"
In past times, when we have visited Miss Lavinia, we have been fairly
meek and decorous guests, following the programme that she planned with
such infinite attention to detail that free will was impossible, and we
often felt like paper dolls.
We had read her lament on the death of sociability and back yards with
many a smile, and a sigh also, for to one born in the pool, every ripple
that stirs it must be of importance, and it is impossible for outsiders
to urge her to step out of the eddies altogether and begin anew, for New
Yorkitis seems to be not only a rarely curable disease to those who have
it, but an hereditary one as well.
As usual, Evan came to the rescue, as we sat in the den the night before
our departure. "Let us turn tables on Miss Lavinia this time and take her
to see our New York," he said, "since we are all quite tired of hers. Do
you remember the time when we went to town to buy the trappings for the
boys' first tree and were detained until Christmas morning by the delay
of a cable I had to wait for? After dinner Christmas Eve we coaxed Miss
Lavinia out with us and bought half a bushel of jolly little toys from
street fakirs to take home, and then boarded an elevated train and rode
about the city until after midnight, in and out the downtown streets and
along the outskirts, to see all the poor people's Christmas trees in the
second stories of tenements, cheap flats, and over little shops.
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