istic
fashion. The pretty, woolly-brained girl had with smiling satisfaction
presented me with a curious structure of perforated cardboard and gilt
paper, intended to catch flies. Its fragility may be imagined from the
fact that it broke twice before I got it back into its box; still there
was, I am sure, not another girl in Cleveland who could have found for
sale a fly-trap at Christmas time.

The straightforward one had presented me with an expensively repellent
gift in the form of a brown earthenware jug, a cross between a Mexican
idol and a pitcher. A hideous thing, calculated to frighten children or
sober drunken men. I know I should have nearly died of thirst before I
could have forced myself to swallow a drop of liquid coming from that
horrible interior.

Semantha was nervous and silent, and the performance was well on before
she caught me alone, out in a dark passageway. Then she began as she
always did when excited, with: "Clara, now Clara, you know I told my
vater of you, for dat you were goot to me, und he say, vat he alvays
say--not'ing. Dat day I come tell you vat his work vas, I vent home und
I say, 'Vater Waacker, I told my fraeulein you made your livin' in de
tombstone yard,' und he say, quvick like, 'Vell,'--you know my vater no
speak ver goot English" (Semantha's own English was weakening
fast),--"'vell, I s'pose she make some big fool laugh, den, like
everybodies, eh?' Und I say, 'No, she don't laugh! de lips curdle a
little'" (curdle was Semantha's own word for tremble or quiver. If she
shivered even with cold, she curdled with cold), "'but she don't laugh,
und she say, "It vas the best trade in de vorldt for you, 'cause it must
be satisfactions to you to work all day long on somebody's tombstone."'"

"Oh, Semantha!" I cried, "why did you tell him that?"

"But vy not?" asked the girl, innocently. "Und he look at me hard, und
his mouth curdle, und den he trow back his head und he laugh, pig
laughs, und stamp de feet und say over und over, 'Mein Gott! mein Gott!
satisfackshuns ter vurk on somebody's tombstones--_some_body's. Und she
don't laugh at my vurk, nieder, eh? Vell, vell! dat fraeulein she tinks
sometings! Say, Semantha, don't it dat you like a Kriss-Krihgle present
to make to her, eh?' Und I say, dat very week, dere have to be new shoes
for all de kinder, und not vun penny vill be left. Und he shlap me my
back, une! say, 'Never mindt, I'll make him,' und so he did, und here
it is," thrusti