AUNT MATILDA'S BACK WINDOW.
By Ella Beecher Gittings
WHEN Aunt Matilda came to visit us and insisted on having a back room, we were greatly disappointed, for sister Mattie and I had spent weeks of our precious vacation-time in making all sorts of pretty nothings to beautify the guest chamber for her occupancy. We had not seen Aunt Matilda for ten years. In that time Mattie and I had grown from little girls to young ladies in our teens and members of the high school. Father had moved West—away out to Colorado—and, as I said, we had not seen Aunt Matilda for ten years when we received the welcome news that she was coming to pay us a visit, and we all resolved not to let her go away from us again if we could help it. Perhaps this was the reason we had taken such extra pains with the guest chamber. I know when it was all finished, Mattie and I surveyed it with what we hoped was pardonable pride. We had coaxed from papa a new bedroom suit of polished oak, which, with its broad mirror of plate-glass, shone grandly in the sunlight which streamed in through the curtains of yellow china silk. The big plush-cushioned patent rocker was resplendent in draperies of hand-painted silk, while the wicker chairs displayed their fine linen and satin ribbons, and even the ottoman was fine in silk embroidery. As for the bed—well, it was simply lovely! Shams were not out of date then, and ours were marvels of fine lace and the Chinese laundry art—and the prettiest yellow satin bows in a corner of each! The lace spread over a quilt of yellow silesia, and the scarf of crazy-work in silk and velvet, completed the ravishing picture. When Aunt Matilda came, Mattie and I had the honor of escorting her to this chamber of state, and you may be sure we watched furtively to see how it impressed her. Perhaps we were more anxious because we knew she had opposed father's coming West, and we wanted to impress her with the financial success of the move, and to show her that truly esthetic taste dwelt even as far west as Colorado. "Let me take off your wraps, auntie," said Mattie, setting her little hand-bag on the floor by the dresser, and going up to Aunt Matilda, who stood looking about in a hesitating manner. "Wait a minute, my dear—let me tell you something—you won't mind if your old auntie is frank with you, I know. I've lived over sixty years, my dear, and I've found that in the end it always pays to be frank with your best friends. Now, I know you want me to feel perfectly at home here, and this room is very beautiful—yes, very beautiful indeed—but it is too large and fine for a simple old lady like me. Don't you see I couldn't really sit against any of these handsome draperies—it would be sure to muss them—and—well I shouldn't feel the least bit at home here. I've lived a very plain, quiet life, you know. Now, girls, if you've a little cozy back room somewhere, with just plain furniture, so that I wouldn't feel that I was mussing anything, I should enjoy it so much." In vain we protested that nothing was too nice for her to use, and that we had no other room good enough for her. She silenced us with a graceful, girlish wave of the hand, and, shaking the gray curls, said:— "Now, my dears, you cannot fool me that way, if I am an old woman. I am first-rate at a game of hide-and-seek and I shall just find a room for myself. In this large house I know there is a corner for me somewhere." And sure enough she stepped briskly across the hall, and paused before the door of a back chamber. "Does anyone occupy this?" Mattie shook her head, and cast a despairing glance at me, as she said:— "But it will never do at all, auntie. It is just a little box of a room, furnished up with odds and ends. We put Miss Betts in there when she comes to sew for us, and sometimes Hetty and I sleep there when we have extra company, and have to give up our room." Aunt Matilda opened the door, however, and stepped in. "The very thing," she cried, delightedly. "A rag carpet, too! So home-like! And this nice splint rocker! I tell you, girls, for real comfort there's nothing like a splint rocker." She stepped to the one window in the room and put back the plain white muslin curtain. "Better and better!" she cried, clapping her hands in almost childish glee. "Such a row of nice back yards! You see, girls, I'm an inquisitive old lady, and I dearly love to watch people's back yards. I get acquainted with them so. You can go in at people's front doors for years and not know a single thing about them; but you can get a good idea of what they are in a week from the rear." So Aunt Matilda had her way. "There's just one thing I would like from the front room, girls," she said, "and that is the vase of yellow marigolds I saw on the mantel. They smell so like home." Mattie fetched them, and having done what we could to make the room convenient for her, we left her to the enjoyment of her splint rocker, her rag carpet and marigolds, and went downstairs to confide our disappointment to mother. The back yards, which interested our aunt so much, belonged to a row of tenement cottages just across the alley from our house. The latter, being built in the middle of the lot and running back a good way, was quite close to the alley, so that a good chance was afforded Aunt Matilda to pursue her backdoor studies, for which she professed such a penchant. Our town was an invalid resort, and the population in consequence a very fluctuating one. We had, therefore, fallen into the habit of paying little or no attention to the families who came and went in the row. But now we were destined to learn many things from Aunt Matilda about our back-door neighbors. What impressed us more than anything else was the kindness of the comments she made upon her unknown friends. Considering that she openly avowed herself "a bit of a gossip," this seemed to us all the more remarkable, as all the gossips we had known showed a remarkable penetration in discovering the weaknesses and sins of the subjects which they dissected. "There is a new family moving into the red house this morning," announced Aunt Matilda at dinner one day. "The woman is a nice, tidy little body, and looks full of energy, but you can see she is not well. She has a bad cough and looks so worn and tired that I feel sorry for her. Her husband is a tall, manly-looking fellow, but he, too, has a discouraged look, and the little boy—there seems to be but one child, about ten years old I should judge—looks as though life had been anything but a joy to him. I shall like to find out what their trouble is." Father held up his hands in well-feigned horror. "Matilda," he said, "you are without doubt the most inquisitive person alive. You embody all the necessary qualifications of a whole detective force." "Never mind," replied the little lady, laughing, "so long as I injure no one by it you ought not to grudge a lonely old woman her only dissipation." "I