had a brogue you
could scrape with a knife and an "O" before his name you could hoop a
hogshead with. "And that woman," exclaimed Aunt Martha, when she was
under full sail, "that woman, because she has two bookcases in the front
room and reads the book-reviews in the _Delineator_, thinks that she is
cultured. When her folks first came to town they were as poor as Job's
turkey, which was not to their discredit--everyone was poor in those
days. The old man Neal was as honest an old Mick as you'd meet in a
day's journey, or at a fair, and he used to run a lemonade and peanut
stand down by the bank corner. But his girls, who were raised on it,
until they began teaching school, used to refer to the peanut stand as
'papa's hobby,' pretend that he only ran it for recreation, and say:
'Now _why_ do you suppose papa enjoys it?--We just can't get him to give
it up!' And now Julia is president of the Woman's Federation, has
stomach trouble, has had two operations, and is suffering untold agonies
with acute culturitis. And yet," Aunt Martha would say through a
beatific smile, "she's a good-enough woman in many ways, and I wouldn't
say anything against her for the world."

Once Miss Larrabee, the society editor, brought back this from a visit
to Aunt Martha: "I know, my dear, that your paper says there are no
cliques and crowds in society in this town, and that it is so
democratic. But you and I know the truth. We know about society in this
town. We know that if there ever was a town that looked like a side of
bacon--streak of lean and streak of fat all the way down--it is this
blessed place. Crowds?--why, I've lived here over fifty years and it was
always crowds. 'Way back in the days when the boys used to pick us up
and carry us across Elm Creek when we went to dances, there were crowds.
The girls who crossed on the boys' backs weren't considered quite proper
by the girls who were carried over in the boys' arms. And they didn't
dance in the same set."

Miss Larrabee says she looked into the elder woman's eyes to find which
crowd Aunt Martha belonged to, when she flashed out:

"Oh, child, you needn't look at me--I did both; it depended on who was
looking! But, as I was saying, if anyone knows about society in this
town, I do. I went to every dance in town for the first twenty-five
years, and I have made potato salad to pay the salary of every Methodist
preacher for the past thirty years, and I ought to know what I'm talking
abou