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116 Hypatia Boyd “Heaven forbid!” exclaimed the girl addressed, “what should I do with a husband?” which convulsed the girls with laughter, and it is a fact that Martha suddenly sneezed, and let fall the tea-cup whose interior she had been examining. The cup was broken beyond remedy. Then Martha closed the window, suddenly aware that the club president was frowning on her, and that the club’s rules were, for the time present, being broken in an wholesale way. This was manifested by the fact that when Martha resumed her place at the festive board, another of the pretty girls courageously announced that she was engaged to a certain young man, whose name she gave in full. “Eh!” said Martha, entering into the spirit of the thing, and disregarding the severe looks of the Lady President. “As David Hartman said somewhere. ‘How’d ye ketch him? Had to go after him with a four quart measure, didn’t ye? Or did he let ye corner him?’” “Miss Stuart caught him for me,” the maid answered. “I did no such thing,” announced Miss Stuart, as she straightened herself up to her full height. “It came about this way. Before I went to Chicago, a prominent deaf person , a Mr. Somebody, sent a note to me to the effect that a mass meeting of the deaf would occur in a near by city on such an evening, at such a place, and that it would be worth while for me to attend as if I wished to hear a lecture in signs. Well, I and yonder young lady went to that city, and as I did not care to attend the mass-meeting alone, I persuaded her to accompany me. And it was at that identical meeting that she met the young man to whom she is now engaged to be married, although I assure you girls I never dreamed of such a thing that might [sic]. In other words, I vigorously protest against being regarded in the light of a match-maker.” “Oh!” said the girls, and they made a rush to congratulate the engaged young woman. c What One Girl Hears and Sees (Continued from the February number) MARTHA, COMFORTABLY SETTLED in a big chair, was absorbedly reading the pages of a book, when the door of her study opened, and Dora came in. “I am glad to see you,” said Martha. “Now don’t make me a brief call, as you business women are so apt to do, but take off your hat and coat, and have that chair near the grate, please. “What One Girl Hears and Sees” is from The Silent Worker 13, no. 7 (March 1901). What One Girl Hears and Sees (continued) 117 Dora did as she was told, and in the meantime, Martha made her a cup of tea. “This tea refreshes me,” said Dora, “and what a lovely blaze you have in the grate.” “Yes,” Martha returned, seating herself in her chair. “I like an open fireplace a great deal better than a register, for you see a register is an unsightly hole in the floor, while a glowing blaze in an open grate suggests much that is grand, poetical, and inspiring. I like to look in such a blaze, and imagine all sorts of things.” “You mean to dream them,” said Dora, “and all the girls call you a dreamer, though your name of Martha is rather misleading. You should have been called Mary, for you are inspired by visions. Your mind is ever fixed upon your ideals, upon the thoughts of all that is high and noble.” “I supposed I’m a hopeless case,” groaned Martha, “for I cannot resist those ‘dreaming moods.’” “I rather think you are to be congratulated upon your temperament,” Dora answered . “History shows that it is the dreamers who in the end have ruled the world. One of your favorite literary characters, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was a dreamer, so was George Eliot and of the men, there is Carlyle, Gladstone, Bismarck, and Lincoln, not to mention others. It is your dreamy nature, your inward aspirations, that keeps you wide-awake or enthusiastic, and enables you to rise above severe disappointments, and makes you look forward to the future with an eager, wholesome anticipation of seeing your ideals, your dreams realized some day. It is this that keeps you going, that makes you say,—‘It is better to wear out, than to rust,’ when we...

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