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Show g 1 1 1 1 1 r i i 1 1 r n m u m 1 1 u 1 1 1 1 1 1 m n 1 1 1 1 1 n 1 1 1 1 n 1 1 1 f I Jl BUNDLE jl ; jj OF MlRRH jj ; WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE E ........ Cllll 1 1 1 II II I i 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 IJ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ! II 111 Copyright, 1922, by the Maciuillan Co. ONK of the first things that a new reporter on our paper has to learn Is. the kinology of the town. Until he knows who is kin to whom, and how, u reporter is likely at any time to make a bntl break. , Now, the kinology of a country town is no simple proposition. After a man has spent ten years writing up weddings, births and tleatns, attending attend-ing old settlers' picnics, family reunions re-unions and golden weddings, he may run into a new line of kin that opens a whole avenue of hitherto unex-plalnahle unex-plalnahle facts to him, showing why certain families line up in the ward primaries, and why certain others are fighting tooth and toenail. The only person in town who knows all of our kinology and most of that In the county, where It Is a separate and Interminable study is "Arnt" Martha Merryfield. She has lived here since the early fifties, and was a Ferkins. one of the eleven Terklns children that grew up in town; and the I'erkinses were related by mnr-riage mnr-riage to the Mortons, of whom there are over fifty living adult descendants on the town-site now. So one begins to see why she Is called "Aunt" Martha Mar-tha Merryfield. She Is literally aunt to over a hundred people here. She lives alone In the big brick , '-' , house on the hill, though her children U and grandchildren are in and out all day and most of the night, so that : she Is mil at all lonesome. She is f the only person to whom we can look for accurate information about local history, and when a man dies who has ' been at all prominent In affairs of the town or county or state, we always call up "Aunt" Martha on tne 'phone, or send a reporter to her. to learn 7 the real printable and unprintable truth about him. A urn Martha used to bring us flowers flow-ers for the office table, and it was her delight to sit down and take out her corn-knife as she called It and go after the town shams. She has promised a dozen times to write an article for the paper, which she says Tfe are not to print, entitled "Self-Made "Self-Made Women I Have Known." iihe Bays that men were always bragging about bow they had clerked, worked on farms, dug ditches and whacked mules across the plains before the j railroads came; hut that their wives 5. insisted that they were princesses of I tne royal blood. ' Her particular animosity In the I town Is Mrs. Julia Neal Worthlngton. Aunt Martha told us that when Tim Neal came to town he had a brogue you could scrape with a knife and an "O" before his name you could hoop j a hogshead with. "And that woman." exclaimed Aunt Martha, when she vras under full sail, "that woman, be-) be-) cause she has-two bookcases In the i front room una reads the book re- I Views In the Delineator, thinks that j she Is cultured. When her folks first 1 came to town they were as poor as ; Job's turkey, which was not to their 1. discredit everyone was poor in those " days. The old man Neal was as hon- ! est an old Mick as you'd meet In a day's Journey . or at a fair, and he I used to run a lemonade and peanut stand down hy the bank corner. But 1 Ills girls, who were raised on It, un- ' til they began teaching school, used to refer to the peanut stand ns 'pa pa's hobby.' pretend that he only ran It for recreation, and say: 'Now why do you suppose papa enjoys It? We Just can't get him to give It up 1' And , now Julia Is president of the Wom an's federation, has stomach trouble, has had two operations, and Is suf- i ferlng untold agonies with acute cul- ' turltls. And yet." Aunt Martha would say through a beatific smile, "she's ; a good enomrh woman In many ways, and 1 wouldn't say anything against her for the world." Oik-c Miss l.arrabee, the society I reporter, brought hack this from a visit to Aunt Martha: "I know, my dear, that your paper says there are no cliques and crowds In society In this town, and that It Is so democratic. demo-cratic. But you and I know the truth. We know about society in this town. We know that If there ever was a town that looked like a side of bacon ba-con Rtrenk of lean and streak of fat ' all the way down It is this blessed place. Crowds? why. I've lived here over fifty years and It was always crowds. 