The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1931-03-12
WHEN
GRANDMA
RULED
g g
By FANNIE HURST
"a. 1881, Mcclure Newspaper syndicate.l
WNU Service.

nine. The moIding of her face was
strong. The hook to her nose was
virile. The tall sparse figure, bent
slightly in these later years, had the
stride to it of a gaunt man. One won
dered in what years grandmother had
ever been sufficiently appealing in
feminine way to have won herself
husband. He had died eight years aft
er their marriage; but those who knew
said that he had died a happy hus-
band.
Gone by now were such of those
graces which might have existed in
the younger woman. Grandmother
ruled her children, sons-in-law, daugh-
ters-in-law, grandchildren and great
grandchildren with high, hard hand.
She lived in a house with two of
her married children and their fam
flies. Within half-mile of the great
gaunt red brick homestead where she
had borne her family, there lived the
remainder of her progeny. Clustered
around the mother hen, as it were.
Dominated by her grip, was the family.
Strange thing, there was almost in
the attitude of this woman toward her
children that Of the proverbial gold
digger" Fortunately, they were a
generous, easy lot with what grand
mother called their fathers spending
streak" She had lived through lean
and terrifying years due to their IA
theirs imprOvident ways. There were
times when the homestead had tot
tered on the brink of foreclosure and
plans for her children, due to untimely
and madcap investments, had been in
Jeopardy.
Grandmother knew the dangers of
that kind of improvidence and prob
ably decided that it was just as well
to let her children offer gold to her
as to spend it in their more promiscu-
Gus ways.
And yet there were times when it
did seem that greed and avarice came
out over the hooked old face Of this
sly old woman. Even from her young
grandsons she demanded the homage
of so little as a weekly one or two
! dollar bill. Her son Wallace, the most
successful member Of her family, 4
striking, prince-like fellow who had
made fortune in a patent medicine,
used laughingly to refer to her as the
'pirate-parrot." She looked like a
parrot, and. laughingly, the family con-
coded that she acted like pirate.
In his palmy years-and Wallace
was one to have good years and bad
It was nothing for him to shovel into
the stern old woman's Golfers thou
sands Of dollars. When grandmother
was seventy, she cleaned like light
house. Jewels lay along her bony
chest and burned in her strong gray
hair.
Three of her sons were associated
in the patent medicine business. Mar
tin, the second and Oswald, the fifth.
They were a gay brood, the owners
of expensive wives and demanding
children. If Grandmother was proud
of them, she gave precious little evil
dence of her pride. She was constant
~ taking them to task, disciplining the
grandchildren, descending in TRADE up
on the extravaganza of her daughters
and daughters-in-law, denouncing in
no uncertain terms the pretenses and
magnifcence of their social aspira-
lions.
Grandmother was hard. Grandmoth-
err should have been a man. Some
times, in talking things over, the chill
dren agreed among themselves that in
their faint and crumbling memories
} of what their father had been, he
seemed to stand out as the gentle,
{ kindly, maternal one of the two.
| OF course. Grandmother had been
\ superb, had tided them over bad
places, but really, now-in her old
age, she was becoming incorrigible.
1t somehow was not nice for her
to have accepted that thousand-dollar
bill Wallace had given her for Christ
mas. Wallace's pretty wife Isabel did
not mince matters about it. Her own
Christmas gift from her husband had
been a chair, which she had finally
ended up by placing in his den. That
Dill NOuiu nave hcdHJ
things that were actually needed in
the Wallace household. Isabel loved
her home, loved to deck 1t in finery.
She was as entitled in her opinion
and, it must be admitted, in the minds
Of the other children-as Grandmother
was to deck herself out with it in q
square diamond ring. Wallace himself
was uncommunicable, but there were
hard and bitter lines around his
mouth, and the family knew, without
his ever taking anyone into his con-
\ fidence, that the thousand dollars,
hard-earned, coaXed from a business
upon which the demands were many,
had been Unanswered out of him by
his mother.
And the old woman's contention was
nat, since the money would be wasted
It best by set of wastrels, she was
as entitled to some of these things as
these children of hers, that were the
chips off the block Of their improvi.
dent father.
Things reached a bad pass in the