putterings 046 < 047 > 048 index
so much of it fragmentary
In fact as I looked — — why,
you know how much it amounts to : A
across his benevolent countenance as it was re —
minister’s work may seem like a puttering job,
vealed
in the telltale sunlight, I was sure I
but he has to be a pretty ...
OCR cross-column confusion above (from google snippet)
but intact at Emma Gary Wallace, “A Puttering Job,” in The Expositor and Current Anecdotes 19:11 (August 1918) : 871-873 (hathitrust)
full transcription will follow, in due course.
—
Emma Gary Wallace (aka Mrs. Leslie O. Wallace), ca. 1876-1938, was known in her time as a writer and activist on many topics (women in pharmacy and pharmacy more generally, among these). A portrait appears at bottom of page, “Successful Meeting of the W. O. N. A. R. D. [The Women’s Organization of the National Association of Retail Druggists],” American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record (October 1916) : 66
In the present essay, the narrator — a self-described “philosophical pharmacist” — hears out, and therapeutically responds to, the complaints of “My-Next-Door-Neighbor-the-Minister” about his depression from his “puttering” job.” He details his multifarious engagements that day, from “hearing the confession of a dying convict,” to a prayer meeting that would be starting in thirty minutes.
In fact, the essay captures the fragmentary, never-finished nature of the pastor’s (and his wife’s) work, whose burden must have multiplied and grown heavy in recent decades, under conditions of constant social and economic change.
see Gregory J. Higby, “Emma Gary Wallace, and Her Vision of American Pharmacy,” in Pharmacy in History 40: 2 and 3 (1998) : 67-76