"Yo' worsteds, madam."
"Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn!" Alma shouted. "You're quite incorrigible.
A spade is a spade!"
"But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young lady," said the Colonel, with
unabated gallantry; "and when yo' mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds. But I
respect worsteds even under the name of yarn: our ladies--my own mothah
and sistahs--had to knit the socks we wore--all we could get in the woe."
"Yes, and aftah the woe," his daughter put in. "The knitting has not
stopped yet in some places. Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. Beaton?"
Beaton explained just how much.
"Well, sir," said the Colonel, "then you have seen a country making
gigantic struggles to retrieve its losses, sir. The South is advancing
with enormous strides, sir."
"Too fast for some of us to keep up," said Miss Woodburn, in an audible
aside. "The pace in Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had to
drop oat into a slow place like New York."
"The progress in the South is material now," said the Colonel; "and those
of us whose interests are in another direction find ourselves--isolated
--isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still in the No'th, sir;
the great cities draw the mental activity of the country to them, sir.
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