NOW AND THEN.
YOU know her. She lives on your street. Her features are either pinched,
or full and frowzy. Her dress is wet, ill-fitting, and of no particular pattern;
her slippers are broken down; her hair is uncombed; her voice is either shrill
or coarse. You have seen her stand out in the back-yard, and put a bare arm
up to her eyes, and under it peer out to the fence or barn, where a man,
in an ill-fitting coat, is searching for something; and have heard her shout,
"John! can't George bring me some water?" and you have heard him cry back,
"If he don't get that water, I will take every inch of flesh from his bones."
And, when you have looked at her again, does it seem possible that those
angry eyes have drooped in maidenly reserve, or raised in coquettish light
to the face of the man in the ill-fitting coat? Can you, by any possible
wrench of the imagination, conceive of his tenderly passing peppermints to
her? of his taking that hand in his, and bashfully squeezing it? But it was
so. Many a "God bless you" has been uttered above that bare head, many a
kiss pressed on that uncombed hair. The tightly-compressed lips have lovingly
framed tender invitations to him to take another bite of cake and pickle.
The hands that are now parboiled and blistered, and marked with scars from
the bread-knife, and scratches
from the last setting-hen, were once twined
lovingly about his neck; and the nose, which is now peaked and red, and looks
as if it would stand on its hind-legs and scream with rage, once followed
the figures of his new vest-pattern, or bore heavily against his jugular
vein. As little probable as this seems to you, it seems less to her. She
has forgotten it: she won't hear it talked of by others: she cannot bear
to see it acted by others. Two lovers are to her a "passel of fools." And—but
George is rubbing his head; and we turn aside while our heroine re-adjusts
her slipper.
