These are stories from Everybody's Magazine, 1910 issues.
Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR softwaredonated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough<Mikel@caere.com>
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910
THE LAYING OF THE MONSTER
BY THEODOSIA GARRISON
Dorothea reposed with her shoulders in the shade of the bulkheadand her bare feet burrowing in the sun-warmed sand. Beneath hershoulder blades was a bulky and disheveled volume—a bound yearof Godey's Lady Book of the vintage of the early seventies.Having survived the handling of three generations, this seemed totake naturally to being drenched with rain and warped by sun, or,as at the present moment, serving its owner either as asand-pillow or as a receptacle for divers scribbled verses on itsfly-leaves and margins.
It was with a poem now that Dorothea was wrestling, as shewriggled her toes in the sand and gazed blankly oceanward. Underthe scorching August sun, the Atlantic seemed to purr like ahuge, amiable lion cub.
It was not the amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorotheafound inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as thatminstrel might who was implored to make love alone his theme.
Given an imaginative young person of eleven, who, when notabandoning herself utterly to athletics, has secret and continualaccess to the brand of literature peculiar to the "SeasideLibrary," and the result is obvious. Dorothea's mother readrecipes; her father was addicted to the daily papers. It was onlyin her grandmother that Dorothea found a literary taste sheapproved. On that cozy person's bookshelves one could always findwhat happened to Goldie or what the exquisite Irish heroine saidto the earl before she eloped with the captain.
In this knowledge Dorothea's parents had no ambition that theirdaughter should excel. In fact, an uncompromising edict on thesubject had been given forth more than once to a sullen andrebellious sinner. But how should the most suspicious parent,when his daughter sits in his presence apparently engrossed in abook entitled "The Girlhood of Famous Women," guess thatcarefully concealed in its interior is a smaller volume bearingthe title "Muriel's Mistake, or, For Another's Sin?"
Having acquired knowledge, the true student seeks to demonstrate.Dorothea had promptly and intentionally fallen in love with theson of her next-door neighbor. Amiel—fresh from his first yearin college— was a tall, broad-shouldered youth, with kindlybrown eyes and a flash of white teeth when he smiled. In contrastto the small boys and the sober-going fathers of families inwhich the summer colony abounded, he shone, as Dorothea'sfavorite novelists would have expressed it, "like a Greek god."
It was this unsuspecting person whom Dorothea had, at firstsight, elected to be the Hero of her Dreams. She trailed him,moreover, with a persistency that would have done credit to adetective. Did he go to the post-office, he was sure to meetDorothea returning (Lady Ursula, strolling through her estate,comes upon her lover unawares). Dorothea, emulating her heroine'sexample by vaulting a fence and cutting across lots, could befound also strolling (if slightly breathless) as he approached.
She timed her day, as far as possible, with his. Would he swim,play tennis, or go crabbing—there was Dorothea. Would he reposein the summerhouse hammock and listen to entire pages declaimedfrom Tennyson and Longfellow, the while being violentlyswung—his slave was ready. She read no story in which she wasnot the heroine and Amiel the hero.