Chapter II

Many are the tales concerning JOANNA's flashing wit. There appeared many years back, in a modest shape that excited small interest amongst the reviewing herd, a booklet whereof the title furnished little if any indication to the contents. _The Spinster's Reticule_, for so the name ran, came forth with no blare of journalistic trumpets challenging approval from the towers of critical sagacity. It appeared and lived. But between its cardboard covers the bruised heart of JOANNA beats before the world. She shines most in these aphorisms. Her private talk, too, has its own brilliancy, spun, as it was here and there, out of a museful mind at the cooking of the dinner or of the family accounts. She said of love that "it is the sputter of grease in a frying-pan; where it falls the fire burns with a higher flame to consume it."[1] Of man, that "he may navigate Mormon Bay, but he cannot sail to Khiva Point." The meaning is too obvious it may be, but the thought is well imaged.

She is delightful when she touches on life. "Two," she says, "may sit at a feast, but the feast is not thereby doubled." And, again, "Passion may lift us to Himalaya heights, but the hams are smoked in a chimney." And this of the soul, "He who fashions a waterproof prevents not the clouds from dripping moisture." Of stockings she observes that, "The knitting-needles are long, but the turn of the heel is a teaser." Here there is a delightful irony of which matrons and maids may take note.

Such, then, was our JOANNA--JOANNA MERESIA SPRATT, to give her that full name by which posterity is to know her--an ardent, bubbling, bacon-loving girl-nature, with hands reaching from earth to the stars, that blinked egregiously at the sight of her innocent beauty, and hid themselves in winding clouds for very love of her.