The Winslow mail., 1909-03-13
THF TPhNGCG3f9hTI0sj
OF HYiiEnlA BASS
BY Edna Foster.

tattoOed arm.
There was no respon1C f-Cl the
half-dozen men mending a big net
which was spread out upon their
knees; they did not cast the fly to
catch the floating gossip of the town,
but allowed it to drift toward them
by the great law of chance. Capt.
Tracy was not dismayed by the ST.
lence: he knew his listeners, and he
stepped into the room and made ready
to divide his spoils.
"Hymeny Bass has always been a
terrible meek sort; she has had a
large, wide idea of the cap'n and his
judgment; she's believed he was SO
great that when he went east the west
would tip up, and that his opinions
were inside infer nation from the very
keyhOle of the universe. Now | think
his ideas on a subject are likely to
hit about as near as the Farmers
Almanac comes to getting the weather
right. There is always a pretty wide
range to allow room to turn. Hy
meny hasn't bought yard of calico
or baked a cake that he hasn't super
vised for 40 years. She would no
more dare to set bureau angling
than she would dare to set fire to
public buildings The whole house is
full Of ruts in the floors where she mas
stepped in her own tracks.
But she's out of bondage now" con-
tinued the narrator. She's gone up
into the conning-tower, and Capn
Bass is only firing when he gets the
signal. And Mary says she is wig
wagging an everlasting message of
freedom to them that can't under
stand.
Its all along of a present they got
from the Old Bass property When
the estate was divided there was
bed and two chairs for Elmiry, a pung
and a oX-goad fer Jonathan; but Hy-
meny wasn't named in the regular
will, and she got only a longish kind
of looking-giass.
"The cap'n is TALL and he has al
ways hung the mirrors so high that
Hymeny hasn't seen herself since she
was married, and when the capn came
home and brought the glass he set
it On the floor, tipped back against the
wall, till he could get chance to buy
cord. Hymeny, it seems-according
TO Mary-saw herself for the first time
in years. They do say she gave
kind of a yelp and stood like one
stunned: she had to get acquainted
with herself all over.
she saw how downtrodden she
looked and meeching, and she saw the
fires quenched out of her eyes, but
what she most wilted at-if SO be
there was left any room to wilt-was
the way her hair had wisped all down
to nothing. She dweit on that, and
dwelt on it until she almost lost her
sense of fear of the cap'n. So one day
she up and away over the fields like
girl going to the fair and she en-
gagged Betsy SpOoner to make her a
false front.
'Hymeny is a changed being. Boys,
when that front came home, Tymeny
perked it up on her head as fine as
you please, and Mary was there, and
said she seemed to undergo a kind of
a Transforming, blooming process. She
sat up straighter, and the first words
she spoke was to contradict the capn,
and three times she upset him in ag-
germint, and then Mary very wisely
got up and came home.
Now, did any of you ever hear any
kind of superstition as to false hair?
Mary and | kind of remember some
thing to the effect that if comb:ngs
are taken from a persons hair un-
beknownst to the person, that the per-
son getting that hair, as switch, viii
develop all the traits of the person