fixed. Dolly is ever a quick forgiver and never would
have thought to stick in that blow for all the girls to remember me
as I was in my slapping days if Zeerooty has not hipnotized her to
do it.
But now she has chozen between me and that Zeerooty whom she loves
like a mother her bad child to think all its meanness darling and
cute. She cannot see me write in this letter “Dear Dolly, take me and
not your old Zeerooty,” but I wouldn’t say it to her out loud, not
for the big round world in my pocket. Goodbye my Dolly chum, I hope
Zeerooty makes you happy you don’t look happy though, but sorry and
frozeup same as me.
I feel my cry is coming Mother, and I must get to bed quick and sqush
it in the pillow for Dolly not to hear. I’m glad you are not a chum
to bandon me for some old Zeerooty. Mothers are just the one thing in
the world you can always keep unless God takes them up to Heaven.
Goodnight truest and darlingist,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Treasure Mother_,
A real lady actress, friend to the Principal, came and performed like
Lady Macbeth in Assembly this afternoon just for us girls. I was
so blue I didn’t want to go but we all must. She was dressed very
curious and talked for her husband Mr. Macbeth also just as I used
to for my doll only she made her voice big instead of little. He
wanted to be king as the witches proffyside but he had some feelings
not to kill the nice gentle old really truly king come to visit him
like an uncle and explained how murdering your company is not good
form. I guess Lady Macbeth’s first name must begin with Z. O Mother,
I shook till it squeeked the seat when she dared him and called him
old fraidcat. Of course he didn’t have to mind her but a wife ought
to keep her husband out of meanness all she can and not put him up to
more like Lady Macbeth.
I was sure that actress lady must be very bad by nature to look
like that out of her eyes and dangerous, ever full of meanness to do
somebody. I wondered how our dear Principal could stand her for a
friend.
When she came in the reception room after she had acted I did not
know her in a tailor suit and smiling sweet, not a bit like that Lady
Macbeth. I was standing close by the Principal and my astonish jumped
right out of me to say how she looked not mean but a lovely lady. The
Principal laughed and told how good that actress is to her little
brothers and orphans and beggars and adored by all.
O the Principal made me most die of mortifide to lead me to the
actress lady and introdoose me by telling right out loud my thinks of
her. But she was so Heavenly tackfull Mother, that by and by I could
ask her the question sticking right out of my soul to be asked--how
she could act herself into a mean one like Lady Macbeth whom she must
ever hate and put on her looks and ways for all persons to detest
and not love.
When she was gone I ran quick upstairs with my heart no more like
coal hods. There sat Dolly on her side writing like crazy in her
play notebook. I never thought not to speak first and I cried out,
“O Dolly, it is the duty of my face to be a picture of Zeerooty’s
face and my voice to sound like hers and my actions to be same as her
actions to show the audients what Zeerooty is like and not what I am
like which does not count at such a time. What a silly I was--all
ignoranty and pursynal like you said--so please forgive and I will
play Zeerooty dandy as I can.”
Dolly looked up awful sweet out of her writing and answered, “No,
Giovanna, you had the right to hate Zeerooty because that actress
explained it to be the smartness of Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth
to have some good feelings mixed in with her badness and those
repentants in her sleep and to be no monster. My Zeerooty was a
fusser and a scowler and a screecher every minute which is to be a
monster. I’m glad you hated her; she is now detestable to me the
same, so here I sit writing some good feelings and repentants into
her.”
I asked “Shall Zeerooty walk in my sleep?” and she answered she would
be no copycat to Shakespeare but ever origynal and make me into a nun
at the last instead of a scratcher of Hop-livelys.
Then I remembered what my real maddest mad was about, only it was
so good to be speaking with my Dolly chum again I didn’t much care,
but I just asked, “Dolly, would it be the same with you if Zeerooty
should pull your hair instead of slap, for the girls to not remember
my dreadful scandle of slapping you during my first dinner in this
school?”
O Mother, Dolly had forgotten all about that slap or she never would
have put it in her play and she begged please forgive. We hugged and
kissed like crazy and went down to dinner with our arms around as
always. I am so happy I love even poor old naughty Zeerooty.
Your devoted daughter
The Wrong Princess.
