Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-05
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

why does II always work out this
way?" he asked, fumbling around in
a capacious file. IT kept at least s5
per cent of those documents. and now
the very one want isn't there"
Why does it always work out that
way. indeed
The plain cussedness of inanimate
things is responsible. It was Poe, we
believe, who first mentioned the mat
ter, In one of the queereSt Of his short
stories, The Imp Of the Perverse."
When one stands on the corner wait
ing for a Mount Pleasant car, 10
Georgetown cars will come along, but
II one wants to 60 to the section be-
tween the river and the creek, at least
a dozen Mount Pleasant cars will wend
their way up the hill.
Whatever one throws away turns out
to be exactly the thing one should
have kept in the light Of subsequent
requirements.
The thing kept, one has no use for
what was discarded suddenly comes
into demand. Thousands Of persons
who threw away their stored copies
of the Cooley Lady Book came to
wish they had kept them, as the COL
ored prints of old fashions came to
have a vogue.
Perhaps the only real remedy for
this diScouraging state Of affairs Is to
save everything.
Grandmothers Of the old day did,
and all they got for their pains was
the sneers of their descendants, who
quickly cleared the carefully stored
attics of the accumulations of the years.
No one today, not even an efficiency
z gVSfAna
the people of the older days. They
were a careful. even frugal lot, mainly
because they had to be.
The modern gospel of mass manu-
featuring and buying was unknown,
so that no one knew that thing was
to be purchased only to be out Of date
immediately. That line of reasoning
had not become fashionable.
If q thing was worth buying and
having, it was worth keeping until 1t
wore out. Such was the old-fashioned
doctrine of those unsophiSticated days.
The result was an accumulation OF
marble-top tables. secretaries, queer lit
tie chalk birds with feather tails, books
kept unread in high cases with tall
glass doors.
Even well-to-do people drank Ar
buckles coffee. Many a man of today
can recall a grandmother who could
make as good coffee with "Arbuckle'S'
as any woman of 1890 can with any
.of the fancy brands
And the saving instinct of the gen.
Grafton was aided by the pictures OF
birds and so on which came with
each package. Or was 1t birds? We
have forgotten, because we were nc
higher than the doorknob, If as high
and one has to be higher than door
knob to remember anything.
y y ~
Grandmaw $50 she was called) had
a big kitchen, with covered well in
one corner. against removing the lid
of which one was warned repeatedly
And one would as soon have at
tempted to lift the lid of hell as
grasp the square, heavy board by Its
round topknot.
Even to walk to that side of the
kitchen, where the coffee pot reposed
in state on shelf, was hazardous
performance.
The very floors seemed to shake and
culver, as one skirted the dread hole
Upon occasion. as a very rare treat.
one was permitted to look on while a
bucket of water was drawn up.
The chief use of such water was to
make coffee. Grandmaw had a repu-
tatiop as q coffee brewer, just as Aunt