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Show I jlyf THE BINGHAM NEWS I a a n SO BIGg-- By EDNA FERBER WNU Srlo. , i The women. In shawls and bonneta of rusty Mark, were Incredibly cut In the same pattern. The unmarried girls, though, were plump, and not uncomely, with high round cheek-bone- s on which aat a spot of brick-re- which Imparted no glow to the face. Their foreheads were prominent and meaningless. In the midst of this drab assem-blage there entered lute and rustllng-l- y a tall, g woman In a city-boug-cloak and a bonnet quite un-like the vintage millinery of High Prairie. An ample woinun, with a Rue fnlr skin and a ripe red mouth; a high firm bosom and great thighs that moved rhythmically, slowly. She hud thick, Insolent eyelids. Her hands, as she turned the leaves of her hymn book, were smooth and white. As she entered there was a little rustle throughout the congregation; a craning of necks. "Who's tfout?" whispered Sellna to SIniirt.le. "Widow Paarlenberg. She Is rich like anything." "Yes?" Sellna was fascinated. "Look once how she makes eyes at Mm." "At hlmT Who? Who?" Tervus DeJong. By Oerrlt Pon he Is sitting with the blue shirt and sad looking so." Sellna craned, peered. "The oh he'a very good looking, Isn't he?" "Sure. Widow Paarlenberg la stuck on him. See how she I Heverend Dekker looks at us. I tell you after." Selina decided she'd come to church oftener. The service went on, dull, heavy. It was In English and Dutch. She heard scarcely a word of It. The Widow Paarlenberg and this Pervus DeJong occupied her thoughts. She decided, without malice, that the widow resembled one of the sleekest of the pink porkers rooting In Klaas Pool's barnyard, waiting to be cut Into Christmas meat. The service ended, there was much talk of the weather, seedlings, stock. somber garment Her slim hands were rough and chapped. The oldest child In the room was thirteen, the youngest four and a half. Early In the winter Sellna had had the unfortunate Idea of opening the d windows at Intervals and giving the children Ave minutes of exercise while the fresh cold air cleared brains and room at once. Arms waved wildly, heads wohhled, short legs worked vigorously. At the end of the week twenty High Prairie parents sent protests by note or word of mouth. Jan and Cornelius, Kntrlnu and Aggie went to school Jo learn reading and writing and numbers, nut to stand with open windows In the winter. On the Pool farm the winter work had set In. Klaas drove Into Chlcugo with winter vegetables only once a week now. He and Jakob and Roelf were storing potatoes and cabbages underground; repairing fences; pre-paring frames for the early spring planting; sorting seedlings. It had been Itoelf who had taught Sellna to build the school house fire. He bad gone with her on that first morning, had started the fire, filled the water pall, Initiated Iter In the rites of corn-cobs, kerosene, and dampers. A shy, dark, silent hoy. She set out delib-erately to woo him to friendship. "Itoelf, I have a book called 'lvan-hoe- .' Would you like to read ltr "Well, I don't get much time." "You wouldn't have to hurry. Right there In the house. And there'a another called The Three Musketeers.' " He was trying not to appear pleased; to appear stolid and Dutch, like the people from whom he had sprung. Some Dutch sailor ancestor, Sellna thought, , or fisherman, must have touched at an Italian port or Spanish and brought hack a wife whose eyes and skin and feeling for beauty had skipped layer on laypr of placid Neth-erlands to crop out now In this wistful sensitive boy. Sellna had spoken to Pool about a shelf for her hooks and her photo-graphs. He hod put up a rough bit of board, very crude and ugly, but It had served. She hnd come home one snowy afternoon to find this shelf gone and In f zzzz I ll ll THE NEW I I LIFE SYNOPSIS. Introducing "Ba i Big" (Dirk DeJong) In bis la-- I h fancy. And his mether, 8.11c V j DaJonf, daughter of Blrneon Peaks, (ambler and gentleman i of fortune. Her Ufa, to young t ,J womanhood In Chicago In Ills, t has b.n unconventional, eoma- - - i what a. amy, but .n. rally noy- - i able. At school bar chum la Julia . ;, H.mp.l, daughter of Ausjuat f Hempel, butcher. 