CULTURE IN MAINE.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 349, 15 January 1903, Page 8

CULTURE IN MAINE.

It B<U a. Singular Kftt-et on the Ijiti ndrrman, the Honaenmid and the Cook. '"The next time I go to Maine," sn'd the girl, pausing to chat while she unpacked her trunk, relates t'.,e New York Sun, "1 take with uir x complete celluloid outfit, so as to snap my fingers at laundry agent* and the like. With water, water everywhere on the coast of Maine, you'd think it would be easy to gel your washing done, but it isn't. "On the island where I was staying the first week all my things were shipped oft* mile* and miles away to Portland, or Boston or Hath. The laundry agent was a most obliging and delightful boy, a son of an Amreican ambassador or something equally imposing, and a true, thrift" Yankee. He was putting hims.rlf through Kome university by thi<■cleanly summer pursuit. And it was a pursuit, if pursuit means hunting for lost things. "Well, he took my things Monday, called at the cottage in person, discussed affably the social news of the island, partook of the ginger ale our host brought out and then went off •with our bundles under his arm. Saturday he brought back what there was. It was a very meager display. A lot of my things didn't turn up at all, and all the hooks had been ripped off one of my waists, in an excess of zeal, for fear they would rust. The agent was very sympathetic. I described the things I was shy on. It did seem funny, but he never cracked a smile; he just jotted down descriptions of the missing things in his little memorandum book and promised to look them up. "You see he went everj'where and I met him at every tack and turn. I ignored his laundry career at dances and clambakes and such places, but I am told there were girls who tackled him boldly during the pauses of the Boston dip, or when they were tipped up on the edge of a catboat with him, or anywhere, about things trimmed with Hamburg and others ruffled and edged with torchon. "I used to assail him on the wharf when the express boat came in. He was really such a very nice boy and took no end of pains. One by one my things trickled back. He would come up to me on the wharf, bareheaded, his eyes beaming and his teeth gleaming. " 'Good morning, there's a petticoat just in, looks like yours,' he would say; or 'l've had a letter about that stock, it's been found. It wiil be along in a day or two.' "Once he came up very confidently to know if I had pink ribbon run in anything, as there was a corset corcr seeking an owner and he though? * might be she, although he remercv bered I never sent things without. taking the ribbons out! Nice as he was, though, I couldn't patromze his old laundry, so I tried various other evils.

"Speaking of the polite little laundry agent makes me think of the lot of people down in Maine who work at anything during the summer to go to college during the other nine months. The man who ran the trunk delivery business was a senior' at some university, a terror in Latin and Greek, I suppose, and he certainly was a wizard with the trunks. He didn't look at the checks until he got to your house, and then he generally would find he had mixed things. I used to moralize to myself sometimes aa to whether educated, service is as good as the plain straight kind. "For instance, the housemaid at the cottage where I stayed knew a lot you didn't expect her to know, but from one to two things my hostess let drop I fancy Ida fell short in the things she was expected to know. One day at dinner one of the children asked her father the French for crumb. He couldn't tell her, although he was educated abroad. We all tried but none of us could recollect the word. After dinner Alice, the little girl, came out and asked her father if miette was not the French for crumb. " 'That's the word I was trying to/ think of,' he said. 'Who told you?* "It seems it was Ida who knew. She got hold of Alice after dinner and said: 'I wanted to tell you at the table, Miss Alice, but, of course, I couldn't speak then.* Ida had studied French for four years and German for three in some New England high school and had aspirations to teach modern languages. "The cook, we discovered, went ht for pure English. We overheard Ida one day describing a man's appearance to the cook. " 'He's a short, fat man, sunburned, and generally he wears a cap and white pants/ he said. " 'Trousers,' the cook said, in /»' really horrified tone, and Ida learned straightway that pants is a vu%ar contraction, and one which the cook hated to hear anyone use. "But culture and pure English didn't hurt the cook's art. I wish you could have tasted her lobster Neuburg, or her blueberry cake or Her—other things," said the girl, rising and resuming her unpacking with a smile of pleasing recollection. Hot to Be Caught. ~ rSponger—What is that expression? Between the "what" of a dilemma? . Kraft—No, you don't! You-neAatme to say "horns," and you thins: that'll remind me to ask you to htjpe one. Philadelphia Record. * nmmmatal *?onß*dkle*tr€a, Milkman—Say, you paid me in counterfeit money. Citizen—Well, you're been bringing ng counterfeit aUlc-QetroMi Free Press.