Personal.--Will the young woman who used to cook in our family, and who went away ten pounds of sugar and five and a half pounds of tea ahead of the game, please come back, and all will be forgiven.
If she cannot return, will she please write, stating her present address, and also give her reasons for shutting up the cat in the refrigerator when she went away?
If she will only return, we will try to forget the past, and think only of the glorious present and the bright, bright future.
Come back, Sarah, and jerk the waffle-iron for us once more.
Your manners are peculiar, but we yearn for your doughnuts, and your style of streaked cake suits us exactly.
You may keep the handkerchiefs and the collars, and we will not refer to the dead past.
We have arranged it so that when you snore it will not disturb the night police, and if you do not like our children we will send them away.
We realize that you do not like children very well, and our children especially gave you much pain, because they were not so refined as you were.
We have often wished, for your sake, that we had never had any children; but so long as they are in our family, the neighbors will rather expect us to take care of them.
Still, if you insist upon it, we will send them away. We don't want to seem overbearing with our servants.
We would be willing, also, to give you more time for mental relaxation than you had before. The intellectual strain incident to the life of one who makes gravy for a lost and undone world must be very great, and tired nature must at last succumb. We do not want you to succumb. If anyone has got to succumb, let us do it.
All we ask is that you will let us know when you are going away, and leave the crackers and cheese where we can find them.
It was rather rough on us to have you go away when we had guests in the house, but if you had not taken the key to the cooking department we could have worried along.
You ought to let us have company at the house sometimes if we will let you have company when you want to. Still, you know best, perhaps. You are older than we are, and you have seen more of the world.
We miss your gentle admonitions and your stern reproofs sadly. Come back and reprove us again. Come back and admonish us once more, at so much per admonish and groceries.
We will agree to let you select the tender part of the steak, and such fruit as seems to strike you favorably, just as we did before. We did not like it when you were here, but that is because we were young and did not know what the custom was.
If a life-time devoted to your welfare can obliterate the injustice we have done you, we will be glad to yield it to you.
If you could suggest a good place for us to send the children, where they would be well taken care of, and where they would not interfere with some other cook who is a friend of yours, we would be glad to have you write us.
My wife says she hopes you will feel perfectly free to use the piano whenever you are lonely or sad, and when you or the bread feel depressed you will be welcome to come into the parlor and lean up against either one of us and sob.
We all know that when you were with us before we were a little reserved in our manner toward you, but if you come back it will be different.
We will introduce you to more of our friends this time, and we hope you will do the same by us. Young people are apt to get above their business, and we admit that we were wrong.
Come back and oversee our fritter bureau once more.
Take the portfolio of our interior department.
Try to forget our former coldness.
Return, oh, wanderer, return!
[The end]
(Edgar W. Nye) Bill Nye's essay: Come Back