Beta Book

He wanted to prowl through his collection of steamship brochures
for a description of Java. But, of course, when one's landlady
has both the sciatica and a case of Patient Suffering one stops
in the basement dining-room to inquire how she is.
Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was
a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was usually
sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked.
She groaned and creaked from bed to breakfast, and ate five
griddle-cakes, two helpin's of scrapple, an egg, some rump steak,
and three cups of coffee, slowly and resentfully. She creaked
and groaned from breakfast to her rocking-chair, and sat about
wondering why Providence had inflicted upon her a weak digestion.
Mr. Wrenn also wondered why, sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was
too conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy
of a nigger-lovin' Yankee, who couldn't appreciate the subtle
sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all the First Families
of Virginia.


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