8lmeon la killed I In a quarrel that la not hie own, ; and Sellna, nineteen years old j and practically deatltute, aecurea J a poaltlon as teacher at the High I Prairie achool, In the outeklrts j of Chlcaso, living- at the home of a truck farmer, Klaaa PooL ., In Roelf, twelve yeara old, aon 4 of Klaaa, Sellna percelvea a kin- - s; drod aplrlt, a lover of beauty, like beraelf. ,vf I I " Chapter III J Every morning throughout Novem-- i ber It waa the same. At six o'clock: , "Miss Peakel Oh, Miss Peakel" .1 "I'm up I" Sellnu would call In what I she meant to be a gay voice, through chattering teeth. , ' "You better come down and dress J where Is warm here by the stove." Peering down the perforations in the floor-hol-e through which the par-- lor chimney swelled so proudly Into the drum, Sellna could vaguely descry T Mrs. Pool stationed Just below, her ; gaze upturned. ,Jt That first morning, on hearing this Invitation, Sellna had been rocked be tween horror and mirth. "I'm not cold, really. I'm almost dressed. I'll be down directly." t Maartje Pool must have sensed some of the shock in the girl's voice ; ) . . or, perhaps, even some of the laugh- - v ter. "Pool snd Jakob are long out I already cutting. Here back of the 1 stove you ran dress warm." , Shivering and tempted though she I was, Sellna had set her will against It. "I won't go down," sbe said to ' herself, shaking with the cold. "I won't come down to dressing behind ' the kitchen stove like a like a peas-- ; ant In one of those dreadful Huxslun ,",! novels. . . , That sounds stuck up and horrid. . . . The Pools are i good and kind and decent. . . . But ; I won't come down to huddling behind v the atove with a bundle of underwear In my arms. Oh, dear, this corset's I , like a casing of Ice. i "But I won't dress behind the kitch en stove!" declared Sellna, glaring meanwhile at that hollow pretense, ) the drum. She even stuck her tongue out at It (only nineteen, remember 1). When she thought back, years later, on that period of her High Prulrie experience, stoves seemed to figure ' with absurd prominence In her niem- -' ory. That might well be. A stove changed the whole course of her life. From the first, the sehoolhouse stove was her bete noir. Out of the welter of that first year It stood, huge and menacing, a black tyrant. The High Prairie sehoolhouse in which Se-llna taught was a little more than a mile up the road beyond the Pool farm. She came to know that road In all Its moods drifted with snow, wallowing In mud. School ; began at half-pas- t eight. After her first week Selina had the mathematics of her early morning reduced to the least conmon denominator. Up at ' aix. A plunge into the frigid gar ments; breakfast of bread, cheese, sometimes bacon, always rye coffee without cream or sugar. On with the "Og Heden! I got no time to alt down." She waa off. Roelf slid his plane slowly, more alowly, over the surface of satin-smoot-oak board. He stopped, twined a curl of ahaving about his finger. "When I am a man, and earning, I am going to buy my mother a ailk dress like I saw In a atore In Chicago and she should put It on every dsy, not only for Sun-day; and sit In a chair and mdke little One stitches like Widow Paarlenberg." "What else are you going to do when you grow up?" She waited, certain that he would say something delight-ful. "Drive the team to town alone to market." "Oh, Itoelf I" "Sure. Already I have gone five times twice with Jakob Rnd three times with Pop. Pretty loon, when I am seventeen or eighteen, I can go alone. At five In the afternoon you start and at nine you are In the Haymarket. There all night you sleep on the wagon. There are gas lights. The men play dice and cards. At four In the morn-ing you are ready when they come, the commission men and the peddlers and the grocery men. Oh, It's fine, I tell you !" ltoalft" She was bitterly disap-pointed. "Here. Look." He rummaged around In a dusty box In a corner and, sud-denly shy again, laid before her a torn sheet of coarse brown poper on which he had sketched crudely, effectively, a melee of d horses; wa-gons piled high with garden truck ; men In overalls and corduroys; flaring gas torches. He had drawn It with a stub of pencil exactly as It looked to him. The result was as startling as thnt achieved by the present-da- y disci-ple of the impressionistic school. Sellna was enchanted. Once, early In December, Sellna went Into town. The trip was born of sudden revolt against her surround-ings and a great wave of nostalgia for the dirt and clamor and crowds of Chicago. Early Saturday morning Klaas drove her to the railway atatlon five miles distant. She was to slay until Sunday. A letter had been writ-ten Julie Hempel ten days before, but there had been no answer. Once In town she went straight to the Hempel