'Way back In the days when the boys used to pick us up and carry D across Kim Creek when we went to dam-es, there were crowds. The girls who crossed on the boys' backs weren't considered quite proper by the girls who were carried over In the boys' arms. And they didn't dance in the same set." Miss l.arrabee says she looked Into the elder woman's eyes to find which crowd Aunt Martha belonged to. when She flushed out : "Oh. child, yon needn't look at me I did both ; It depended on who was looking I But, as I was saying. If anyone knows about society In this ' town, I do. I went to every dance In town for the first twenty -five years, and I have made potato salad to pay the salary of every Methodist preacher for the past thirty years, and I ought to know what I'm talking about." There was fire enough to twinMe tn lier old eves as she spoke. "Beginning "Begin-ning at the bottom, one may say that - the base of society Is the little tnrts. ranging down from whut your paper calls the Amalgamated Ilarrdnolders. to the trundle-bed trash Just out of their kissing games. It'6 funny to watch the little tads grow up and pair off and see how bravely they try to keep in the swim. I've seen ten grandchildren get out and I've a greatgrandchild great-grandchild whose mother will be pushing her out before she Is old enough to know anything. When young people got married they all say they're not going to he old-mnrrledly, and they hang on to the dances and little hops until the first baby comes. Then they don't get out to the dances much, but they Join a card club." In her dissertation on the social progress- of young married people. Aunt Martha explained that after the second year the couple go only to the big dances where everyone is Invited, hut they pay more attention to cards. The young mother begins going to afternoon parties, and hns the other young married couples In for dinner. Then, before they know It, they are invited out to receptions and parties, where little tads preside at the punch-howls punch-howls and wait on table, and are seen and not heard. Aunt Martha continued con-tinued : "By the time the second baby comes they take one of two shoots either go In for church socials or edge Into a whist club. Aunt Martha's eyes dnnced with the mischief In her heart as she went on : "Now, if after the second baby comes, the young parents begin to feel like saving money, and being someone at the bank, they Join the church and go in for church socials, which don't take so much time or money as the whfst clubs and receptions. The babies keep coming and the young people keep on Improving their home, moving mov-ing from the little house to the big house; tiie young man's name begins to creep into lists of directors at the hank, and they are invited out to the big parties, and she goes to all the stand-up and 'gabble-gobble-and-git' receptions. As they grow older, they are asked with the preachers and widows for the first night of a series of parties at a house to get them out of the way and over with before the young folks come later In the week. When they get to a point where the young folks laugh and clap their hands at little pudgy daddy when he dating 'Old Dan Tucker" at the big ried Judge of the District court ac twenty-four." She held the case In ; her lmnd and went on opening the , others. She came to one showing a ! must ached and goateed youth in a captain's uniform a slim, straight, soldierly figure. As she passed it to Miss Larrabee Aunt Martha looked sidewise at her, saying: "You wouldn't know him now. Yet you see him every day, I suppose." After the girl I shook her head, the elder woman con- tinned : "Well, that's Jim Purdy, taken the day he left for the army." She sighed as she said: "Let me see, I guess I haven't happened to run across Jim for ten years or more, but ; he didn't look much like this then. Poor old Jim, they tell me he's not having the best time in the world. Miss Larrabee came down the lilac-bordered lilac-bordered walk from the stately old brick house, carrying a great bouquet of sweet peas and uasturtiums and poppies and phlox, a fleeting memory of some association she had in her mind of Uncle Jimmy Purdy and Aunt Martha kept tantalizing her. She could not get It out of the background back-ground of her consciousness, and yet It refused to form itself into a tangible tan-gible conception. It was associated vaguely with her own grandmother, as though, Infinite ages ago, her grandmother had said something that had lodged in the girl's head. When the' occasion made Itself, Miss Larrabee asked her grandmother