Explore "Kennedy Square" by Francis Hopkinson Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Intruders of all kinds had thrust their heads between the dripping, slightly moist, and wholly dry installments of Aunt Jemima's Monday wash, and each and every one had been assailed by a vocabulary hurled at them through the creaky gate, and as far out as the street -- peddlers; beggars; tramps; loose darkies with no visible means of support, who had smelt the cooking in the air -- even goats with an acquired taste for stocking legs and window curtains -- all of whom had either been invited out, whirled out, or thrown out, dependent upon the damage inflicted, the size of the favors asked, or the length of space intervening between Jemima's right arm and their backs. In all of these instances the old cook had been the broom and the intruders the dust. Being an expert in its use the intruders had succumbed before they had gotten through their first sentence. In the case of the goat even that privilege was denied him; it was the handle and not the brush-part which ended the argument.
To see Aunt Jemima get rid of a goat in one whack and two jumps was not only a lesson in condensed conversation, but furnished a sight one rarely forgot -- the goat never!