From a Bench in Our Square, page 69 by Samuel Hopkins Adams
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an Gluck's Orphan came dashing up-wind giving tongue, or rather, nose, voluptuously.
"Mm-m-m! Snmmff!" inhaled the Orphan, wrinkling ecstatic nostrils. "Mister, lemme smell it some more!"
Graciously the dispenser of fragrance waved his balm-laden handkerchief. "Like it, kiddie?" he said.
"Oh, it's grand!" She stretched out her little grimy paws. "Please, Mister," she entreated, "would you flop it over 'em, just once?"
The pink man tossed it to her. "Take it along and, when you get it all snuffed up, give it back to the Dominie here for me."
"Oh, gracious!" said the Orphan, incredulous at this bounty. "Can I have it till to-morrah?"
"Sure! What's the big idea for to-morrow?"
"I'm goin' to a funeral. I want it to cry in," said the Orphan importantly.
"A funeral?" I asked. "In Our Square? Whose?"
"My cousin Minnie. She's goin' to be buried in God's Acre, an' I'm invited 'cause I'm a r'lation. She married a sporting gentleman named Hines an' she died yesterday," said the precocious Orphan.
So Minnie Munn, pretty, blithe, life-loving Minnie, whose going had hurt us so, had come back to Our Square, with all her love of life quenched. She had promised that she would come back, in the little, hysterical, defiant note she left under the door. Her father and mother must wait and not worry. There are thousands of homes, I suppose, in which are buried just such letters as Minnie's farewell to her parents; rebellious, passionate, yearning, pitiful. Ah, well! The moth must break its chrysalis. The flower must rend its bonds toward the light. Little Minnie was "going on the stage." A garish and perilous stage it was, whereon Innocence plays a part as sorry as it is brief. And now she was making her exit, without applause. Memory brought back a picture of Minnie as I had first seen her, a wee thing, blinking and smiling in the arms of her Madonna-faced mother, on a bench in Our Square, and the mother (who could not wait for the promised retur