Cousin Patty is small, rather white and thin, and she is fifty-five. I
tell you her age, because in a way it explains many things which would
otherwise puzzle you. She was born just before the war. She knew
nothing of the luxury of the days of slavery. She has twisted and
turned and economized all of her life. She has struggled with all the
problems which beset the South in Reconstruction times, and she has
come out if it all, sweet and shrewd, and with a point of view about
women which astonishes me, and which gives us a chance for many
sprightly arguments. Her black hair is untouched with gray, she wears
it parted and in a thick knot high on her head. Her gowns are
invariably of black silk, well cut and well made. She makes them
herself, and gets her patterns from New York! Can you see her now?
Our arguments are usually about women, and their position in the world
to-day. You know I am conservative, clinging much to old ideals, old
fashions, to the beliefs of gentler times--but Cousin Patty in this
backwater of civilization has gone far ahead of me. She believes that
the hope of the South is in its women. "They read more than the men,"
she says, "and they have responded more quickly to the new social
ideals."
But of our arguments more in another letter--this will serve, however,
to introduce you to some of the astonishing mental processes of this
little marooned cousin of mine.
For in a sense she is marooned. Once upon a time when Cotton was king,
and slave labor made all things possible, there was prosperity here,
but now the land is impoverished. So Cousin Patty does not depend upon
the land. She read in some of her magazines of a woman who had made a
fortune in wedding cake. She resolved that what one woman could do
could be done by another. Hence she makes and sells wedding cake, and
while she has not made a fortune she has made a living. She began by
asking friends for orders; she now gets orders from near and far.
So all day there is the good smell of baking in the house, and the
sound of the whisking of eggs. And every day little boxes have to be
filled. Will you smile when I tell you that I like the filling of the
little boxes? And that while we talk o' nights, I busy myself with
this task, while Cousin Patty does things with narrow white ribbon and
bits of artificial orange blossoms, so that the packages which go out
may be as beautiful and bride-y as possible.