After his family
attended her family's gathering three years in a row, a
quarrel broke out and his family, seriously outnumbered and
frantically looking for an excuse, declared that the two
children were in love, and the fact that they only saw
each other once a year represented a particularly
cautious and respectful approach to courtship on his
part.
Touched, the girl's family immediately broke
out their impressive collection of ornate
ceremonial shotguns and arranged a lavish wedding
and reception, featuring at least one bite of chicken for each guest and a
generous gift of a honeymoon abroad, including
First-Class, one-way accommodations on a Cunard Liner.
Confused by the alien culture of the
new land in which they found themselves unceremoniously
dumped by the ship's crew, the newlyweds struggled for
many years to adapt. But the move was not without its
compensations.
myeck's mother had been tormented by
an idle rumor passed between the women of her town.
Although totally unfounded, the suggestion that she was a
pot head created a scandal that refused to completely
die.
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Typical
of the attacks was this anonymous drawing illustrating
her supposed fondness for ceramic ware.
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Although she responded by trying to live a virtuous
life, her efforts were doomed to failure both by the
refusal of the townspeople to accept her and by the
simple fact that living
a virtuous life was essentially impossible in that
part of the world.
In
America, she was delighted to discover that she had
finally found a way to leave her troubled past behind
her. Here was a new land, a land full of people whose
ancestors had, like her, been kicked out of their own
homelands; people who didn't care what the gossips back
home had said; people who, in fact, had no idea her
homeland even existed and probably couldn't find it on a
map if you stuck a pin in it and poked it in their eye.
In short, Americans.
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