Kabanata Kabanata 13 · SNOW-WHITE; ROSE-RED

. SNOW-WHITE; ROSE-RED

SNOW-WHITE; ROSE-RED

Just before Thanksgiving the affairs of the Simpsons reached what might

have been called a crisis, even in their family, which had been born

and reared in a state of adventurous poverty and perilous uncertainty.

Riverboro was doing its best to return the entire tribe of Simpsons to

the land of its fathers, so to speak, thinking rightly that the town

which had given them birth, rather than the town of their adoption,

should feed them and keep a roof over their heads until the children

were of an age for self-support. There was little to eat in the

household and less to wear, though Mrs. Simpson did, as always, her

poor best. The children managed to satisfy their appetites by sitting

modestly outside their neighbors' kitchen doors when meals were about

to be served. They were not exactly popular favorites, but they did

receive certain undesirable morsels from the more charitable housewives.

Life was rather dull and dreary, however, and in the chill and gloom of

November weather, with the vision of other people's turkeys bursting

with fat, and other people's golden pumpkins and squashes and corn

being garnered into barns, the young Simpsons groped about for some

inexpensive form of excitement, and settled upon the selling of soap

for a premium. They had sold enough to their immediate neighbors during

the earlier autumn to secure a child's handcart, which, though very

weak on its pins, could be trundled over the country roads. With large

business sagacity and an executive capacity which must have been

inherited from their father, they now proposed to extend their

operations to a larger area and distribute soap to contiguous villages,

if these villages could be induced to buy. The Excelsior Soap Company

paid a very small return of any kind to its infantile agents, who were

scattered through the state, but it inflamed their imaginations by the

issue of circulars with highly colored pictures of the premiums to be

awarded for the sale of a certain number of cakes. It was at this

juncture that Clara Belle and Susan Simpson consulted Rebecca, who

threw herself solidly and wholeheartedly into the enterprise, promising

her help and that of Emma Jane Perkins. The premiums within their

possible grasp were three: a bookcase, a plush reclining chair, and a

banquet lamp. Of course the Simpsons had no books, and casting aside,

without thought or pang, the plush chair, which might have been of some

use in a family of seven persons (not counting Mr. Simpson, who

ordinarily sat elsewhere at the town's expense), they warmed themselves

rapturously in the vision of the banquet lamp, which speedily became to

them more desirable than food, drink, or clothing. Neither Emma Jane

nor Rebecca perceived anything incongruous in the idea of the Simpsons

striving for a banquet lamp. They looked at the picture daily and knew

that if they themselves were free agents they would toil, suffer, ay

sweat, for the happy privilege of occupying the same room with that

lamp through the coming winter evenings. It looked to be about eight

feet tall in the catalogue, and Emma Jane advised Clara Belle to

measure the height of the Simpson ceilings; but a note in the margin of

the circular informed them that it stood two and a half feet high when

set up in all its dignity and splendor on a proper table, three dollars

extra. It was only of polished brass, continued the circular, though it

was invariably mistaken for solid gold, and the shade that accompanied

it (at least it accompanied it if the agent sold a hundred extra cakes)

was of crinkled crepe paper printed in a dozen delicious hues, from

which the joy-dazzled agent might take his choice.

Seesaw Simpson was not in the syndicate. Clara Belle was rather a

successful agent, but Susan, who could only say "thoap," never made

large returns, and the twins, who were somewhat young to be thoroughly

trustworthy, could be given only a half dozen cakes at a time, and were

obliged to carry with them on their business trips a brief document

stating the price per cake, dozen, and box. Rebecca and Emma Jane

offered to go two or three miles in some one direction and see what

they could do in the way of stirring up a popular demand for the

Snow-White and Rose-Red brands, the former being devoted to laundry

purposes and the latter being intended for the toilet.

There was a great amount of hilarity in the preparation for this event,

and a long council in Emma Jane's attic. They had the soap company's

circular from which to arrange a proper speech, and they had, what was

still better, the remembrance of a certain patent-medicine vender's

discourse at the Milltown Fair. His method, when once observed, could

never be forgotten; nor his manner, nor his vocabulary. Emma Jane

practiced it on Rebecca, and Rebecca on Emma Jane.

"Can I sell you a little soap this afternoon? It is called the

Snow-White and Rose-Red Soap, six cakes in an ornamental box, only

twenty cents for the white, twenty-five cents for the red. It is made

from the purest ingredients, and if desired could be eaten by an

invalid with relish and profit."

"Oh, Rebecca, don't let's say that!" interposed Emma Jane hysterically.

"It makes me feel like a fool."

"It takes so little to make you feel like a fool, Emma Jane," rebuked

Rebecca, "that sometimes I think that you must BE one. I don't get to

feeling like a fool so awfully easy; now leave out that eating part if

you don't like it, and go on."

