The Daughter Of The Storage

William Dean Howells

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783849657918
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

There is something delightfully intimate about this miscellany of verse, fiction and study. One has almost the feeling of being invited to draw up a comfortable seat opposite the "Easy Chair" to listen to the words from its depths. Perhaps it is the variety that seems to bring the author nearer, for a number of short unrelated stories offer more opportunity for revelation of personality than a long connected narrative. Perhaps it is because these tales are of the sort in which Mr. Howells could readily let himself out. Perhaps it is because he has long held such a place in our affections that it is difficult to detach his work from himself. At any rate the atmosphere of nearness and friendliness is there. And now our host is off, a kindly twinkle in his eye, upon the delightful tale of "The Daughter of the Storage." He is laughing, I fear, at a woman's failing, but nobody cares and any way she inherited it from her father, so her mother said. Charlotte's failing was indecision and its first manifestation as well as the beginning of her romance occurred in the storage warehouse whither her parents had betaken themselves to deposit the household gods they could not carry with them to Europe. A generous little boy, the child of the people who were filling the adjoining room had heaped her lap with his toys and Charlotte, aged three, had cried herself to sleep that night because she had not been able to make up her mind on which of her treasures to bestow upon him. After the lapse of years the young people meet again at the storage warehouse and there among the household gods renew their acquaintance. Charlotte still has difficulty about making up her mind or rather, making it up right. In fact she first refuses the young man that the generous little boy has grown into. But unmaking her mind was always easier for Charlotte and so she decides to give the custody of her future waverings into the hands of the "son of the storage." You will want to laugh at this story and at many of the others in the same gently satirical vein, particularly at the adventures of a man who decides to sell only the best books, of his encounters with infuriated authors, of certain little mirrors arranged to show the feminine portion of the customers just how charming they looked while reading one of the bus! hooks, and of various other innovations in bookselling. "A Return to Favor, " the story of the reform of a tailor who never kept his promises and what came of it, is in the same category. "The Night Before Christmas, " a dialogue between a father and mother exhausted with last minute shopping, has some laughs, but reveals the sawdust in the Christmas doll. Its "shop early" moral is less apropos today than it used to be. Several of the stories are somber. That of "The Boarders" tackles the problem of the woman who tries to make a living taking boarders because she knows how to do nothing else and she knows this least of all. "Somebody's Mother" has for its heroine a dilapidated creature resting in a semi-somnolent state on a doorstep protesting inability to walk—until a policeman appears. Nearly all of the stories raise questions which even Mr. Howells from his seventy-nine years of wisdom has not presumed to answer. The poetry is interesting both for its content and form. The latter is, in several selections, the so-called free verse, but in some there is rhyme. People who usually skip poetry will read these stories of 'every-day life and when they have felt the swaying of the boat and heard the creaking of the tiller in "Captain Dunlevy's Last Voyage" perhaps they will want to try some other little excursions into the poetry world.

SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY

I

MISS ISOBEL RAMSEY AND MISS ESTHER GARNETT

Miss Ramsey: "And they were really understood to be engaged?" Miss Ramsey is a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl of nearly the length of two lady's umbrellas and the bulk of one closely folded in its sheath. She stands with her elbow supported on the corner of the mantel, her temple resting on the knuckle of a thin, nervous hand, in an effect of thoughtful absent-mindedness. Miss Garnett, more or less Merovingian in a costume that lends itself somewhat reluctantly to a low, thick figure, is apparently poising for departure, as she stands before the chair from which she has risen beside Miss Ramsey's tea-table and looks earnestly up into Miss Ramsey's absent face. Both are very young, but aim at being much older than they are, with occasional lapses into extreme girlhood.

Miss Garnett: "Yes, distinctly. I knew you couldn't know, and I thought you ought to." She speaks in a deep conviction-bearing and conviction-carrying voice. "If he has been coming here so much."

Miss Ramsey, with what seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think it needs thought, don't you?"

Miss Garnett: "That is what I expected of you."

Miss Ramsey: "And have some more tea. There is nothing like fresh tea for clearing the brain, and we certainly need clear brains for this." She pushes a button in the wall beside her, and is silent till the maid appears. "More tea, Nora." She is silent again while the maid reappears with the tea and disappears. "I don't know that he has been coming here so very much. But he has no right to be coming at all, if he is engaged. That is, in that way."

Miss Garnett: "No. Not unless—he wishes he wasn't."

Miss Ramsey: "That would give him less than no right."

Miss Garnett: "That is true. I didn't think of it in that light."

Miss Ramsey: "I'm trying to decide what I ought to do if he does want to get off. She said herself that they were engaged?"

Miss Garnett: "As much as that. Conny understood her to say so. And Conny never makes a mistake in what people say. Emily didn't say whom she was engaged to, but Conny felt that that was to come later, and she did not quite feel like asking, don't you know."

Miss Ramsey: "Of course. And how came she to decide that it was Mr. Ashley?"

Miss Garnett: "Simply by putting two and two together. They two were together the whole time last summer."

Miss Ramsey: "I see. Then there is only one thing for me to do."

Miss Garnett, admiringly: "I knew you would say that."

Miss Ramsey, dreamily: "The question is what the thing is."

Miss Garnett: "Yes!"

Miss Ramsey: "That is what I wish to think over. Chocolates?" She offers a box, catching it with her left hand from the mantel at her shoulder, without rising.

Miss Garnett: "Thank you; do you think they go well with tea?"

Miss Ramsey: "They go well with anything. But we mustn't allow our minds to be distracted. The case is simply this: If Mr. Ashley is engaged to Emily Fray, he has no right to go round calling on other girls—well, as if he wasn't—and he has been calling here a great deal. That is perfectly evident. He must be made to feel that girls are not to be trifled with—that they are not mere toys."

Miss Garnett: "How splendidly you do reason! And he ought to understand that Emily has a right—"

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I don't know that I care about her—or not primarily. Or do you say primarily?"

Miss Garnett: "I never know. I only use it in writing."

Miss Ramsey: "It's a clumsy word; I don't know that I shall. But what I mean is that I must act from a general principle, and that principle is that when a man is engaged, it doesn't matter whether the girl has thrown herself at him, or not—"

Miss Garnett: "She certainly did, from what Conny says."

Miss Ramsey: "He must be shown that other girls won't tolerate his behaving as if he were not engaged. It is wrong."

Miss Garnett: "We must stand together."

Miss Ramsey: "Yes. Though I don't infer that he has been attentive to other girls generally."

Miss Garnett: "No. I meant that if he has been coming here so much, you want to prevent his trifling with others."

Miss Ramsey: "Something like that. But it ought to be more definite. He ought to realize that if another girl cared for him, it would be cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was engaged to some one else."

Miss Garnett: "And cruel to the girl he is engaged to."

Miss Ramsey: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vaguely. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in the abstract."

Miss Garnett: "Yes, I understand that. And at the same time you wish to punish him. He ought to be made to feel it all the more because he is so severe himself."

Miss Ramsey: "Severe?"

Miss Garnett: "Not toleratin...