Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-02-19
Around the City

4 woman was carrying basket down
II street. \ worsted nubia that had been
pink before it washed into a streaky no.
color. hooded her old face. and the rest
Of her was blue wool josie. an al-around
Bingham apron and. beneath that "A skirt
Of which the least said the soonest
mended.
In the basket were odds and ends of
wood broken into jagged bits. with long
scantlings wherever they could be poked.
Some of them were pierced with nails
that stuck up. and everything was coated
with gray dust that was plaster.
1t was such a tremendously heavy load
that another woman who was going IN
the same direction offert d to pay two boys
she passed to lend "A helping hand.
Neither would tackle the job. Then she
tried to make a business deal with an
ancient colored man, who considered the
proposition, sized UP the basket ana
backed out
So much for prosperity.
1t would have looked like cheap btd
for notoriety if the woman, herself. IN
her best bib and tucker. had assisted, so
she persuaded the old soul 20 hide nan
her forage under the stone steps OF
heightened porch until she could return
and get 1t. The basket owner had her
doubts but, with fine consideration Tor
the feelings of the bib and tucker woman.
tucked away the scantlings and the two
stepped on together. There being no one
In sight, the two shared the basket pe-
tween them.
The old woman did the talking. and
among the things she said was this:
MY son kept me in all the fire wanted
until he went to Chicago on a Job OF
work and got run down by the cars.
do washing and odd jobs whenever 1 can
get work. but / had no fuel and no money
10 buy it and / would have had TO take
back the lady's clothes and gone hungry,
If II hadn't been for tho chance to get all
this wood for nothing. and COD bless the
one that give it to me.
To light the torch of knowledge Is one
good thing. To light an empty stove Is
And old George Washington University
will never know which was ltS pest WA n.
Not in this world.
The river-front man was looking at a
woman's page. And on his race was the
bewilderment that is Adams official ex-
nression when contemplating the fashions
Of Eve.
The club-woman, a plain. industrious
soul had whisked into the news room
and was pulling pins out of her nat
when the man presented tne DEE ,he
didn't say q word. He just looked the
silence that gets ahead of speech.
What the woman saw was the cut or
fashion-plate lady posed in the thing that
calls itself a harem skirt. 1t began
calmly with a sheat-fitting hip and then
branched out suddenly like some united
couple that had fared off at tangent
to live in separate flats. And the fashion
plate lady, relieved to shake herset Tree
Of her hobble, had gone to the other ex-
treme and taken for her attituae ane
straddle Of a cowboy instead of the cor
rect picturesqueness Of the trousered laoy
OF the Orient whom no mere street man
may ever hope to see.
what do you think Of ito'
The man wasn't soliciting an opinion.
He was merely expressing his own in an
ejaculation loaded with disguised aston
fshment and lightened with grin-then
he went away.
And as the club woman sorted her
man wise enough to know every wave OF
the Potomac, from wharf to chesapeake.
and all about ships and crews and shoals
and tides and things. should be nus
trated at sight Of a gown so eminentiy
adapted to women who have proved
themselves mems equals in the trades
and professions. and in the wori~s OF
art and literature.
Then she forgot about the river-front
man to wonder IL the day would ever
come when women would learn to send
in notices without writing on both sides
Of the sheet.
A man and woman were walking to-
4 colored man followed with rolling
chair The woman was so feeble that
the man almost carried her. She had a
green shade over her eyes.
And as they moved slowly in the sun
shine the man described things as they
went along.
There are some sappy green shoots
sprouting up in the White House grounds
close to the ratings, and under bush
with long. switchy branches that droop
all around, like tent; there is clump
of spears with fat buds on the stems.
Some of the buds are SO fat that they are
bursting their green coats, and every
slit shows a yellow frock beneath
"Jonquils.'
That's what they are-and over in a
sunny spot. sheltered from the wind,
there is a tuft of reddish-brown foliage,
fuzzled like celery tips
That's peonies-"
Then another woman who was walking
behind spurted ahead for two reasons:
One of them was that she had no right
TO be there.
4 workman was crossing the Agrlcul-
tural grounds with basket of bulbs.
Friend Watson might have sized him
Ilp as a gardener ready to do some plant
ing. but Sherlock would have known
better.
For they we're electric light bulbs.