house. Mrs. Hempel, thin-lippe- met her in the hall and said that Julie wus out of town. She was visiting her friend Miss Arnold, In Kansas City. Selina was not asked to stay to dinner. She was not asked to sit down.' When she left the house her great line eyes seemed larger and more deep-se- t than ever, and her Jaw-lin- e was Bet hard against the Invasion of tears. Sudden-ly she hated this Chicago that wanted none of her; thnt brushed pnst her, bumping her elbow and offering so npology; that clanged, and shrieked, and whistled, and roared In her ears now grown accustomed to the prulrie silence. She spent the time between one and three buying portable presents for the entire Pool household Including ba-nanas for Geertje and Jozlna, for whom that farinaceous fruit had the fascination always held for the farm child. She caught a train at four thirty-- five and actually trudged the five miles from the station to the farm, arriving half frozen, weary, with ach-ing arms and nipped toes, to a great. the approaching holiday season. Maartje, her Sunday dinner heavy on her mind, was elbowing her way up the aisle. Here and there she Intro-duced Sellna briefly to a woman friend. "Mrs. Vander Sljde, meet school teacher." "Aggie's mother?" Sellna would be-gin, primly, only to be swept along by Maartje on her way to the door. "Mrs. Von Mljnen, meet achool teach-er. Is Mrs.. Von Mljnen." They re-- garded her with a grim gaze. Se-llnu would smile and nod rather nerv-ously, feeling young, frivolous, and somehow guilty. When, with Mnnrtje, she reached the church porch Pervus DeJong was unhitching the .dejected horse that wns harnesses to his battered and-- lop-sided cart. The animal stood with four feet bunched together In a droop-ing and "pathetic attitude and seemed Inevitably meiiut for mating with this decrepit" vehicle. DeJong untied the reins quickly, nnd was about to step Into the sagging conveyance when the Vldot' Paarlenberg jailed down the church steps wilh admirable speed for one so amply proportioned. She made straight for him, skirts billowing, flounces flying, plumes waving. Maartje clutched Selina's arm. "Look how she makes! She asks him to eat Sunday dinner I bet you ! See once how he makes with his head no." Sellna and the whole congregation unashamedly watching could Indeed see bow he made with his head no. His whole body seemed set In negation the fine head, the broad patient shoul-ders, the muscular powerful legs In their Sunday blacks. He shook his head, gathered up the reins, and drove away, leaving the Widow I'aarlenbeag to carry off with such hravndo as she could muster this pub-lic flouting In full sight of the Dutch Reformed congregation of High Prai-rie. It must be said that she actually achieved this feat with a rather mag-nificent composure. Her round, pink face, as she turned away, wus placid; her great cowlike eyes mild. She stepped agilely Into her own neat phaeton with Its sleek horse and was off down the hard snowless road, her head high. . I It looks as If Sellna were " orowing rather fond of Hlflh Prairls. Likely enough she will fall In love with soma truck farmer. (TO BBS CONTINUED.) welcome of the squeals, grunts, barks, and gutturals that forme'd the expres-sion of the Pool household. She was astonished to find how happy she was to return to the kitchen stove, to the smell of frying pork, to her own rooii with the walnut bed and the book lielf. Kven the grim drum had tuken on the dear and comforting uspect of the accustomed. Chapter IV High Prairie swains failed te find Selina alluring. She was too small, too pale and fragile for their robust taste. Naturally, her coming had been an event In this Isolated commu-nity. With no visible means of com-munication- news of her leaped from farm to farm as flume leaps the gaps In n forest fire. She would liave been aghast to learn that Higo Prairie, Inexplicably enough, knew all about her from (he color of the 'ribbon that threaded her neat little white corset covers to the number of books on her shelf. She thought cobbuge fields beautiful;: she read books to that dumb-actin- g Roelf Pool ; ' she was making over a dress for Maartje after the pottern of the stylish brown lady's-clot- h she wore (foolishly) to school. On her fifth Sunday In the district she accompanied the Pools to the morning service at the Dutch Re-formed church. Maartje seldom- - had the time for such frivolity. But on this morning Klaas hitched up the big farm wagon with the double seat and took the family complete Maartje, Sellna. Roelf, and