IT PAYS TO SMILE

NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

It Pays to Smile

By NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers

New York

Published by arrangement with George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1920,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

TO

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

THE ALL-AMERICAN EDITOR

CONTENTS

IT PAYS TO SMILE

I

Since the very beginnings of Boston my people, who were, as every school child knows, an integral part of the original colony, had the commendable habit of recording all those events which bore in a manner either psychological or physiological upon their households or upon the affairs of state, in which they were ever active. In truth I make small doubt that but for the Talbots there would have been no Boston, or at least certainly no information regarding it recorded in intelligible English. And though in my girlhood I conceived my ancestors' style to be a trifle jejune and was myself fond of lighter and more frivolous works such as those of Emerson and Walter Pater, a weakness to which I confess with all due humility, I nevertheless realize the importance of the writings of my family and the desirability of maintaining our tradition of making an accurate record of such pertinent events as come under my immediate observation in order that future generations in their search after truth may have a reliable monument to depend upon. And this resolve has been greatly strengthened by perusing the ill-written, outrageously sensational and ill-considered newspaper versions of the affair which has so recently brought our historic name into the public notice under such distressingly vulgar and conspicuous circumstances.

Of course Talbot, the chauffeur, has enjoyed it all immensely, thereby to my mind proving once and for all that he has no genuine claim upon the name, and that his pretension of belonging to a younger Western branch is, as I have consistently maintained, absolutely fallacious. But I show weakness by digression. Permit me to recount the tale from its true beginning, which was, of course, my unfortunate answering of that advertisement in the Transcript.

When the wretched thing came to my attention Euphemia and I were seated at the supper table; she at the head and I at the side—a custom she has insisted upon since our parents' death, her position being that due to the elder sister and the rightful head of the family; and the table has continued to be set thus, though at the time of my rebellion I was fifty and she sixty, and it was absurd that she should maintain a formality instituted when she was twenty and I was ten. I had often disputed with her about it, but to no avail.

"My dear Freedom," she would rebuke me, "I am the elder and I know what is best for youth. So long as I am here this household shall be conducted properly!"

And nothing served to move her from that point of view.

Well, upon the portentous evening when my rebellion began we were sitting as usual, promptly at five-thirty, in the cheerful if shabby dining room of our vast and dilapidated old mansion on Chestnut Street, with the sun shining brightly upon the neatly darned table linen, the zinnias from the garden and the few remaining bits of family silver. It can hardly be said that Old Sol spread his refulgent glory upon very much to eat, for he did not, there being nothing but a pot of tea, four very thin half slices of toast and the evening Transcript. According to her custom Euphemia looked at this first herself.

"I perceive that the Republican Party is indignant with the Administration," she informed me. "And that a mail service is to be established by air from New York. How shocking! The postman will very likely drop things from the aëroplane! I