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Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
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Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

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Alice Caldwell Rice was a popular 20th century author best known for historical fiction, particularly her classic Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherKrill Press
Release dateJan 30, 2016
ISBN9781518387296
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

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    Book preview

    Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch - Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

    MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH

    ..................

    Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

    YURITA PRESS

    Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

    This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

    All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

    Copyright © 2016 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

    Interior design by Pronoun

    Distribution by Pronoun

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    CHAPTER I: MRS. WIGGS’S PHILOSOPHY

    CHAPTER II: WAYS AND MEANS

    CHAPTER III: THE CHRISTMAS LADY

    CHAPTER IV: THE ANNEXATION OF CUBY

    CHAPTER V: A REMINISCENCE

    CHAPTER VI: A THEATER PARTY

    CHAPTER VII: MR. BOB

    CHAPTER VIII: MRS. WIGGS AT HOME

    CHAPTER IX: HOW SPRING CAME TO THE CABBAGE PATCH

    CHAPTER X: AUSTRALIA’S MISHAP

    CHAPTER XI: THE BENEFIT DANCE

    Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

    By

    Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

    Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

    Published by Yurita Press

    New York City, NY

    First published circa 1942

    Copyright © Yurita Press, 2015

    All rights reserved

    Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

    About YURITA Press

    Yurita Press is a boutique publishing company run by people who are passionate about history’s greatest works. We strive to republish the best books ever written across every conceivable genre and making them easily and cheaply available to readers across the world.

    CHAPTER I: MRS. WIGGS’S PHILOSOPHY

    ..................

    "In the mud and scum of things

    Something always always sings!"

    MY, but it’s nice an’ cold this mornin’! The thermometer’s done fell up to zero!

    Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were not sticking out through the boy’s coat that she wore, or her teeth chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs. Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles. When Mr. Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried his faults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she always laid stress on the fine hand he wrote. It was the same way when their little country home burned and she had to come to the city to seek work; her one comment was: Thank God, it was the pig instid of the baby that was burned!

    So this bleak morning in December she pinned the bed-clothes around the children and made them sit up close to the stove, while she pasted brown paper over the broken window-pane and made sprightly comments on the change in the weather.

    The Wiggses lived in the Cabbage Patch. It was not a real cabbage patch, but a queer neighborhood, where ramshackle cottages played hop-scotch over the railroad tracks. There were no streets, so when a new house was built the owner faced it any way his fancy prompted. Mr. Bagby’s grocery, it is true, conformed to convention, and presented a solid front to the railroad track, but Miss Hazy’s cottage shied off sidewise into the Wiggses’ yard, as if it were afraid of the big freight-trains that went thundering past so many times a day; and Mrs. Schultz’s front room looked directly into the Eichorns’ kitchen. The latter was not a bad arrangement, however, for Mrs. Schultz had been confined to her bed for ten years, and her sole interest in life consisted in watching what took place in her neighbor’s family.

    The Wiggses’ house was the most imposing in the neighborhood. This was probably due to the fact that it had two front doors and a tin roof. One door was nailed up, and the other opened outdoors, but you would never guess it from the street. When the country house burned, one door had been saved. So Mrs. Wiggs and the boys brought it to the new home and skilfully placed it at the front end of the side porch. But the roof gave the house its chief distinction; it was the only tin roof in the Cabbage Patch. Jim and Billy had made it of old cans which they picked up on the commons.

    Jim was fifteen and head of the family; his shoulders were those of a man, and were bent with work, but his body dwindled away to a pair of thin legs that seemed incapable of supporting the burden imposed upon them. In his anxious eyes was the look of a bread-winner who had begun the struggle too soon. Life had been a tragedy to Jim: the tragedy that comes when a child’s sensitive soul is forced to meet the responsibilities of manhood, yet lacks the wisdom that only experience can bring.

    Billy Wiggs was differently constituted; responsibilities rested upon him as lightly as the freckles on his nose. When occasion or his mother demanded he worked to good purposes with a tenacity that argued well for his future success, but for the most part he played and fought and got into trouble with the aptitude characteristic of the average small boy.

    It was Mrs. Wiggs’s boast that her three little girls had geography names; first came Asia, then Australia. When the last baby arrived, Billy had stood looking down at the small bundle and asked anxiously: Are you goin’ to have it fer a boy or a girl, ma? Mrs. Wiggs had answered: A girl, Billy, an’ her name’s Europena!

    On this particular Sunday morning Mrs. Wiggs bustled about the

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