Booth Tarkington

Gentle Julia Booth Tarkington

Publisher Marketing: Superciliousness is not safe after all, because a person who forms the habit of wearing it may some day find his lower lip grown permanently projected beyond the upper, so that he can't get it back, and must go through life looking like the King of Spain. This was once foretold as a probable culmination of Florence Atwater's still plastic profile, if Florence didn't change her way of thinking; and upon Florence's remarking dreamily that the King of Spain was an awf'ly han'some man, her mother retorted: "But not for a girl!" She meant, of course, that a girl who looked too much like the King of Spain would not be handsome, but her daughter decided to misunderstand her. "Why, mamma, he's my Very Ideal! I'd marry him to-morrow!" Mrs. Atwater paused in her darning, and let the[Pg 2] stocking collapse flaccidly into the work-basket in her lap. "Not at barely thirteen, would you?" she said. "It seems to me you're just a shade too young to be marrying a man who's already got a wife and several children. Where did you pick up that 'I'd-marry-him-to-morrow, ' Florence?" "Oh, I hear that everywhere!" returned the damsel, lightly. "Everybody says things like that. I heard Aunt Julia say it. I heard Kitty Silver say it." "About the King of Spain?" Mrs. Atwater inquired. Contributor Bio:  Tarkington, Booth Jeremy Beer, a native of Indiana, is president of the American Ideas Institute. He is the author of The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity, and coeditor of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. He co-founded the influential localist web journal Front Porch Republic in 2009. He and his wife, Kara, live in Phoenix, Arizona.