MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH

CONTENTS


MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

WAYS AND MEANS

THE "CHRISTMAS LADY"

THE ANNEXATION OF CUBY

A REMINISCENCE

A THEATER PARTY

"MR. BOB"

MRS. WIGGS AT HOME

HOW SPRING CAME TO THE CABBAGE PATCH

AUSTRALIA'S MISHAP

THE BENEFIT DANCE






MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH




CHAPTER I

MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

"In the mud and scum of things
Something always always sings!"

"MY, but it's nice an' cold this mornin'! The thermometer's done
fell up to zero!"

Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were
not sticking out through the boy's coat that she wore, or her teeth
chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs.
Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy
lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles. When Mr.
Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried his
faults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she always
laid stress on the fine hand he wrote. It was the same way when
their little country home burned and she had to come to the city to
seek work; her one comment was: "Thank God, it was the pig instid of
the baby that was burned!"

So this bleak morning in December she pinned the bed-clothes around
the children and made them sit up close to the stove, while she
pasted brown paper over the broken window-pane and made sprightly
comments on the change in the weather.

The Wiggses lived in the Cabbage Patch. It was not a real cabbage
patch, but a queer neighborhood, where ramshackle cottages played
hop-scotch over the railroad tracks. There were no streets, so when
a new house was built the owner faced it any way his fancy prompted.
Mr. Bagby's grocery, it is true, conformed to convention, and
presented a solid front to the railroad track, but Miss Hazy's
cottage shied off sidewise into the Wiggses' yard, as if it were
afraid of the big freight-trains that went thundering past so many
times a day; and Mrs. Schultz's front room looked directly into the
Eichorns' kitchen. The latter was not a bad arrangement, however,
for Mrs. Schultz had been confined to her bed for ten years, and her
sole interest in life consisted in watching what took place in her
neighbor's family.