GIOVANNA’S COMMENCEMENT
_O Mother Dear_,
Such high sky cheer but feelings queer rezembling fear though love
burns clear to know that we’re so close and near.
Why I almost made a sonnut! I must be catching poetry off Dolly’s
Muse. A Muse, Mother, is a ghosty person only not made of fog and
clam like a real ghost but just of air. It hawnts round waiting to
help you write poetry but you got to be a true genius first. No
other girl in this school has a Muse except Dolly and I don’t mind
it hawnting in our room because all it does is to keep the poetry
stirred up in Dolly’s soul.
This is not a real letter for the post office or for you to read
ever, but just scribble in the back of my composition book which
cannot be dissybedient now the term is over all but fun and exes.
Dolly down in the studyroom crams and crams till she daresent talk
for fear of losing something out of her mind. I am writing this
sortof letter just to keep myself out of crazyness while I wait alone
in my room the long, long, long hours before you come. My imaginer
can see you in the cars this minute. You seem to be looking out of
the window and I wonder if you got little thinks of your Giovanna
waiting here. On the seat by your side is some big package of my
surprise for which you did not wish me to meet you at the train,
but please I don’t need that surprise--just you! you! you! Since
receiving your letter, the big school clock has ever ticked “Mother’s
coming! Mother’s coming!” till I wrote it all round the edge of my
music book when I never knew I did.
I want you to come so bad I can hardly live and yet--O Dearest, all
the corners of my soul are full of scares. I stare in the mirror
until Dolly tells I am getting vanity on myself, but it is my wonder,
wonder what my looks and ways will be to you. I hope you do not
forget how Dago black I am and have dizzypoint in me for that. And my
manners--I have not worn them so long as the other girls--sometimes I
lose them off when I am embearest or forget.
Let’s count me up together, Mother, now before you come. I’m
bigger--that’s by the grace of God as the preacher says. I wear the
clothes of grandeur--that’s by the grace of your love. I am a teeny
smarter in my head--that’s by the grace of my teachers.
Spelling is still my ennemy. I don’t see why God made so many ways to
spell words and then only put one way in the Dictionery which He must
have written like the Bible and Encyclopedia since too big for any
person to write in his long life.
Fractions are mean too and I hate them! What is the good to divide
units in all those stingey parts which the denommynator shows how
many and the numerator what you give each person? Fractions is how
they used to cut the pie at the asylum on Saturday. If it wasn’t
for fractions there would be no poors in this world for everybody
would have good and plenty of all things. O Darlingest, there is no
numerator and denommynator between you and me; you are my entire
Mother instead of 1-90 of a matron I used to have.
And deffynitions are what Dolly calls my pon sassy norum which is
Latin for the hardest ever. I could not remember moonshiner away from
honeymoon till Dolly explained which one makes whisky on the still
and which one is two going off alone after the wedding on a journey
away from all encumbrants. They are still romantics and just hate to
have anybody close except themselves, especially children big enough
to be obzervant. Dolly learned that last outside of the book.
I was sure, Mother, I had scribbled away this whole hour and when I
saw it to be only half gone, I shook my little watch and then kissed
it to forgive me.
It is Commencement Week in this school and with me the same because
I commence to live by your side. I wonder if I will ever acheeve
the Senior kind to wear a graduated dress and make a grand bow
(down, head, neck and chest; up chest, neck and head) to receive my
dipploma tied with blue ribbon and you in the front row quite an
old lady (though plenty young now) for all the grades and classes I
must get promoted through. Dolly is a Freshy which is to be despized
by Seniors, but anyway Freshies have class things like a yell, a
color, and a spirit, while the grades have not and so are despized by
Freshies the same.
Mother, so near, so near.... O O I believe there comes the maid to
call me downstairs....
* * * * *
Sweet Mother dear did wait below, and I to talk with her did go, but
acted like when I was young, they used to say “Cat’s got your tongue.”
O Muse, go way and let me alone! Can’t you see I’m too miserable to
fool with poetry? Go and hawnt Dolly down in the study-room; only
you’ll find she’s dreadfully busy cramming math and she won’t bother
with you either; she’s got real troubles same as me--not the fancy
poetical kind!
