Lummox

1923. Hurst, an American author, is noted for her sympathetic, sentimental novels including Lummox, Back Street, Imitation of Life and God Must Be Sad. Lummox begins: Nobody quite knew just what Baltic bloods flowed in sullen and alien rivers through Bertha's veins-or cared, might be added. Bertha, least of all. She was five feet, nine and a half, of flat-breasted bigness and her cheekbones were pitched like Norn's. Little tents. There must have been a good smattering of Scandinavian and even a wide streak of western Teutonic, Slav, too. Because unaccountably she found herself knowing the Polish national anthem. Recognized it with her heart as it rattled out of a hurdy-gurdy. In her carpetbag, an outlandish one with a steamship stamp on it, were a bit of Bulgarian embroidery, a runic brooch, a concertina with a punctured bellows and an ikon in imitation mosaic. Old world.