should think," said mamma, "that if the lady is such an invalid—consumptive, of course, if she coughs so bad—you might see in that sufficient cause for the family unhappiness. Perhaps, after all, they are only tired from a long journey and not really unhappy." Aunt Matilda shook her head. "No, Martha, temporary weariness does not mark such lines in the face. Neither is the illness of one member sufficient to permanently destroy the family peace. Why, some of the happiest families I know have inmates who are hopeless invalids, and all the other members seem to make a point of being bright and cheery for their sakes. No, there is something more than this the trouble over there. Never mind, I shall find out by and by." A few days later she called to me as I was passing through the hall. "Come here, my dear. Come and look out of my window." "I am on the right track now. I told you I should find out. Do you see?" "I do not understand you, auntie," I said. "Why, just look at the clothes on the line back of the red house. See that petticoat. It has yards and yards of knitted thread-lace on it—actually hand-knitted, child. Just think of it, every stitch of the millions of them requiring four motions of the hand! More than that, see that knitted counterpane." "It is lovely, auntie!" I could not help saying. "Lovely! yes, if one did not think of the woman's life-blood that went into it, and of the child's happiness that went into it, of the widower and orphan soon to be made by it. Why, think, Hetty, what a costly quilt it is! Likely they had to break up a cozy home at61the East, and sacrifice property and business interests there, to come here for her health. And you can buy a beautiful Marseilles quilt for ten dollars! Yes, a very good one for five. Five paltry dollars—and think what went into that! I walked past the front of the house yesterday, and there were fine hand-knitted curtains at the windows. Why, even those check gingham kitchen aprons hanging there have cross-stitch embroidery three or four inches deep. And the rugs that she hangs out on the line every day—all hand-work! One has little cloth circles button-hole-stitched to a foundation—pyramids of them—thousands of embroidery stitches on a two-feet-by-three rug! A yard of Moquette or Wilton carpet could be bought for two dollars or less, and you know yourself, Hetty, that it is twice as pretty and durable for a rug." "Perhaps she does not do all this work herself. It may be given to her, or she may buy it of poor invalids who can do nothing else." "No, child, she does it herself. I see her sit by her kitchen window every day knitting and crocheting, oh, so steadily! It is a north window, too. The sitting-room fronts south, and she cannot sit there because the sunlight would fade her carpets. The shades are nearly always close down; and the poor child wanders about the yard looking so homesick and lonely that my heart aches for him. His clothes are nice and fit beautifully, and his linen is starched and polished and fresh every day. She does her own ironing. I see her bending for hours over the ironing-board, and stopping every little while to cough. Look at that line now, Hetty, and see what she has before her this week. There are six white shirt-waists for the boy, pleated every one, and to be done with the polishing iron; then there is that skirt I first showed you, and a pair of ruffled and tucked and embroidered pillow shams, and—well, all the rest. It makes me sick at heart to see it and think of that poor starved little boy. He has no mother, don't you see? only a nurse and laundress. She won't let him run the street and get with bad boys. She thinks she is very careful about him, but she starves his very soul. She has no time to answer questions for him, and help him plan amusements, and sympathize with him, and he can't play in the dirt because he will soil his clothes. Of course the husband has the same treatment. He has to be very careful about throwing his papers about or making a litter in the house; and when he comes home at night his wife is too tired to talk and coughs a great deal. The cough worries him, and he feels that he ought to do something more for her—but he has done all he can, poor man! The doctor has told him to bring her to Colorado, and he has done so—but she doesn't seem to get much better, and she never will, Hetty, till she stops that everlasting knitting and fancy-work and gets into the sunshine, and takes an interest in something outside of her housekeeping. I am going to call on her to-morrow. She is a new neighbor, you know, and I will tell you beforehand just what I shall find. I shall ring the bell, and wait a long time. Then I shall hear doors open and shut, and finally the key turn in the front door, and I shall be let in. The sitting-room will be dark and have a close, shut-up smell—" if it were anywhere but in Colorado it would be musty. The lady will raise a shade and let in a little light, taking care to shut out as much sunlight as she can by drawing the knitted curtains close. The room will be literally crowded with hand-made fancy-work, and everything will be painfully neat and unused. I shall scarcely have introduced myself until she begins to bemoan her lot on account of this dusty country. She will tell me that it is simply impossible to keep things clean, and that she wears herself all out trying." The call was made, and Aunt Matilda came home more indignant than ever. "I tell you that woman is dying by inches of fancy-work and lack of sunshine and pure air. She tells me that her disease is not hereditary, but she was always a delicate child, and it was brought on by a hard cold. A hard cold, indeed! How could anyone keep any lungs and sit all day by a north window crouched over those fiendish shining needles." Aunt Matilda's usually mild brown eyes flashed indignantly and then filled with sudden tears. "Oh my dears, the pity of it! And to think that she is only one of many. I saw a whole stack of Home Journals, and Journals of Fancy Work, and fashion magazines, but not one single useful book or paper in the house. Talk about the suppression of improper literature—I sometimes think journals of fancy-work and fashion ought to be included in the list, for they surely do tempt weak-minded women to their ruin. I meant to go home next month, but you will have to keep me a spell longer, Martha. I've a clear call to missionary labor in the red house over there. I must have the phæton at least two or three hours every day—for she won't be able to walk far at first, and you must help me hunt up all the poor children you know, and if she must sew she shall make plain garments for them. But I don't mean to let her touch a needle for a month if I can help it. How will I manage it? You'll see. Where there's a will there's a way." And in Aunt Matilda's case we knew this to be true.—Ella Beecher Gittings.