A Gift for Orpha

Hark! I have found the perfect present to bestow upon Orpha, the wretched servant girl, during Yuletide. I know they will bring her joy aplenty.


These fine needles will make it much easier for her to darn my stockings in a timely fashion, resulting in fewer beatings with the wet hemp sack. She will be ever so pleased! This is what Christmastime is all about -- remembering those in need.

Here is a photo-graphic image of the homely Orpha.


'Tis the only such pictorial representation of her visage; Papá was good enough to pay for her to have a sitting with a photo-grapher so that she might leave a record for the ages. Ah, Papá is such a benevolent figure. (Though, considering the gruesomeness of her countenance, perhaps he did her, and mankind, no favor!)

Melancholic musings

Whilst strolling through the mangrove groves on the estate evening last, I furrowed my brow in thought. I was not considering whether ‘twould be more fashionable to buy gloves in slink or lamb leather. Nor was I trying to determine whether ‘twould be a more fit deliverance of justice for Papá to spray the brutish strikers at his jute mill with high-powered hoses, or to run steeds into the unruly crowds. Rather, the source of my disquiet in the guava-hued twilight was what focus I shall chuse for what is termed, in today’s profane parlance, a “blog.”

There are, after all, over sixty possible topics that one could explore. Shall I discuss the love for alchemy that I share with my betrothed one, and Horace’s unending quest to decode the mysteries of simple metals to reveal gold in its purest form? Or shall I recount my love for gustatory delicacies , from Anguille Pompadour to simple sliced Zampino? I could comment extensively on my role in the religious development of my godnieces, little Florine Filomena and Millicent Magnolia. Would I find sufficient fodder in the tumultuous but, of necessity, interdependent relationship between myself and my wretched servant girl, Orpha? Would it be unseemly for one who calls herself a gentlelady to comment upon her distaste towards the policies of the current Secretary of State, Philander C. Knox?

O, the psychic mining I could perform! O, the delving into crass behavior of my social subordinates! Why, there is plenty more upon which I could comment: my swooning episodes upon passing by a mound of equine manure in these urban streets…the revulsion I feel, the affront to my natural feminine modesty, when the physician performs his invasive auscultation to determine whether my consumptive symptoms have worsened…the difficulty of witnessing the servants’ quotidian struggles around the villa…my frustration, and Mummy’s and Papá’s and all the children’s, upon not receiving our roast squab promptly when the consommé is removed from our dinner settings…the pain and horror I feel when my delicate fingers yet again are injured in the dangerous bamboo hinges of my authentic Oriental parasol.

But O! must I constrain myself to just one singular corner of all of God’s grand creation? I feel that to delimit this reportage would be to shun much of the greatness of these forty-six states united in their hatred of the downtrodden and the Irish, nay, a stain on the magnanimity of the Lord Himself! I will ponder these matters this eve in the drawing-room while working on my tatting. Hopefully Papá sha’n’t be too dismayed with my faint display of unease.