The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1889-12-13
THE DONATION PARTY.
Surprising the Clergyman in the
Rural Districts.

Rural Districts.
Pork sausages and Pincushions for a
Dyspeptic Dominie-But the Boys
and Girls Had Good Time
All the Same.
The season opened with regular old
fashioned donation where the people be-
stow generous gifts of garden sass"
and maple sugar, frosted cake and saus-
ages to the minister who has the worst
kind of indigestion from long surfeiting
on such delicacies, and where the sisters
take pieced quilts and pincushions to
the minister's wife who hasn't had new
dress since war time. The deacon bitches
up the team as soon as millzin' is over
| and loads a broadside of pork and a
bushel of potatoes and all the children
in the farm wagon, while his wife
chambers unassisted up on the high seat
and makes herself comfortable with the
baby and pumpkin pie in her lap, and
away they come humping and bouncing
through the crisp frosty air, getting up
smart appetites for the supper
the good sisters will prepare, and
the sturdy, red checked country
lads pick up their sweethearts and
all their sweetheart's friends, to the
number of half score apiece, and
hasten to the merrymaking. How sur
prised the pale minister is when they all
walk in, though half dozen sisters have
talked to him mysteriously of it's being
their usual custom to give their pastor a
surprise after harvestin', and the master
of ceremonies, little gnarled old cob
Ser of the crab-apple species, had in
timated to the minister ''that he might
be wanted to hum that evenin'." How
the pink-cheeked lasses futter into the
square chamber" to take off their
wrappings and to shake out their bright
dresses and tie their soft tresses with
snoods of blue and crimson, and the
weary farmers wives tramp laboriously
up after them to take off their bonnets
and smooth down their hair against
their tired faces. They haven't had
good time since they can remember, and
haven't stopped working for two con-
secutive days, except when the chill
dren came, since they were married.
Some of them have heavy babies on
their shoulders, and they all have
worked all day and will work all the
evening to get the supper ready. The
''men folks come later (they seldom go
with their wives), and stay in the
kitchen talking about the weather and
the crops.
''Oh, DEAR" says vivacious little viii
lage woman in a garnet silk dress, with
plush band down the side, ''there
those men are all together again. You'd
think every last one of them had parted
from his wife. Even at party, if you
don't watch 'em every minute, they all
get in one room and the women in the
other" The minister's wife looks as if
she had been brought up on salt pork
and johnny cake, and had never had any
thing really new made for her or with
enough cloth in it since she was married.
Her thin, scanty hair is combed up high
and twisted into a tight little knot, and
her hard, rough hands are folded over
her skinny little overdress in awkward
and unaccustomed idleness, but the min
ister's broadcloth is as sleek and his lin
en- as snowy as hands can make it. She
is nervous, worried and restless; he is
complacent, dignified and calm, because
he knows that she will arrange every
thing all properly; and so she does after
little. In the tiny parlor where one
dismal kerosene lamp shines dimly upon
the solemn scene and tintypes of depart
ed friends look severely down from their
frames upon any attempt at converse
ton, the mothers in Israel and the wom-
en- with the smallest babies sit in silent
| row about the room and the minister's
wife stays here, too, though she would
like to go out in the other room where
the young married women have
managed to entice two men and are
making merry at their expense. In the
doorway sits the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, with the 'ris'b bands of his blue
bingham shirt despoiling the dignity of
the white bosom and collar donned for
the occasion, laboriously writing with a
blunt little pencil in a worn-out mem
orandum book the contribution of the
company. There was Deacon Smith,
who brought ''shugar, appels, vinnigar
and pickles to the amount of ST." and
Elder Brown, who donated zone chord
OF wood and some pun kins, all to the
value of 50 land the minister was sup
posed to go out and get the wood him
self; there were ''ten yards of dry
goods, $1.30," which the merchants wife
brought, and which her husband had
been trying to sell in vain for decade:
there were socks tearfully and wonder
fully made, cabbages and potatoes, pork
and hams, sausage and beans, honey and
ounce sauce" and in the center, on a
dinner-plate of deli, actually was a
little money, which the kindly faced old
chancellor counted anon as if it burned
his fingers. The boy who brought six
girls and took them all to supper put
down quarter of dollar with as much
| ceremony as II it had been Bank of
England note tor R100. and tha school