Holbrook argus., 1909-01-19
THE TRANSFORMAT|OH
 OF HYMEN|A BASS
By Edna Foster.

leaning against the door or the IlS. house and supporting himself with on tattooed arm.
 There was no response from the halfdozen men mending 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 si- lence; he knew his listeners, and he stepped into the room and made ready to divide his spells.
 "Hymeny Bass has always been a terrible meek sort; she has had 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 infor nation from the very keyhole of the universe. Now l 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 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 a bureau angling than she would dare to set fire to public buildings. The whole house is full of ruts in the floors where she has ctoppod in hor nWu trockc
 But she's out of bondage now," con- tinued the narrator. She's gone up into the conning-tower, and Cap'n Bass is only firing when he gets the signal. And Mary says she is wig wagging an everlasting message of fire edom to them that cant under stand.
 Its all along of present they got from the old Bass property. When the estate was divided there was a bed and two chairs for Elmiry, .pung and a ox-goad for Jonathan; but Fly meny wasn't named in the regular will, and she got only longish kind of lookng-g,ass.
 
 ways hung the mirrors so high that Hymeny hasn't seen herself since she was married, and when the cap'n came home and brought the glass he set it cn the floor, tipped back against the wal, till he could get chance to buy a 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 dwe,t 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 changed being. Boys, when that front came home, Hymeny perked it up on her head as fine as you please, and Mary was there, and said she seemed to undergo kind of a transforming, blooming process. She sat up straighter, and the first words she spoke was to contradict the cap'n, and three times she upset him in az 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 I kind of remember some thing to the effect that if comb.ngs are taken from persons hair un- beknownst to the person, that the per son getting that hair AS switch will