the pig tails. Roelf had rebelled against going, bad been cuffed for It, and had sat very still all through the service, gazing at the red and yellow glass church window. Selina's appearance had made quite a stir, of which she was entirely As the congregation entered by twos and threes she thought they resembled startlingly a woodcut In an eld Illustrated book she once hM.I seen. The men's Sunday trousers nnd coats had a square stiff angularity, as though chopped on' of a biota. She Would Read Aloud to Him While He Carved. Its place a smooth snd polished one, with brackets Intricately curved. Roelf had cut, planed, polished, and carved It In many hours of work In the cold little shed off the kitchen. He bad there a workshop of sorts, fitted with such tools and Implements as he could devise. He did man's work on the farm, yet often nt night Sellna could faintly bear the rasp of his handsaw after she had gone to bed. This sort of thing was looked upon by Klaus Pool as foolishness. Roelf's reiil work In the shed was the making and mend-ing of coldiraines and hotbeds for the early spring plants. Whenever possible Roelf neglected this dull work for some fancy of his own. To this Kluns Pool objected a nelng "dumb.'! "Roelf, atop thnt foolishness, get your ma once some wood. Cnrvlng on that box again instead of' finishing them coldfrumes. Some day, by golly, I show you. I break every stick . . . dumb as a Groningen ..." Itoelf did not sulk. He seemed not to mind, particularly, hut he came back to the carved 4xx as soon as chance presented Itself. He was reading her books with such hunger as to cause her to wonder If her stock would last liim the wliiter. Sometimes, after sup-- ; per, when be was hammering and saw-ing away In the little shed Sellna would snatch Manrtje's old shawl off the hook, and swathed 4n thls'agalnst draughty chinks, shewould read aloud to him while he carved, or talk to him above the noise of his tools. Sellna was a gay and volatile person. She loved to make this boy laugh. .His dark face would flash Into almost dazzling animation. Sometimes Maart-je, hearing their young laughter, would come to the shed door and stand there a 'moment, hugging her arms In her rolled apron and smiling at them, un-comprehending but companionable. 'Tou muke fun, h'm?" i "Come In, Mrs. Pool. Sit down on J my box and make fun, too. Here, you I may bave hair the shawl' j cloak, muffler, hood, mittens, galoshes. , The lunch box In bad weather. Up the road to the sehoolhouse, battling s the prairie wind that whipped the - i tears Into the eyes, plowing the drifts, slipping on the hard ruts and Icy ridges In dry weather. Excellent at nineteen. As she flew down the road In sun or rain. In wind or snow, her pilnd's eye was 'fixed on the stove. The sehoolhouse reached, her numbed fingers wrestled with the rusty lock. The door opened, there smote her the schoolroom smell a mingling of dead ashes, kerosene, unwashed bodies, dust, mice, chalk, stove-woo- lunch crumbs, mold, slate that has been washed with saliva. Into this Sellna rusheo, untying her muffler as she en-tered. ' In the little vestibule there Wus a box plied with chunks of stove-woo-d and another heaped with dried corn-cobs- ! Alongside this a can of kerosene. The cobs served as kin-dling. A dozen or more of these you soaked with kerosene and stuffed Into the maw of the rusty Iron pot-bellied stove. A match. Up flared the corn-cob- Now was the moment for a small stick of wood; onnlher to keep It company. Shut the door. Iraughts. Dampers. Smoke. Sus-pense. A blaze, then a crackle. The wood has caujfht. In with a chunk now. A wait. Another chunk. Slam the door. The sehoolhouse fire Is "' started for the day. As the room thawed gradually Sellna removed lay-ers of outer garments. By the time the children arrived the room wss - livable. ' Sellna had seen herself, dignified, , Instructing a roomful of Imtch cherubs in the simpler ele-ments of learning. But It lr difficult to be dignified and gracious when you are Buffering from chilblains. Sellna fell victim to this sordid discomfort, as did every child 1c the room. She mt it the battered pine desk or moved about, a little Ice-wo- shawl around her Shoulders when the wind ' was wrong and the stove balky. Her 'iite little face seemed whiter In cootras with the black folds of thlf MANY HOUSEKEEPERS TOO ILL TO WORK How Many Are Finding Relief from Weakness and Pain. Mrs. Brandenburg a Notable Case I. i I took three. I had ben treated J? ,5- W by doctor, bat ha gave me an iron B.5 ,i i, - tonic and that did not help me. It J v . seemed that the tonic did not have in i. X ' it what the Vefretable Compound did. ' """N V ' V Thateavemetheatrengthandambi- - f : tion f needed and I have gained in v ff Hjil weight Tbia year before I atarted ' 4 V to c'0lin houB 1 8' 'our bottlea of i I y f '. the Vegetable Compound and am tak. 