Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-24

to appear in the more lightly floating bubbles.
Then we knew that they were toughening up
if we tried to dance 'em on the rough wood
floor of the kitchen; we danced EN- on the
old rag carpet in the adjoining dining and
settin room, the same being one room. We'd
blow huge, bulgy ones, and just rock EN- gently
and swayfully from the pipe to the rag carpet.
pomposity for bit, the colors boiling into a
myriad changing hues.
Then. the air being very still, they'd settle
down on the rag carpet and wag and loll around
they were sure enough sky-roaring balloons
whitfield down to our size. Whereupon-spif!
they'd vanish, leaving naught but teeny
moisty-lacy patch of suds on the carpet. re-
member yet the curious wonder and unrest it
aroused in my young mind to observe how an
out, whisked utterly from the world, all in the
fraction of an instant. That was my earliest
lesson as to the mutability of mundane things.
When the Mother Came
A FTER awhile the little mother would come
in from her marketing and catch us litter
ing up the place with our bubble making, and
she'd ask US, with thinly yelled assumption
of severity, what in the wide world we meant
by wetting up the new rag carpet that way;
whereupon we'd transfer the bubble making
gear to the grass and begin outdoor operations.
We'd skim the now well toughened bubbles over
the dandelion dotted sward, the little sporadic
puffs of breeze swinging them along their rico
cheting paths until they bounced upon some
lurking unkind blade of grass that punctured
them to evanshment.
BY this time the water in the basin would be
so nobly tuned up that we could blow three or
four whoppers from the one dip in the bowl.
Then we'd send the bubbles into the air, one
right after another, in quick succession. can
see them now, the fine, big purplish blush ones,
sailing up maJestically among the branches OF
the poisoning trees, catching and rejecting
the tints of green grass and blue sky and the
slowly rolling golden clouds massed in the
heavens. and changing hues so rapidly that it
What Made EN- Change Color
WONDER what it is that makes em change
w color that way?" we used to ask each
other, standing, sort O. rapt, watching them
churn into changing tints as they sailed. Come
to think of it. l don't know the answer to that
question yet OF course there must be a scien-
tifc answer; but l shouldn't care to know
that.) And so there they'd float and sway and
culver in the bright mellow sunshine; some of
them going k'bang! against the weather worn
trellis of the old well-house, petals of peach
and cherry blossoms clinging to the trellis;
others dashing themselves recklessly against
the blackened shingles on top of the kitchen;
and still others, the harder, tougher ones. dodg
ing all these evils and soaring truly and beauti-
fully right smack up against the blue of the sky
and the gold of the clouds. while we watched
them, shading our eyes with our hands, till they
suddenly popped and dropped their little misty
tendrils through the air.
But there were few-a very few, but some
that kept right on going till we lost them in
the empyrean. These were the ones that, l
want to believe. still are drifting ever drifting
stopping occasionally to visit Neptune and the
Dog Star and the perky little Pleiades, but