The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress Eugénie. She lingered along, feeble and half-blind, until she was nearly 95 years old. She has been called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women have lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation knew or cared anything about her. I presume most of our young people skipped the details of her life as given in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before the war between France and Germany, the women of the world regarded this sad empress as the great model of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would be hard for women in these days to realize how this beautiful empress to people in every land how they should arrange their hair and wear their dresses. At that time most women wore their hair in short nets bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of “hoopskirts”—most of them, as it seemed, four to five feet wide. Just how this woman managed to put her ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I never could understand. From the big city to the little backwoods hamlet women were studying to see what “Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often wondered if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman remembered those days of power.
Her death brings to mind an incident that had long been forgotten. I had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some milk, since our cow was dry. In those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The woman of the house, an immense, fat creature, with the shape of a barrel, a short, thick neck and a round moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris. She wore an immense hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance of walking inside of a hogshead. Her hair was parted in the middle and brought down beside her wide face to be caught in a net just below her ears. I know so little and care so much less about style in clothes that I can remember in detail only two costumes that I have ever seen women wear. This is one of them.
“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat lady as she poured out the milk. “You can tell your aunt that you have seen one lady dressed just like Paris.”
It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was glad to have the experience.
“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman came here today and said I looked enough like Ugeeny to be her half-sister—dressed as I am now. He has been in Paris, too.”
“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold her a book on the strength of that . Say, Mary, you don’t look any more like Ugeeny than old Spot does—and you don’t need to.”
“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have no idea of beauty.”
“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got a stomach, and I know that you can make the best doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in Bristol County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can do. You are worth three of her for practical value to the world, and I think you a handsome woman—but you can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the shape, and I’m glad of it.”
But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.
“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look like Ugeeny?”
Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.
“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”
“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are divided into two classes—strung together like on different . Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the finest men that ever lived on earth!”
“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”
But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean. Some day or ’nuther every will have water and heat and light right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days farmers will be kings.”
The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.
“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd and Charles Sumner on the slavery question. Folks at them, laughed them down and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask is, Ain’t I in their class?”
“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes them discontented!”
“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there ............