San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1923-09-02

mands that the loaded baskets brought
home.
Sunday breakfast for these children
was always "hpt Indian pudding,
baked beans, fish balls and brown
bread" And for parties there was
not yet ice cream, with all its va
riations of mousses and sherbets and
ices; no, they had "whips," and "syl
labubs," "calf's-foot jellies" end sen
timents, with tells rolled up in them"
if there is anybody alive to explain
to US what on earth those were!
The children went to bed before the
party. but a tray of these delicacies
was brought them before they quit
ted their warm blankets" the next
morning.
Now, our generation, and the way
that we do things, is certainly going
to seem as funny to the women of
1920 as all this does to us. Those of
us who can remember the ladylike
SOS can be sure of that. We remem-
Der things that make girls and boys
of sixteen say incredulously, "Oh, |
don't believe it." and yet we don't fell
old.
Do You Remember?
For example, do you remember
when all our older aunts and grand
mothers drank their tea from the sau-
GERS, and held their vegetable saucers
in their left hands Will. clearing
them with spoon in their right?
Do you remembe- when every din
iEg room buzzed with flies?
Do you remember when we used to
have cobwebs in the corners of hall
ways and pantries, and pull down
these cobwebs; and put them on cus
fingers?
Do you remember playing "but-
TONS" and having a treasured calico
button bag on a, string, and begging
your mother for special crystal or col
Ored buttons from her button box?
Women used to save all buttons
then and cut them off discarded gar,
ments before they gave the aforesaid
garments to "the poor" and they use,:
to save limp and laundered embroid
cries, cutting them off, too, and roll
ing them into thick wheels.
They used to turn" wooden or
cashmere dresses, and skirts dragged
on the ground on all sides, AMI sleeves
took three yards each of material,
and were stiffened into balloons with
fibre chamois."
Little girls wore aprons over Their
school dresses or their best dresses in
those da~s. but you don't hear the
words aprons or best dresses any more.
A Problem for Mother.
Tann1raeeo. a.
three or four times a year there also
came the seamstress by the day, who
made all our under and night wear.
and most of our dresses, too. To
have a "ready-made" dress was quite
a distinction.
And one of our mothers problems
was just how to feed the seamstress
If she came to the table the nan Of
the house was apt to be cross, and if
her meal went up on a tray the
seamstress was apt to be- hurt.
Ny own mother died just at the
end OF the old century, and never
saw an automobile nor a movie. Some
times, in those days the vaudeville
houses had one-reel little absurdiries
on their bills, but my mother never
went to vaudeville shows.
To her, grapefruit was an exciting
innovation, house telephone
breath-taking continuance, electric
lights were ''the incandescent lights.
and apple-and-celery salad a little
100 bizarre to be an everyday dish.
remember her explaining to a
group OF US what a flat was; she
never saw steam heated. elevator
apartment, but it was sufficiently alb
surd to us to think OF two families,
strangers to each other, living under
one roof at all, 1t seemed to us the
last resource of poverty-''like people
over saloon"
What We Read.
This was, of course, in the Far
West, where civilization still had
pioneer flavor, and where Chimes
pidgeon-English and Spanish rancko
customs colored our lives. But tn,
Eastern states were not very far
ahead of us.
We read ''Thc Wide, Wide World"
and wonderful Mrs. A. d. T. Whit
nev. with her 1--WE girls" and "The
Other Girls" and Rosa Nouchettn "a.
rey, with her curates and "scallopeC
sacques," and the great Victorian
novelists brought to us the deeper
problems and the old world Joint Of
| view.
We didn't have the "squills" and tic
STEPPED physic" and the "Bury .ndy
pitch of Anton House days, nor will
cur children have the cobNebs ard
the peroxide of hyC ~ and tn =,
'lickrish root" or indeed that leath-
dealing crew of pal killers" an !
''cure Ne" those terrible tall paten
medicine bottles with the streaked and