My mother; or Home scenes in Yorkshire
Annie Wadsworth Ward
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 Excerpt: ...a time, it was the habit of "mimicking," and thereby ridiculing, though innocently, almost everyone. About two miles from the church, three spinster ladies lived with their mother.. After the fatiguing walk they would regularly call at our house to rest before they went into church. I suppose, that is to say I did suppose, that they had never done an improper thing in their lives; whenever they came my mother told me, by a particular look, to behave properly. Now, though these ladies had walked all this distance, not one fold of their dress seemed to have been put awry; they walked in properly, sat down properly, and coughed properly; to tell the truth there was such a formal propriety about their whole bearing that I dreaded their calling. Their visit lasted nearly half an hour. And when Madam, the youngest, took out her fine embroidered pocket handkerchief, and "a'hem'd," and "dear me'd," and so on, I, in my foolish habit, whipped out my red handkerchief and imitated her with the most ludicrous success, though I really had no intention of being naughty. For that breach of etiquette I was usually put into a cupboard close by, though even there, I continued coughing and "a'hemming," and so on. Oh! ours was a village. How strange the world was then to what it is now; for instance, I can remember middle aged and old people saying boastingly, that they had never received a letter in their lives, and thinking themselves very clever in being able to say so. Indeed there are some stranger things in real life than one ever finds in imagination. "Truth is stranger than fiction," saith the proverb, and it very often is so. There was also my mother's village-school feast. A neighbour was coaxed to send for her on some...