'V V"" I ln(C it right along. I tell all my frienda - J ' 1 about it and how much good it does I J t me. They can notice it because I have V gained in weight I weigh 118 now !r - ' ' and do all my work myself again." Mv v -- Mrs. Emil O. Brandenbuho. 661 y'?:' v V; 37th Street Milwaukee, Wisconsin. , ,y r' ' Mra. Earl's Recovery f"V y Horace, Nebraska. "I had terri-- I r ' S ble pains and backache, so bad that I I t , V I could hardly move, and I would have f fi- - 1 1 to lie down at times. I read adver- - ' J tisemenU of Lydia E. Pinkham'a MRS. imil o. MNDiNiUa Vegetable Compound and I was so i err tit. miwAusit, Wisconsin ai( at j thought I would try it My Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "I waa in husband knew it was good as he knew badly run-dow- n condition and 1 a woman it had helped. It took all would get weak spells and terrible my pains away and I don't have any headaches. I felt so badly last year backache now. I do my own house-th- at I could not do any housecleaning. work, take care of a few chickens The minute I would lift or atoop it and my garden, and have a little girl seemed as if I was going to fall to three years old to look out for. I I told a neighbor how I felt ommend the Vegetable Compound to and she said that Lydia E. Pinkham'a my friends and I will answer all the Vegetable Compound was aurely the questions I can, if any one writes to right thing for me. I took four bot-- me." -- Mra. Ada Eabl, Box 28, ties then and in the fall of the year Horace, Nebraska. 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Salt Lake City, Utah li - - : Rapid Transmission It la claimed that a new Invention cnlled the teletype delivers typewrit-ten messages up to a distance of 5,000 miles, transmitting at speeds of from forty to eighty words a minute, a print-ed message being delivered at the re-ceiving end of the wire. High Explosives Put Through Severe Test The new high explosives, which found their first large scale use dur-ing the great war, are "insensitive" I. e., reluctant to go off. So markedly ao, Indeed, that they are as safe to handle as cornmeal or baking powder. This quality Is extremely Important, Inasmuch as It makes them easy to doal with. To make them explode, a fuse la used. They are mostly coal-ta- r products. From coal tar are obtained benzine and toluene, which are converted Into high explosives by treating them with nitric acid. T N T Is an example. High explosives purchased by the United States government are tested to determine their degree of sensi-tiveness. Samples of them are set up and fired at with a rifle. If the Im-pact of the bullet sets them off. they are considered unsafe and are re-jected. One of Them Dinah was a product' of New Or-leans, a big, plump "yaller gal," who could cook the finest dinners for miles around. One tlay a new htiller appeared upon the scene, and Dinah's mistress noticed that she took a great Interest In the man. At last her mis-tress asked: "Dinah, do you know that new man?" Dinah took another long and scru-tinizing look and then slowly and replied : "Well, I dunno. Miss Alice; but I think he wns my fust husband!" They Are "My daughter, why do you touch up your cheeks so heavily with rouge T Why not emulate nature?" "Huh! Ain't the cherries red?" Louisville Courier-Journal- . England' Fith Rain In August, 1018, a small territory In northern England enjoyed what wns possibly the most novel of ull showers The precipitation in Uirge purt con-sisted of fish. The explanation which has been made, and which la seeming-ly a logical one, Is that a waterspout offshore lifted the fish by Its power carried them a short distance Inland, and with the dispersion of the water-spout and Its power dropped the fish on the land. Science and Invention Magazine. Traveler's Tate traveled?" said a sailor In a train to a passenger who had questioned him. "I should think I 'ave. I've been all round he world; over an' under It, too. There ain't manj ports I don't know the Inside of." "Why, you must know a lot about geography." "Yes, we did put In there once. Bar only to o:il shin. Taint much ot place, what 1 remember of IL" |