But howsumever she never could take a mite of care of her children, they wuz brought up on wet nurses, and bottles, etc., etc., and wuz rather weakly, some on ’em. The nurses, wet and dry ones both, used to gin ’em things to make ’em sleep, and kinder yank ’em round and scare ’em nights to keep ’em in the bed, and neglect ’em a good deal, and keep ’em out in the brilin’ sun when they wanted to see their bows; and for the same reeson keepin’ em out in their little thin dresses in the cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and sly and cowerdly. Learnt ’em to use jest the same slang phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin’ ’em in every way; spilin’ their brains with narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds and morals by evil examples.
You see some nurses are dretful good. But Miss Flamm’s health bein’ so poor and her mind bein’ so took up with fashion, dogs, etc., that she couldn’t take the trouble to find out about their characters and they wuz dretful poor unbeknown to her. She had dretful bad luck with ’em, and the last one drinked, so I have been told.
Yes, it made it dretful bad for Miss Flamm that her health was so poor, and her fashionable engagements so many and arduous that she didn’t have the time to take a little care of her children and the dog too. For you could see plain, by the care that she took of that dog, what a splendid hand she would be with the children, if she only had the time and health.
Why, I don’t believe there wuz another dog in America, either the upper or lower continent, that had more lovin’, anxus, intelligent, devoted attention than that dog had, day and night, from Miss Flamm. She took 2 dog papers, so they say, to get the latest information on the subject; she compared notes with other dog wimmen, I don’t say it in a runnin’ way at all. I mean wimmen who have gin their hull minds to dog, havin’, some on ’em, renounced husbands, and mothers, and children for dog sake.
You know there are sich wimmen, and Miss Flamm read up and studied with constant and absorbed attention all the latest things on dog. Their habits, their diet, their baths, their robes, their ribbons, and bells, and collars, their barks—nothin’ escaped her; she put the best things she learned into practice, and studied out new ones for herself. She said she had reduced the subject to a science, and she boasted proudly that her dog, the last one she had, went ahead of any dog in the country. And I don’t know but it did. I knew it had a good healthy bark. A loud strong bark that must have made it bad for her in the night. It always slept with her, for she didn’t dast to trust it out of her sight nights. It had had some spells in the night, kinder chills, or spuzzums like, and she didn’t dast to be away from it for a minute.