The Project Gutenberg eBook, Paste Jewels, by John Kendrick Bangs
(#7 in our series by John Kendrick Bangs)

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Title: Paste Jewels

Author: John Kendrick Bangs

Release Date: November 20, 2004 [eBook #4930]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASTE JEWELS***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
1897 Harper and Brothers edition.

PASTE JEWELS

PREFACE

It may interest the readers of this collection of tales, if there
should be any such, to know that the incidents upon which the
stories are based are unfortunately wholly truthful. They have one
and all come under the author's observation during the past ten
years, and with the exception of "Mr. Bradley's Jewel," concerning
whom it is expressly stated that she was employed through lack of
other available material, not one of the servants herein made famous
or infamous, as the case may be, was employed except upon
presentation of references written by responsible persons that could
properly have been given only to domestics of the most sterling
character. It is this last fact that points the moral of the tales
here presented, if it does not adorn them.

J. K. B.

THE EMANCIPATION OF THADDEUS

They were very young, and possibly too amiable. Thaddeus was but
twenty-four and Bessie twenty-two when they twain, made one, walked
down the middle aisle of St. Peter's together.

Everybody remarked how amiable she looked even then; not that a
bride on her way out of church should look unamiable, of course, but
we all know how brides do look, as a rule, on such occasions--looks
difficult of analysis, but strangely suggestive of determined
timidity, if there can be such a quality expressed in the human
face. It is the natural expression of one who knows that she has
taken the most important step of her life, and, on turning to face
those who have been bidden to witness the ceremony, observes that
the sacredness of the occasion is somewhat marred by the presence in
church of the unbidden curiosity-seekers, who have come for much the
same reason as that which prompts them to go to the theatre--to