The suburban citizen., 1900-04-14
AN AMUSING WOMAN.
S0O 0OCooo00OC00000C000000ol

MS>YSssIZ unpopular. Peo-
-. SASSs=zF pie wanted TO
.,o$N seS''sSS like her, but it
was difficult when she was laughing
at them, but without reservation they
admitted that she was the brightest
girl in town. So they made great
lamenting when she left there with
her family and went to Chicago. Lucy
was sorry to leave the little town, too,
when she found that she would be
lamented. She began to attach some
Importance to herself, thing she had
previously failed to do. because of all
the absurd creatures in world of alb
surdity she had seemed the most ri
diculous. If she had even enter
tained an ambition, she laughed her
self out OF it. Her attitude toward
herself, as we'll as toward the world,
was that of mocker. And if ray
of sentiment dared to find its way in
to her mental compound she gave
chase to it with derisive mIrth.
She did, whatever she attempted,
we'll. In the village there had been
only the home duties to offer vent to
her activity, and she excelled in these
When other girls blundered in bread
making Lucy turned out white and
featherly loaves. When experienced
housewives fretted about the mo-
notony of fare Lucy invented new
dishes. She could make dresses and
embroider, and NOW the lawn, and
curry the horse and drive a nail.
Oddly enough none of these things
had satisfied her. They had not
seemed worth while, and she had not
been interested in her own achieve
mouts, But when she got to Chicago,
and found what an awful hurry every
body was in, she got in a hurry, too,
though she laughed all the time at the
senseless fret and rush and decided
20 become II part of the breathless aud
preposteroIs procession.
She went around and looked ut the
city, and made up her mind about
men, and women, and business, and
politics, and religion, with the splen-
did ease and dogmatism of the young.
She sent away number of ardent
lovers.
Love-" said Lucy. cts an illu-
sion. Any one over forty win tell you
shat"
"But you are under twenty" said
one of the protesting ones.
"An accident" cried Lucy. ga
mere blunder on my part. 1t will take
me twenty years of my life to rectify
it, and I shall be 30 busy doing it that
I really shall be able to think Of moth.
ing else"
To herself she said
"When / marry it shall be for-for
reasons of state, 80 to speak. I shall
marry capable, brilliant, physically
perfect man. believe in the survival
of the fttest. [ believe IN the selec-
tion of ,species. This girlish senti-
ment that entraps other girls shall
not waylay me.
And for once she did not know that
she was amusing.
One morning she awoke with an
idea.
III am going to be nurse" she
said. The more she thought OF the
idea the better she was pleased For
what other purpose had that magnl6.
Gently strong body been given her?
She felt as if she could radiate strength
and courage She was taken for pro
baton on the merits of her general
bearing and intelligence,
"But am afraid you are too fond
of excitement" " the head nurse said,
kindly. "You seem to have high
spirits. I fear you will not be able to
stand the discipline and the confne-
ment.
But it seemed to Lucy the place for
high spirits. 1t appeared to be, more
over, the most exciting of places-ns
stirring and vital as battlefield.
Here were real tragedies, not mimic
ones. Here was the actual heroism.
She was interested to absorption.
There was, moreover, plenty to laugh
at-7the pOmposity of the doctors, the
solemn reverence with which they re-
garded themselves even in the face of
outrageous blunders and erroneous
diagnoses and futile experiments; the
hypochondriacal whims of the patients;
the dry sloughing off of all moral re-
sponsibility on the part Of the nurses,
who came to regard themselves as
autOmata set in motion by the physi-
clans. This phase of the comedy
humane was deliciously funny TO Lucy.
She made herself both friends and
enemies by her ill-advised merriment.
doctors are absurd" she COM
lnented frequently. "I have never
seen anything so owlish and 80 in
effective as doctors. The way they
set up theories before which we all
fall PROSTATE, and the manner in
which they knock the same theories
over presently, while we servilely ap-
plaud, is truly entertaining. / am
glad came"
"You won't stay if you don't exer-
else more control of your tongue,
one Of the truly obedient nurses once
said to her.
"Oh, well, said Lucy. 'tThe cars
still run by the hospital. can't get
away"
m