The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-03-06

fairy godmother has been good and lasting.
Few men will be less than kind to an inof-
fensive old woman. Some who are the re-
verse Of generous would not turn one away
empty handed lest in doing so they turn
away good luck
A. T. Stewards 'sAIascotte" was an old
woman in charge of a fruit stand. She estab-
Hshed herself near him in the early days Of
his down town store, and when he movedup
town he not only asked her to follow him,
but he moved her stand for her and did
all he could to make her comfortable in her
new quarters. Tie story is that he carried
part of her establishment with his own hands,
firmly believing that she brought him luck
When the great money maker died, and the
management of his house was changed, the
apple woman vanished, and so did the
luck
A successful and presumably practical
business man showed me a shabby old wo-
man in charge of a still shabbier fruit stand
few doors from his place of business, and
said: ri have bought something of that wo-
man every day I have passed her for five
years and I never yet got anything 1 could
eat. Her apples are the meanest, her oranges
the bitterest, her bananas the staiest ever
found anywhere under the sun. Why do
patronize her? Well, honestly. I scarcely
know. Habit, I guess I feel as though L
had quarreled with myself if didn't; and
then, don't believe money dribbled out to
such people is thrown away after all. be-
lieve it helps the one that gives as much as
it does the one who receives"
And that explanation may probably do
for many other customers.
1t is, perhaps, superfuous to say that the
apple woman is invariably of Irish birth or
parentage. She is not ambitious for her.
self, but she is for her children. She sends
them to school, and they are soon far in
advance of her, intellectually and socially.
Her sons, not infrequently, are filling offices
of honor and profit; her daughters marry
"well off in the world, " and wear sealskin
and velvet. But she never changes. She is
intellectually as stationary as her stand.
The Italian fruit vender does not educate
his children. From the moment they are
able to toddle and count money they are
helping him to make living. This enables
him to vanquish his female rival, but it does
not make him an ornament to society. -
The apple-women are sometimes what they
call erich" They own houses and have in
and more than enough to maintain them
comfortably all their lives, but they refuse
to be divorced from their beloved business.
1t is their ife their only congenial atmos-
phere. If removed to palace they would
die of homesickness for the sidewalk. Their
prosperous sons beg them in vain to retire to
private life. Often their obstinate persis-
tence in this lowly calling is a continued
thorn in the flesh of their ambitious and sue
cessful full-grown children. Whatever ma
teriaI wealth they have acquired is not the
result of large profits, but Of close economy,
rigid seIf-denia1 and eternal industry.
In Washington market one finds the best
type of female fruit seller, as well as isolated
instances of the worst. Those within the
market are mostly we'll to-do, and sometimes
good-looking and clearly dressed. They
partake Of the business energy of the place.
On the outskirts, sitting beside barrels with
boards over them, clad in mean and ragged
garments, are some of the old and departing
type of fruit women. The original of Har-
rigan and Harris Mrs. McSorley is there, the
most withered, tattered. dirty and dolorous
specimen of womankind that eyes ever
looked upon. If I could describe her as I
saw her on one of the warm days in Septem-
Der no one would believe that the description
was not exaggerated Her stand contained
about two dozen of the most dwarfed and
distorted peaches that ever grew, in the later
stages Of decay. Her face is bronzed and
wrinkled and grown almost outof semblance
to a woman's face. Her small grey eyes
peer out from under shaggy white
eyebrows, weird and witch-like. Her
clothing seemed to be a dismal and
dirty combination of mems coats and
women's skirts, that had formerly served
as mop rags. Her head wear was
piece Of bagging, tied on sunbonnet fashion,
and of the color of New York mud. She
held the fragments of an umbrella over her,
and part of her head stuck out through the
top. There she sat and dozed in the blazing
sun, not on the sidewalk, but on the street.
Teams were driven around her as carefully
as the crowded condition of the thorough
fare permitted. She has been a figure Of
Washington market since she was girl Of
IS. fair and fresh and spirited as any of
them, though tits hard to believe, looking at
her now-she is nearly 20. Where
she gets her meagre assortment of damaged
fruit could not learn. Who buys it Icannot
imagine A young journalist told me he
had seen her almost every day for five years,
and never saw any one buy cents worth
from her. He occasionally patronized her
to the extent of nickel, for sweet charity's
sake, and threw the fruit in the gutter as
soon as he was out of sight.
Some artist ought to imnortalize this re-
markable relic of a fast-going class before
she passes from the sight of men. There
will never be another like her.
Mrs. McSorley is the only one of her tribe
who has grown thin and withered sitting
through years of sun and rain. They are
usually doomed to fatness and their faces
grow redder and redder as their years and
wealth increase.
Contentment with her life is one of the
characteristics of the fruit-selling woman.
Content, indeed! She's perfectly happy.
She wouldn't exchange her place behind her
small merchandise for anything on earth.
1t is the point of observation from which
she looks out upon the panorama of life as
it rolls necessarily past. She usually wears
an expression OF detection, or at least sub
mission to hard fate; but it's a mere mask
put on to play upon the sympathies of the
unwary, if, indeed, there be such mortals as
the unWary in this big Babel, where to ex-