THE LATE MRS. PIDGEON.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 205, 28 August 1909, Page 13

THE LATE MRS. PIDGEON.

(By MAX ADELER.) We had been ont ro the graveyard to bnry Mrs Pldgeon. and we were riding home tn the carriage with the bereaved widower. While he sopped his eyes with his handkerchief, he told as aboat her: "In one respect I never sa-w her equal. She was a manager. I've knowed that woman, that's lying out there In the tomb, ro take an old pair of my trousers, and cut them up for the boys. She'd tmike a. splendid suit of clothes for both of them out of them old panfs, get out stuff enough for a coat for the baby, and a cap for Johnny, and trave some left over for rag-carpet, besides making handkerchiefs out of the porkets. and other glmcracks for herself out of the other llninirs. '"-Give her any old garment and it was as good as a gold mine. Way. she'd take a worn out sock and make a brand new overcoat out of It, I believe. She had a turn for that kind of economy. There's one of my shirts that I bought In 1888 still going about making Itself usefirl as window curtains and plenty of other things. Only last Jnly our gridiron Itlnder give out, and she took It apart, and in two hours It was rigged on the side of the house as a splendid lightning-rod, all except wiat she had made Into a poker and an Ice pick. "Ingenious? Why. she kept our family In buttons and whistles ont of the ham bones she saved, and she made fifteen princely chicken coops from onr old mosquito screens, and a pig-pen ont of her used-up corset bones. She never wasted a solitary thing. Let a cat die around our house, and the first thing you knew Mary Jane'd have a muff and a set of furs, and I'd begin to find mince pies on the dinner table. "She'd stuff a feather bed wloh the feathers that she'd got off of one little bit of a rooster, and she'd even utilise the cockroaches in the kitchen so's they'd run the churn—had a machine she Invented for the purpose. Oh, she was phenomenal. I've seen her cook potato parings so's you'd think they were canvasback duck, and she had a. way of doctoring up shavings so that the pig'd eat 'em , and grow fat on 'em. "I believe that woman could 'a' built a four-storey hotel If you'd 'a' given her a single pine board; or a steamboat out of a wash-bller; and the very last thing she said to mc was to bury her In the garden, so's she'd be useful down below there. helping to shove np the cabbages. I'll never see her like again." I don't believe he will, elfier.