Page:Gadsby.djvu/163

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
GADSBY

you will find man built big and strong, and woman small and frail. That is so that man can obtain food for his family, and that woman may nourish his offspring. But today, I am sorry to say, you’ll find girls working hard, in gymnasiums, fondly hoping to attain man’s muscular parity. How silly!! It’s going straight against all natural laws. Girls can find a lot of bodily good in gymnasiums, I’ll admit! but not that much. And as for your ‘ball-bat’ arm, as you call it, what of it? You’d look grand, now wouldn’t you, with Frank’s big oak-branch arms hanging way down to your shins. But that ball-bat arm can curl around your tiny baby as softy as a down pillow. Aw, darling! Don’t say you can’t do anything; for I know you can. How about our old Organization of Youth days? You,——

And Nancy, now laughing, said, gaily:—

“Oho! Our old Organization! What fun it was! But, Daddy, I don’t know of any young crowd following us up.”

“No. Our young folks of today think such things too much work;” and, as that old factory was but a mass of ruins now, and midnight was approaching, Gadsby’s family was soon in that mythical Land of Nod, in which no horns blow, no sparks fall; only occasionally a soft gurgling from a crib in Nancy’s bungalow.

[ 155 ]