The Delaware ledger., 1883-09-22
Sis Browns Fortune.

To begin with, am a young person
with big bones and plenty of them
and l don't care button if my hair is
red have good reason to know that
| am not considerable beautiful; that
my nose, for instance-but there's
really no need for such distressing de-
tails.
My father, Peter Brown-the best
farmer living in all Fairfax, be the
dead one whom he may-is the unfor-
tunate possessor of thirteen children,
every single one of them girls-and the
married ones, too, for that matter OF
course, girls are all very well as far as
they go, but one gets too much of
good thing sometimes, and SO when
poor pa takes a notion to upbraid fate
because all his boys turned out girls, |
must say rebel against the decree that
condemns me to slavish frocks and
frizzes. Most good folks sing out that
they want to carry harps and be angels,
but I-if only l were Peter Brown,
junior, and had farm like pa don't
blame ma, Of course, but l really do
think the even dozen ought to have
contented her-and, what's more, l
say, 80, when pa and 1 get beyond the
subduing influence of her eye--for
there's nothing trifing about mas eye !
When pa and mas love was young,
and their future a rose-colored rose
there I've heard pa say il dozen
times, but when a girl happens to be
shackled with memory like bey's
pocket upside down and the middle
nowhere, and got that memory from
her ma, suppose there's to be allow
ances-anyhow, the first girls got the
benefit of it all in the way of mugs and
coral, and names as fine as fddles then
there came such disastrous lull in pas
enthusiasm that ma says, when he
painted up from the fields one hot noon
and found out dear old twins waiting,
instead of his dinner, it set him so fran
tic that he threatened to bunch the
whole family together like string of
fish and do dark and desperate deed.
But ma just kept on having her own
way-which means girls until by the
time she wound up the home circle
with meat your service--she had so
worn her intellect down at the heels
thinking up double-barreled names for
the other dozen, that she handed my
christening over to pa, and pa ever
lastingly disgraced himself, in my esti-
nation, by heartlessly calling me Sis
absolutely nothing but Sis.
If had been boy this indignity, at
least--bHt there are some wrongs SO
great that the only thing one can con-
veniently do is to forgive them But,
though pa has been cheated of his
bishops and senators and things (pooI
dear, he never dreams that sons of his
might have turned out farmers like
himself, only not half so good) the girls
have certainly made up his loss il
husbands. Indeed, pa seems to have
more sons-in-law than he knows quite
what to do with-and as to sgrand
sons
"If one could only feed then
like chickens l' sighs poor ma plain
lively.
After that little business talk pa ant
had behind the barn I've settled il
my mind that the Browns have got t
economic, and l mean to start wit
the grand children by way of a nobl
beginning.
snow look here, ma," 1 say to tn
dear old soul who is already swearing a
me with big anxious eyes, like he
with her feathers ruflled, "this thin
has gone on long enough, and jus
mean to hitch old Calico to the car
and dump every scrap of grandchild q
his own lawful door-I do It's dowI
right mean in the girls to impose o
us in this everlasting way-as if theI
wasn't work enough of our ow
l -
"There, there, SIS" interrupts mi
: pathetically, ''they only mean to plea,
4 pa
Sand nice way they take to do il
, PAS an old man now, and after pincl
ing and shaving all his live for us arm
of girls, what right have they to ket
him pinching and shaving to the last
L Oh, you needn't look at me like tina
ma, dear; children, like good ma
It ners, ought to be found at home-t
d you, Tom, Dick, Harry, etc., etc.
, and when at last l have packed the
d in the wheezy old cart, and we
10 laughing, scratching and squallil
p down the road, / feel like t
if pied piper of Hamelin, only thert
no hill with wide; greedy jaws, wa