"The Snow-White is probably the most remarkable laundry soap ever

manufactured. Immerse the garments in a tub, lightly rubbing the more

soiled portions with the soap; leave them submerged in water from

sunset to sunrise, and then the youngest baby can wash them without the

slightest effort."

"BABE, not baby," corrected Rebecca from the circular.

"It's just the same thing," argued Emma Jane.

"Of course it's just the same THING; but a baby has got to be called

babe or infant in a circular, the same as it is in poetry! Would you

rather say infant?"

"No," grumbled Emma Jane; "infant is worse even than babe. Rebecca, do

you think we'd better do as the circular says, and let Elijah or Elisha

try the soap before we begin selling?"

"I can't imagine a babe doing a family wash with ANY soap," answered

Rebecca; "but it must be true or they would never dare to print it, so

don't let's bother. Oh! won't it be the greatest fun, Emma Jane? At

some of the houses--where they can't possibly know me--I shan't be

frightened, and I shall reel off the whole rigmarole, invalid, babe,

and all. Perhaps I shall say even the last sentence, if I can remember

it: 'We sound every chord in the great mac-ro-cosm of satisfaction."

This conversation took place on a Friday afternoon at Emma Jane's

house, where Rebecca, to her unbounded joy, was to stay over Sunday,

her aunts having gone to Portland to the funeral of an old friend.

Saturday being a holiday, they were going to have the old white horse,

drive to North Riverboro three miles away, eat a twelve o'clock dinner

with Emma Jane's cousins, and be back at four o'clock punctually.

When the children asked Mrs. Perkins if they could call at just a few

houses coming and going, and sell a little soap for the Simpsons, she

at first replied decidedly in the negative. She was an indulgent

parent, however, and really had little objection to Emma Jane amusing

herself in this unusual way; it was only for Rebecca, as the niece of

the difficult Miranda Sawyer, that she raised scruples; but when fully

persuaded that the enterprise was a charitable one, she acquiesced.

The girls called at Mr. Watson's store, and arranged for several large

boxes of soap to be charged to Clara Belle Simpson's account. These

were lifted into the back of the wagon, and a happier couple never

drove along the country road than Rebecca and her companion. It was a

glorious Indian summer day, which suggested nothing of Thanksgiving,

near at hand as it was. It was a rustly day, a scarlet and buff, yellow

and carmine, bronze and crimson day. There were still many leaves on

the oaks and maples, making a goodly show of red and brown and gold.

The air was like sparkling cider, and every field had its heaps of

yellow and russet good things to eat, all ready for the barns, the

mills, and the markets. The horse forgot his twenty years, sniffed the

sweet bright air, and trotted like a colt; Nokomis Mountain looked blue

and clear in the distance; Rebecca stood in the wagon, and

apostrophized the landscape with sudden joy of living:--

"Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,

With the wonderful water round you curled,

And the wonderful grass upon your breast,

World, you are beautifully drest!"

Dull Emma Jane had never seemed to Rebecca so near, so dear, so tried

and true; and Rebecca, to Emma Jane's faithful heart, had never been so

brilliant, so bewildering, so fascinating, as in this visit together,

with its intimacy, its freedom, and the added delights of an exciting

business enterprise.

A gorgeous leaf blew into the wagon.

"Does color make you sort of dizzy?" asked Rebecca.

"No," answered Emma Jane after a long pause; "no, it don't; not a mite."

"Perhaps dizzy isn't just the right word, but it's nearest. I'd like to

eat color, and drink it, and sleep in it. If you could be a tree, which

one would you choose?"

Emma Jane had enjoyed considerable experience of this kind, and Rebecca

had succeeded in unstopping her ears, ungluing her eyes, and loosening

her tongue, so that she could "play the game" after a fashion.

"I'd rather be an apple-tree in blossom,--that one that blooms pink, by

our pig-pen."

Rebecca laughed. There was always something unexpected in Emma Jane's

replies. "I'd choose to be that scarlet maple just on the edge of the

pond there,"--and she pointed with the whip. "Then I could see so much

more than your pink apple-tree by the pig-pen. I could look at all the

rest of the woods, see my scarlet dress in my beautiful looking-glass,

and watch all the yellow and brown trees growing upside down in the

water. When I'm old enough to earn money, I'm going to have a dress

like this leaf, all ruby color--thin, you know, with a sweeping train

and ruffly, curly edges; then I think I'll have a brown sash like the

trunk of the tree, and where could I be green? Do they have green

petticoats, I wonder? I'd like a green petticoat coming out now and

then underneath to show what my leaves were like before I was a scarlet

maple."

"I think it would be awful homely," said Emma Jane. "I'm going to have

a white satin with a pink sash, pink stockings, bronze slippers, and a

spangled fan."