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Wilson, Harry Leon, 1867-1939

"Somewhere in Red Gap"

Then comes this here next upheaval over riding
pants for ladies--or them that set themselves up to be such. Of course
we'd long known that the things were worn in New York and even in such
modern Babylons as Spokane and Seattle; but no woman in Red Gap had ever
forgot she had a position to keep up, until summer before last, when we
saw just how low one of our sex could fall, right out on the public
street.
"She was the wife of a botanist from some Eastern college and him and
her rode a good bit and dressed just alike in khaki things. My, the
infamies that was intimated about that poor creature! She was bony and
had plainly seen forty, very severe-featured, with scraggly hair and a
sharp nose and spectacles, and looked as if she had never had a moment
of the most innocent pleasure in all her life; but them riding pants
fixed her good in the minds of our lady porch-knockers. And the men just
as bad, though they could hardly bear to look twice at her, she was that
discouraging to the eye; they agreed with their wives that she must be
one of that sort.
"But things seem to pile up all at once in our town.


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