grand-mother the question that puzzled her, and learned that Martha Perkins and Jim Purdy were lovers before the war, and that she was wearing his ring when he went away thinking he would be back In a few weeks with the Civil war ended. In his first fight he was shot in the head and was In the hospital for a year, demented ; when he was put back in the ranks he was captured and his name given out among the killed. In prison his dementia returned and he stayed there two years. Then for a year after his exchange he followed the Union army like a dumb creature, and not until two years after the close of the war did the poor fellow drift home 1 again, as one from the dead all uncertain un-certain of the past and unfitted for the future. And his sweetheart drank her cup alone. The old settlers say that she never flinched nor shrank, but for j The Judge Walked Over and Gave the Band Leader Five Dollars. parties In the brick house, It's all up with them they are old married folks, and the next step takes them to the old folkB' whist club, where the bankers' wives and the Insurance widows run things. That Is the Inner sanctuary, the holy of holies In the society of this town." "That reminds me of the Wln-throps. Wln-throps. When they came here, back In the sixties. It happened to be Fourth of July, and the band was out playing in the grove by the depot. Mrs. Wlnthrop got off the train quite grandly and bowed and waved her hand to the band, and the Judge walked over and gave the band leader five dollars. They said afterward that they felt deeply touched to find a raw western town so appreciative of the coming of an old New England family, fam-ily, that It greeted them with a band. Before Mrs. Winthrop had been here three weeks she called on me, 'as one of the first ladies of the town,' she said, to organize and see If we couldn't break up the habit of the hired girls eating at the table with the family." The talk drifted back to the old days, and Aunt Martha got out he-photograph-album and showed Miss l.arrabee the pictures of those whom she called "the rude forefathers of the village," in their quaint old costumes cos-tumes of war-times. In the book were baby pictures of middle-aged men and women, and yonthful pictures of the old men and women of the town. But most Interesting of all to Miss Larrabee Larra-bee were the daguerrotypes quaint old portraits in their little black-boxes, black-boxes, framed In plush and gilt. The old woman brought out picture after picture her husband's among the others, tn a broad beaver bat with a high choker taken hack In Brattleboro before he came to Kansas. She looked at It for a long minute, and then said gayly to Miss Larrabee: "lie was a handsome boy quite the bean of the state when we were mar- years, even after her marriage, the young woman kept a little grave covered cov-ered with flowers, that bore the simple word: "Martha, aged five months and three days." The war brought her neighbors so many sorrows that Martha's trouble was forgotten, the years passed and only the old people of the community know about the little grave beside the judge's and their little boy's. Jimmy Purdy grew into a smoothfaced, smooth-faced, unwrinkled, rather blank-eyed old man, clerking in the bookstore for a time, serving as city clerk for 20 years, and later living at the Palace hotel on his pension. He worshiped Aunt Martha's children, but he never saw her except when they met in some casual way. She was married when he came back from the war, and If he ever knew her agony he never spoke of it. j One day they found him dead In his bed. And Miss Larrabee hurried out to Aunt Martha' to get the facts about his life for the paper. It was a bright October morning as she went up the walk to thf old brick house, and she heard someone playing on the piano, rolling the chords after the grandiose manner of pianists 60 jears ago. A voice seemed to be tinging ting-ing an old ballad. As the girl Txjuut ed the steps the voice came more distinctly dis-tinctly to her. It waj quavering and unsure, but with a moan of passion the words came forth: "As I lay my heart on your dead heart Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true" Suddenly the voice choked wltl a groan. As she stood by the open door Miss Larrabee could see in the darkened dark-ened mora the figure of an old woman, racked with sobs on a great mahogany mahog-any sofa, and on the floor beside her lay a daguerreotype, glinting Its gilt and glass through the gloom. The girl tiptoed across the porch down the steps, through the garden and out of the gate. |