Improvement Era, 1935 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion

Longing By Lavenia B. Horsley

OH, the heart of me is longing

For country lanes today,

For scent of sweet wild clover,

And a meadowlark's glad lay.

I want to see gold wheat fields,

A waving in the sun.

I want to breathe the wild plum's breath

That floats when day is done.

The whispering rills in woodlands,

Bring music to my soul,

That's stifled in the city

Where harsh noises swell and roll.

Satisfactorily Serviceable By Irene Dunlap

"OH Mother, it simply must be chiffon."

Janice's big blue eyes pleaded as eloquently at twenty as they had when she was a chubby child of three, and worked as much havoc with Mrs. Staitman's kind, motherly heart.

It is hard to refuse an only child anything, especially when one is a widow and one's every thought of every waking hour is for that child.

In this particular instance, however, Mrs. Staitman resolutely banished the pleading of the blue eyes and assumed her most forbidding air.

"Chiffon isn't serviceable, Janice. Now a nice crisp organdie could be worn dozens of times and still launder to look like new."

"Oh, Mother!" Janice's voice was bleak with protest, "Who ever heard of a wedding dress being serviceable!"

Affectionately, she resorted to her little-girl tactics. Slipping onto her mother's ample lap and twining white arms about her plump neck, she continued the argument. She could almost see the maternal defenses fast crumpling about her.

"In the first place, I never, never expect to need a wedding dress more than once. If anything happens to Bill, I'll just fold up and be a nice respectable widow the rest of my natural life."

"Janice dear," her mother expostulated in a scandalized tone, "I didn't mean that I expect you to be married in it more than once!"

Janice burrowed her golden head into the folds of the plump neck.

"I know you didn't Mom. But, some way, I don't like your term 'serviceable.' It isn't appropriate. It sounds like blue serge or checked gingham. I want to be beautiful for Bill, Mom. I want to just take his breath away."

A tremulous smile played around the older woman's mouth and tears of happy remembrance that dated back some twenty-two years before glistened in her eyes. She, too, had had that same desire to be beautiful for Janice's father. She felt her last defense crumpling.

"I only meant," she put in a last dignified effort to stand her ground, "that you could wear organdy to parties afterward."

"But we won't be going to parties," Janice discouraged promptly. "If we were going to live here, it would be different. But Bill's being transferred to Chicago makes matters altogether different. We won't know a soul to invite us to parties. Being married in chiffon will sort of make up to me for not having a June wedding, Mother. You know how I've had my heart set on that. But now with Bill insisting, in October of all times, on rushing the wedding so I can go with him when he is transferred-well, I just have to have chiffon, that's all."

"I suppose every mother knows the joy of being wheedled out of things by her tyrannical children," Mrs.

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