Penelopes Postscripts | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1915 Hodder and Stoughton edition.

Penelope's Postscripts
by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Contents:
Penelope in Switzerland Penelope in Venice Penelope's Prints of Wales
Penelope in Devon Penelope at Home

PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND

A DAY IN PESTALOZZI-TOWN
Salemina and I were in Geneva. If you had ever travelled through
Europe with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental
table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-a-vis whether she
were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would understand
why I call my friend Salemina. She doesn't mind it. She knows that I
am simply jealous because I came from a vulgarly large tribe that never
had any coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors always sealed their letters
with their thumb nails.
Whenever Francesca and I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we
know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors in a
sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she remains

unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual public
comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was given her
by her sponsors in baptism.
Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds. The
first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is
travelling with us simply because her relatives think that she will "see
Europe" more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she were
accompanied by persons of her own age or "set."
Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is
collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of her own
country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment before her
letter of credit is exhausted.
I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience in
mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I
began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking,
back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all
unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them.
Even now the spell still works and it is the curly head, the "shining
morning face," the ready tear, the glancing smile of childhood that
enchains me and gives my brush whatever skill it possesses.
We had not been especially high-minded or educational in Switzerland,
Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a point where the
improvement of one's mind seems a farce, and the service of humanity,
for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased imagination.
How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake
Geneva and think about modern problems,--Improved Tenements,
Child Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the
Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva!--blue as