Please excuse me, Muse, to be so cross and rude, but it’s real
aggervating of you when i’m just writing down my woe in this same old
composition book and you change it into doggyrells which is all the
kind you can unwind in me since I am no genius like my Dolly chum. I
suppose it’s missing her makes you try to poetize me. Now be good
and you may look over my shoulder though the Principal says for that
not to be polite.
I shook some as I opened the reception room door and there was
Mother, grander and wonderfuller than even my remembers. She met me
on the first oriental rug and hugged me in her arms and kissed my
cheeks and I was Heavenly happy.
But Odear! my orgins of speech wouldn’t act hardly at all. A teacher
says we are full of orgins--not the music kind which would be nicer
only I guess we wouldn’t stay in tune and then how bad we would
sound up to God. Mother sat down and me too just like any other
time to sit in a chair. O it was so funny and gloryous to have her
close like that, it got me awful dazzled up and all I could talk was
“Yes, Mother,” “No, Mother” like some silly doll when you pull its
string. Why didn’t you come down stairs Muse, and hawnt some poetry
into me--even that would have been better than “Yes, Mother,” “No,
Mother” every minute.
My orgin of thought worked right along but of course Mother couldn’t
hear it. When she asked was I in a hurry for my surprise I said
outside “No, Mother,” but my think spoke “Before you came, Dearest,
my soul was boiling over with hurry like a teakettle but by your side
I got no hurry in the big world.”
Mother asked didn’t I wish I had a father and I answered “No, Mother”
but my think exclaimed: “For the stupid I am, Mother Dear must
take up any question she can, like some tackfull lady talking to a
nidiot.” I felt so mortified I was almost some glad when she kissed
me goodbye on the red rug in the hall. O all the night I dreamed and
dreamed that first visit and the words we were going to speak, Mother
to me and me to Mother! O dear! O dear! O dear!
Come hawnt me, O Muse, if you want to, for Mother Sweet was just
sitting in that chair by the table right in this room, mine and
Dolly’s. It is evening but it seemed as if the sun shone in all the
windows at once!
Mother said “Here I am again, now don’t be so diffydent and sollum.”
My thinks hollered that I wouldn’t but “No, Mother,” was all I could
speak and there I was the same chumpy nidiot of the afternoon.
Mother laughed. O Musie, her laugh rezembles Men--somebody’s “Spring
Song” which Dolly ever plays on the piano for company, only Mother
tinklies softer and more sweet.
Then she wanted to see my “Girl’s School Memory Book” and I sat close
on my stool of putting on shoes to explain all with gladness, since
its writings and pasteings were done for her precious eyes. I got
my tongue back from the cat and talked and talked and talked--now, O
Muse, what do you think of that?
When the book was finished, Mother meddytated to herself. By and by
I put a little kiss to her hand and it fell on her rings, a diamond
solitary and another unfancy, “Daughter,” she said, “I love those
rings better than my fingers.” She meddytated some more while little
watch on top of my heart ticked “Mother’s here! Mother’s here!”
Pretty soon she sortof waked herself up and said, “Giovanna, when you
have a Mother and no father, you are still half of an orphan.”
I told her, “I don’t feel the least bit halffy, Mother, but so
wrapped all round by your love there isn’t any chilly side to my
soul!”
She spoke how splendid for me to own a father like Dolly and the
other girls.
I answered: “No thank you, please, because a father would divide our
loves and so bring fractions into our family, now a Heavenly unit of
you and me.”
I remembered her asking me in the reception room about wanting a
father and now I understood it was not just for tackfull but for
really truly. All my time as her daughter it has been her angelical
wish for me nevermore to see other girls with any pretty and me not.
I asked her, “If he is my father, mustn’t that make him your weddy
husband?”
“Yes,” answered Mother, and blushed as any really lady must all times
do when talk is about their husbands and they have none.
Then we meddytated some more and I thought how every man in the big
world who sees Mother must wish he could have her for his weddy wife
to sit forever by his side.
O Muse, I was afraid not to be respeckfull if I talked more to Mother
on that blushy subject, but she asked me for my thinks so I spoke
them out.
“Mother, he mightn’t suit you the leastest bit and perhaps you don’t
care for husbands anyways so please don’t trouble yourself since you
are to me plenty of parents.”
