From a Bench in Our Square eBook

Samuel Hopkins Adams
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 226 pages of information about From a Bench in Our Square.

From a Bench in Our Square eBook

Samuel Hopkins Adams
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 226 pages of information about From a Bench in Our Square.
work.  She formed cultural improvement classes for such as Leon Coventry, the printer, who knows half the literatures of the world, and MacLachan, the tailor, to whom Carlyle is by way of being light reading.  She delivered some edifying exhortations upon the subject of Americanism to Polyglot Elsa, of the Elite Restaurant (who had taken upon her sturdy young shoulders the support of an old mother and a paralytic sister, so that her two brothers might enlist for the war—­a detail of patriotism which the dispenser of platitudes might have learned by judicious inquiry).  And so forth and so on.  Miss Roberta Holland meant well, but she had many things to learn and no master to teach her.

Yet when the flu epidemic returned upon us, she stood by, efficient, deft, and gallant, though still imperious, until the day when she clashed her lath-and-tinsel sword of theory against the tempered steel of the Little Red Doctor’s experience.  Said the Little Red Doctor (who was pressed for time at the moment):  “Take orders.  Or get out.  Which?”

She straightened like a soldier.  “Tell me what you want done.”

At the end of the onset, when he gave her her release from volunteer service, she turned shining eyes upon him.  “I’ve never been so treated in my life!  You’re a bully and a brute.”

“You’re a brick,” retorted the Little Red Doctor.  “I’ll send for you next time Our Square needs help.”

“I’ll come,” said she, and they shook hands solemnly.

Thereafter Our Square felt a little more lenient toward her ministrations, and even those of us who least approved her activities felt the stir of radiance and color which she brought with her.

On a day when the local philanthropy market was slack, and Miss Holland, seated in the Bonnie Lassie’s front window, was maturing some new and benign outrage upon our sensibilities, she called out to the sculptress at work on a group: 

“There’s a queer man making queer marks on your sidewalk.”

“That’s Peter Quick Banta.  He’s a fellow artist.”

“And another man, young, with a big, maney head like an amiable lion; quite a beautiful lion.  He’s making more marks.”

“Let him make all he wants.”

“They’re waving their arms at each other.  At least the queer man is.  I think they’re going to fight.”

“They won’t.  It’s only an academic discussion on technique.”

“Who is the young one?”

“He’s the ruin of what might have been a big artist.”

“No!  Is he?  What did it?  Drink?”

“Does he look it?”

The window-gazer peered more intently at the debaters below.  “It’s a peculiar face.  Awfully interesting, though.  He’s quite poorly dressed.  Does he need money?  Is that what’s wrong?”

“That’s it, Bobbie,” returned the Bonnie Lassie with a half-smile.  “He needs the money.”

The rampant philanthropist stirred within Miss Roberta Holland’s fatally well-meaning soul.  “Would it be a case where I could help?  I’d love to put a real artist back on his feet.  Are you sure he’s real?”

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From a Bench in Our Square from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.