VINTAGE 1953 FROM BAGPIPES TO FOGHORNS BOOK BANIS

 AN ORPHAN'S ADVENTURE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, PUBLICATION YEAR: 1953

JOSEPHINE TAFT BANIS, 239 PAGES 

 Life presented few happy aspects to five- year-old J osephine Taft when she entered the Bears Den School for Orphan Girls, in Scotland, aher the death of her mother. The orph~nage, like similar institutions in the novels of Dickens, seemed to have but one purpose-to discourage the spirit of the little girls. Discipline came before everything else. For two weeks, every summer, the girls were taken to the sea- side on vacation, and a great part of the other fifty weeks of the year was spent in memories of the last vacation and anticipa- tion of the next. Nevertheless, Josephine learned to sew and cook, and when she was fourteen she was sent as maid-of-all-work to a Scottish family, but still under the remote control of the orphanage. With the exception of one kindhearted couple, lier new life in service was as unhappy, although for different reasons, as her life in the orphan- age. Release finally came with emigration to the United States, although the sister who had come to fetch her to America was forced to stay in England as there wasn't enough money for both to. make the trip. ' There were other sisters in America to re- join, and her father, a seafaring man, who put in occasional appearances but could never become reconciled for long to life ashore. The next few years of Josephine's life took her to Boston, New York, and Florida, working for one family or another as a private cook. Her experiences dur~ng this period are graphically described and her observations on servant life in the house- holds of the newly rich are both amusin@ and mordant. Finally marriage came and a trip to Maine. Both she and her husband fell in love with the Maine coastline, its pines, its rocky shores, its bracing, salty air, and its people. There they settled, and after almost pioneer efforts in modernizing an old farmhouse now run it as a summer re- sort. Throughout her story, Mrs. Banis con- veys the feeling of a woman who refuses to be daunted, who is cheerful withal in over- coming adversity, and manages her tasks in life with humor, understanding, and tol- erance. In a sense, her story is an immi- grant saga-of the girl-who-makes-good type-but it is much more unusual than most such chronicles and holds interest from start to finish. 

 SOME EDGE WEAR, NO WRITING, BINDING INTACT, THE DUSTJACKET HAS NUMEROUS NICKS AND EDGE TEARS ALONG WITH SUN FADING, THE BOOK HAS A WATER STAIN ON THE FRONT COVER, THE COVERS LOOK STREAKY (GREEN/YELLOW) BUT I'M NOT SURE THAT IT WAS NOT MADE THAT WAY?  THERE IS AN UNDATED NEWSPAPER CLIPPING RELATIVE TO THE BOOK AFFIXED INSIDE THE FRONT COVER

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