The Principal says there isn’t any joy like selfsacryfice and that
is the true, for Mother’s face was just angel shiney with happiness
to think of providing me to a father which she got to stand his long
life as an old weddy husband always round in her way.
She just tinklied some more laugh and told me I could come tomorrow
to her room at the hotel and receive my grand surprise. Then she went
away. Goodnight, O Dolly’s Muse.
* * * * *
_Precious, Funny, Darling Mother_,
It seems like the night of day after tomorrow but it isn’t it’s the
same evening tied right on to the same day of the afternoon I went
to receive my surprise. O I must write all down here quick, quick or
I will believe it to be just some perhaps I made up with myself and
it isn’t--it’s the true--the great big wonderful gloryous true! This
time I got to write it like a letter to you, Mother, as I so long
have the habit and not to any Muse of slim air. Anyway Musie is busy
this evening wispering a class song into Dolly.
In your room waited a big tall high bundle like no other in the whole
world tied round and round with white paper and white ribbon.
I cried out was it a statyou to stand in my room and you said a
little like that.
I asked was it a Pollo, god of handsome looks? You said better than a
Pollo, and the bundle shook as if wind was blowing it. I pulled some
paper off and there was cloth like a coat and I said I was glad for
my statyou to not be cold and pitiful like the Pollo of the Museum
seemed when I put my hand on him. That bundle shook more like mice
running up and down inside the paper and I felt creepyfied but I
pulled again and there was the real hand of a man.
I shreeked it was a burglar and ran away to you and shook and shook
but you laughed and said “Goosey, would I bring you a burglar for a
present?”
“O! O! O!” I screamed, “It’s my new father!” But I couldn’t pull any
more paper off him for shakes, so he did himself and stood there, a
big, grand, fine, dandy, shiverlrous gentleman! I said “Thank you,
Mother for this nice father which is handsomer than Dolly’s or a
Pollo but don’t make trouble to yourself just on account of me--does
he suit you for a weddy husband?”
How you both laughed and ran together and hugged and laughed like
anything and explained you were already married and having your
honeymoons!
[Illustration: “I pulled again and there was the real hand
of a man” Page 156]
O and then my happiness got an awful bumpy ripple when I had quick
remembers of Dolly explaining how honeymooners are romantic solitarys
with their worst hate on children old enough to be obzervant.
I ran and looked out of the window and twinkled my eyes hard not to
cry. I stared at a girl walking with a blue parrysol and I had awful
jealous feelings to be just an old rag doll adoption out of an asylum
and now not wanted by you any more. I had those feelings while that
girl passed by seven lamp posts and then I saw what a mean, selfish,
horrid, piggy thing I was, not to like you to be a romantic and have
such happy looks on you as I never saw there before!
Then you and Daddy hugged me on both sides and asked what was my
sadness and I was ashamed but must tell with all those coaxes and
you both said this wasn’t any Dolly deffynition kind of honeymoon
but you two wanted it all trimmed up with children. For that we are
going next week to a cottage by the same lake where the orphans stay
in a big camp with the money out of the kind old gentleman’s hat at
Christmas. And Daddy says in its turn of ten at once every orphan
gets a ride in his gassylean launch on the lake.
I can’t hardly believe yet that Isabella is to come for her vacation
from the school where she was put by the will of her deadngone
Bennyfactor and that Dolly is to visit for a month and my Italian
cousins out of their tenement. Joy! joy! joy! joy!
O! O! O! and Daddy Dear took a dockument out of his pocket about you
and him adopting me leegully for all my life! That dockument is my
dipploma to be graduated out of the orphan school; only I made no
down-head, up-chest bow but plenty of hugs to you and Daddy Dear
instead.
O and he don’t bring fractions in our family and divide our loves
as I was afraid! It was before he came we were fractionary but now
complete. And my love for him is not cut off my love for you but is
new by itself.
This is my last blank page, but I don’t need any more because now I’m
all finished up like a once-on-a-time story in my green fairy book to
“live happy ever after” with my adored parents. Amen! Amen! Amen!
Giovanna.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences were added.
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. Misspelled words were not corrected.
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