The Whirligig of Time

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 16, 1915

The Whirligig of Time

FOR ten years the Corey family had been trying to induce Cousin Rebecca to come into town during the winter, but they never succeeded until the year of Betty Corey’s wedding. Then, at last, she consented to close her house for six months. Betty was triumphant.

“Of course the rest of you might have persuaded Cousin Rebecca to come for the winter,” she conceded, “but you know perfectly well that if I hadn’t decided upon being married in October, no power on earth could have dragged her away until after Christmas. And I don’t blame her. If I had an old house like that, I couldn’t be enticed away from it. Cousin Rebecca and I understand!”

However, Cousin Rebecca, once lured away from the homestead, threw herself heartily into everything that was going on. She was seventy years old, but no girl of seventeen enjoyed life more keenly. In the gayeties that preceded Betty’s wedding, the family reunion at Thanksgiving, and the Christmas celebrations, Cousin Rebecca was a vivacious figure. She was so popular that the girls declared she gave the rest of them no chance at all. It was therefore with incredulous amazement that the family received the announcement, in the middle of January, that she could not stand it any longer—she was going back home.

“Can’t stand what, Cousin Rebecca?” they asked. “We thought you were enjoying it all so much. And to go back in the very worst of the winter—”

“That’s precisely it,” Cousin Rebecca returned. “At home I know exactly what time of year it is, and what to expect; here, from the day I came, I’ve been so hustled and pushed about from one season to another that I’m all in a muddle.”

“Before November had fairly begun, there were Thanksgiving announcements in all the shop windows; and before Thanksgiving came, there were signs up everywhere—‘Twenty-nine shopping days before Christmas!’ Long before Christmas I’d got so mixed up that I didn’t know whether it was 1911 or 1912.

“I hung on somehow, thinking that after the holidays things would settle down, but dear sakes, no! Now it is early spring fashions and fresh strawberries. It gave me a real turn at first, for I always plant my sweet peas in March, and I had a feeling that I had forgotten them. No, I’m going home. You’ve all been real good to me, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of things, but I can’t stand the way you juggle the seasons. I was brought up to an old-fashioned calendar, and I’m too old to change. Perhaps if I pack right away, I can get off before I see any Fourth of July powder crackers.”

So Cousin Rebecca went back. A few days later the Coreys received a letter.

“The pump in the shed froze last night,” she wrote, “and the hill road is closed by the drifts, and just now Mary Jane Haskins has gone by in the coat she’s worn twelve winters. There’s no doubt about its being January here.”—Youth’s Companion.