root in the swamps
and sands of the Wolverine State may seem surprising at the first
glance, but let the second rest upon our environment--the absence of
mountain or swift-flowing river, the presence of fever and ague and
half-burnt pine woods--and it will be seen that this Eastern lore with
its embarrassment of symbols supplies a long-felt want to starving
imagination. We of the West are forever reaching beyond our grasp, have
intelligence and perception, but lack the culture necessary for
discrimination, and therefore the romantic souls among us who rise above
the rampant materialism of the majority go to the other extreme, and
hail with enthusiasm the new-old religion.

"It's better to believe too much than too little, but you theosophists
swallow an awful lot," I say to Belle when she tries to convert me.

I am well aware that many of my fellow-citizens consider me a subject
for commiseration because I have lived for twenty years with so erratic
a house-mate, for I have not deemed it necessary to explain to them that
without the stimulus of her enlivening spirit, without the element of
surprise constantly contributed by my wife's love of variety, the daily
life, and therefore the daily paper, of their favorite editor would
partake of that flatness which is the predominant characteristic of this
western part of the State of Michigan.

Our four sons and two daughters enjoy their mother fully as much as I
do, for is she not the most fascinating romancer they ever knew? Now
that they are all of an age to be attending school and looking out for
themselves, after the manner of independent young Americans, they
require from her nothing but sympathy, for their grandmother sews their
buttons on. Grandma!--Ay, there's the rub.

I have no hesitation in owning that I am Scotch by birth. My mother left
her native land to make her home with us entirely too late in life to
allow Western ideas regarding Sabbath observance, the rearing of
children, or the amount of respect due to the opinion of elders, to
become ingrafted upon Scottish prejudice concerning these matters.

Mrs. Gemmell Senior has, however, the national peculiarity of judging
"blood thicker than water," and whatever her convictions may be
concerning the methods of Mrs. Gemmell Junior, she restricts the
expression of them to our family circle--in fact, I may say, to myself.
She generally seizes me when I lie at my ease on the well-worn lounge in
our sitting room,