A “wintry mix” of precipitation is expected tomorrow, so this postcard painting seemed appropriate for this evening’s post.
We met Master Benjamin G. Stauffer in earlier postcard stories; he was the son of Benjamin S. Stauffer, and lived on the family farm on a rural delivery route of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania
“The Boy and the Gilded Bugs”, “A Christmas Bicycle for Benjamin”, and the school prize of “George Washington at Princeton”.
In October of 1907, Benjamin received a postcard from Mrs. C. C. Greider.
The postcard was mailed from Mount Joy, a borough in northwest Lancaster County.
This area boasts many place names redolent of Protestant regions of Ireland – Derry, Londonderry, and Donegal.
(“Mountjoy” was the ship that broke the Catholic siege of Derry in 1689)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Joy,_Pennsylvania
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The face of the postcard is a charming drawing of a boy sharing his umbrella with two dogs.
The boy is wearing a rain coat with a hood’ it is fastened with large brass buttons.
On either side of the boy, a dog is nestled close.
The rain and sleet streams down upon the party huddled beneath one umbrella – they appear to be sitting on a stone parapet.
The image was copyrighted in the US and in Germany; the postcard was printed in Europe.
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On the reverse, Mrs. Greider reports that she was unsuccessful in arranging a purchase – writing, “He said he will not sell”, and a reference to “no price”
It is not clear what young Benjamin wanted to buy -perhaps it was a puppy.
Mrs. Greider continues with a discussion of sending some goods to market in Lancaster along with the cabbages that the Stauffers are selling.
I cannot interpret the final words of the inscription, “Your _____”.
One hopes that Benjamin was able to secure the thing that he sought to buy and that the marketing trip proved successful.
We know that Benjamin preserved this lovely postcard (within his large collection of postcards) throughout his life.
