Pen Pricks 



And I, too, have my own reflections. My les- 

 son in humility comes from the Hales. It is my 

 cotmtry, that New England which they redis- 

 covered on their last happy trip. Gay are the 

 sketches, full of beating light and sunshine, 

 whether it falls on pastures, self-sown with rocks 

 and little cedars, on the uncompromising bleak- 

 ness of the village church, or on mill towns hud- 

 dled close about a dingy river side. But there 

 is the tartness of a Rhode Island greening to the 

 text. It delights where it most piques. To some 

 I know it has given a wry mouth. And why 

 not? What else would you expect from her who 

 recently played "Mamma Bett"? Impossible 

 that that peppery old lady who could so chastise 

 with the valor of her tongue, should write with 

 other than a caustic pen. In "Beyond the Hori- 

 zon," too, did not her grim humor crackle like 

 a lightning flash across the blackness of the sky? 

 'Inimitable, but, so you insist, a person of one 

 part. Last year she had recovered from a spell 

 and was meddlesomely up from her wheel-chair. 

 She would be lost without her "tantrims." I tell 

 you I know better. For many years she played 



[19] 



