“My, but it’s nice an’ cold this mornin’! The thermometer’s done fell up to zero! Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were not sticking out through the boy’s coat that she wore, or her teeth chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs. Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles. When Mr. Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried his faults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she always laid stress on the fine hand he wrote….”

– Alice Hegan Rice, from Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901)
“not a real cabbage patch, but a queer neighborhood, where
ramshackle cottages played hop-scotch over the railroad tracks.”