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Show Uncle Waltfe ! DISTORTED NAMES i7 HAD a letter from Marie Dusen--fi. herry this nioi'nin," announced Mrs. Jamcswnrlhy, "and she hints thai she would like to come and stay with us a while." ' Let her keep on. hinting until her 1 elbow is out of joint," said James-worthy. James-worthy. "So long as I am master of this house, and my word is law, no American woman wom-an who calls herself her-self Marie "is going go-ing to be welcome at our groaning board. There are some affectations-, Mrs. J a in e s-worthy, s-worthy, which give me- a horizontal hor-izontal pain in my snouiderblade, and the worst of thera is this thing of givng foreign, spelling and pronunciation to our home grown names. There isn't a finer or statelier name in the city- directory di-rectory than Mary. The most distinguished dis-tinguished woman this world ever saw had that name, and it was good enough lor her. v "Any woman who tries to rearrange rear-range such a name as that has something some-thing wrong with her intellect, and I'd be afraid to have 'her under my roof. At any moment she might become be-come a gibbering maniac. "When I was young all the good old fashioned names were in evidence everywhere. The woods were full of Elizabeths' and Dorcases and Matildas. Matil-das. The women who had such names were proud of them, and never monkeyed mon-keyed with them. Had they done so, they'd have been cast into outer darkness dark-ness by polite society. Just today I was glancing over the newspaper and saw some mention of a woman who calls herself Elyzabeth. Now, I wonder what that 'y' is doing there. Sane people don't spell Elizabeth with a 'y,' and in the grand old days the people wouldn't have stood for such an innovation. in-novation. But in tliese modern times all the institutions of our fathers and mothers are being overturned, and if a girl is so fortunate as to receive a stately name at her christening, she devotes the best years of her life to overhauling it, so it will look like something escaped from a feeble-minded institution. "There is no law to prevent women from maltreating their names, so we can't rebuke them by process of warrant, war-rant, but we can at least set our faces against the fool custom and close our doors to the guilty parties. I am a man of hospitable instincts, and would welcome to my abode the veriest beggar beg-gar or social outcast, but no Marie, Kathryn or Mae will ever enter this house while I have strength to resist. When I see them coming I'll sell my life as dearly as possible, Mrs. James-worthy. James-worthy. "My sainted mother was the smoothest woman I ever knew. Taking Tak-ing her by and large, pro and con, she stacked up about as high as anyone. She never tried to cut a swath In social so-cial circles, for she had a profound contempt for everything that was tri fling or superficial and she had a rev-si rev-si ence for old ways and customs. "Her front name was Isabella, and Bhe wore it, without any frills or furbelows, fur-belows, as long as she lived. She never sent that name to the upholsterer upholster-er or taxidermist to have it made over. Bhe realized that famous queens and other great women wore that name, and she was proud of it. You might have argued her into having her hair Bhingled or her front teeth pulled out. but if you had suggested rearranging her name she'd have thought your proper place was the booby hatch. Her name was a treasured possession, as heirloom more precious than Uie family fam-ily jewels. "The name Isabella lends itself to . mutilation and transposition more than any other. Modern women, blessed with that magnificent name, can't rest until they have telescoped it, so we have Isabels and Isbells and Ysobels and half a dozen other variants, each being more Idiotic than the others. Whenever I think of the way my mother moth-er hung on to Isabella I feel a new respect and admiration for that grand old woman, and I wish she were here today, to make the round of the Chau-lauquas, Chau-lauquas, and point out to young women wom-en their duties and privileges. ' |