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From The Potato Museum Library:
The Potato Child &
Others
When Miss Amanda had selected her from among the girls at "The Home," the motherly matron felt sorry. "She is a tender-hearted little thing, and a kind word goes a great way with Elsie." Miss Amanda looked at the matron as if she were speaking Greek, and said nothing. It was quite plain that few words, either kind or unkind, would pass Miss Amanda's lips. But "The Home" was more than full, and Miss Amanda Armstrong was a person well known as the leading dressmaker in the city, a person of some money; not obliged to work now if she didn't wish to. "If cold, she is at least perfectly just," they all said. So Elsie went to work for Miss Amanda, and lived in the kitchen. She waited on the door, washed the dishes, cleaned the vegetables, and set the table (Miss Amanda lived alone, and ate in the kitchen). Every Friday she swept the house. Her bed was in a little room in the back attic............ ........She used to long for a doll or cat or something she could call her own and talk to. She asked Miss Amanda, who said "No." She added, "I have no money to give for such foolishness as a doll, and a cat would eat its head off."....... ......One day, a never-forgotten day, she went down cellar to the bin of potatoes to select some for dinner. She was sorting them over and laying out all of one size, when she took up quite a long one, and lo! it had a little face on it and two eyes and a little hump between for a nose and a long crack below that made a very pretty mouth. Elsie looked at it joyfully. "It will make me a child," she said, "no matter if it has no arms or legs; the face is everything." She carefully placed it at the end of the bin, and whenever she could slip away without neglecting her work would run down cellar and talk softly to it. But one day her potato-child was gone! Elsie's heart gave a big jump, and then fell like lead, and seemed to lie perfectly still; but it commenced to beat again, beat and ache, beat and ache! She tried to look for the changeling; but the tears
made her so that she couldn't see very well; and there were so many
potatoes! She looked every moment she had a chance all the next day,
and cried a great deal. "I can never be real happy again,"
she thought. By phone: 505 898 0909 Email:
thepotatomuseum12345yahoo.com Mail:
The
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