The Merivales

Unlike the old woman who lived in the shoe, Mrs. Spaine knew perfectly what to do. It is true that she was old,-very old, indeed; moreover, she had a great many children. Not more than her share, however, if one goes back several generations for the purpose of computation, but she knew what to do with them. Back in the Sixties and before, a family was a family. People rather boasted about the extensiveness of their families, even the poor. Those were the days when rich and poor alike took pride in building a nation, regardless of the results of their prodigality. To them the nation was a home, and by the same token, the same was a part of the nation. They stocked the land with empire-builders at a time when babies were cheap and plentiful and the nations was being brought up by hand rather than by mouth.


Genre: Literary Fiction