Miss Alcott's was a tidy soul. She was always getting in sly digs about bad little rich girls who threw their clothes about and good little poor ones who hung theirs up. But the jelly of her narratives covered the powder sufficiently for the most part, save for this one egregious example, The fable concerned itself with a girl who was an author. She wrote wonderful stories whenever the mood seized her, and' sometimes it seized her before she had dusted her study and polished up her brass pen holder and put fresh flowers round the room. In the frenzy of composition she sometimes got ink on her fingers, the Portable not being invent at that time, and she did not always rise at once and pumice away the spot. Besides these weaknesses there was another. She loved a young man with a decorous and maidenly affection.
The young man, who had not as yet declared himself, was suddenly called away and desired to say farewell to the authoress, and doubtless to propose. The emergency caused him to call in the morning, and horror of horrors, she emerged from her study to meet him with a smudge of ink on her forehead and a blouse that was distinctly down at the heels, if you get what I mean. The neat young man naturally recoiled and departed with the proposal unmade. The heartbroken autheress confided in some older wiser person who pointed out the error of untidiness in words which might well grace this very page.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.