South-eastern Independent. (McConnelsville, Ohio) 1871-1871, 1871-06-23
THE GUNpowDER PLOT.

WHENEVER one writes with photo
graphic exactness of frontier life, he is &C
cused of inventing improbable things
"Old Dsvy Lindsey" lived in quee
cabin on the Pomme de Terre River. ]
you should ever ride over the new North
ern Pacific when it shall be completed, o
over that branch of it which crosses tn
Pomme de Terre, you can get out at sta
ton which will, no doubt, be called for al
old settler, Gager's Station; and if yol
would ike to see some beautiful scenery
take canoe and float down the Pomme d.
Terre River. You will have TO max,
some portages, and you will have a goot
appetite for supper when you reach tn,
] old Lindsey house, ten miles from eager
but its present owner is hospitable.
A queer old chap was Lindsey the las
time saw him. remember how he tool
me all over his claim, and showed me thu
beauties of Lindsleyville, as he called it
His long iron-gray hair fiuttered in the
wind, and his face seemed like wizard s
penetrating but unearthly. That was lone
before the great tide of immigrants haC
begun to find their way into this paradise
through the highway Of the Sauk valley
Lindsleyville was hundred and fifty mile:
out of the world at that time. Its popula
ton numbered two, Lindsey and his
daughter The old man had tried tC
make a fortune In many ways. There was
no sort ofuseless invention that he had moi
attempted, and you will find in the Patent
Office models without number of bee
hives and cannons, steam cut-otfs and baby
jumpers, lightning churns and flying ma
chimes, on which he had taken out pa
tents, assured Of making a fortune from
each ono. He has raised fancy chickens,
figure himself rich on two swarms of
bees, travelled with magic lantern, writ
ten philosophic novel, and started a
newspaper. There was but one purpose
in which he was fixed: which was to
guard his daughter jealously. To do this,
and to try the experiment of building an
Utopian city, he had travelled to the sum-
NIT of this knoll on the right
bank of the Pomme de Terre. There
never was a more beautiful landscape. than
that which LindsleyVille commanded.
But the town did not grow, chiefly be-
cause it was so far beyond the border,
though the conditions in his deeds intend
ed to secure the character of the city from
deterioration were so many, that nobody
would have been willing to buy the lots.
AT the time speak of, David Lindsey
had dwelt on the Pomme de Terre for five
years. He had removed suddenly from
the Connecticut village in which he had
been living because he had discovered
that his daughter had, in spite of his
watchfulness, formed an attachment for
young man who had the effrontery to dis
close the whole thing to him by politely
asking his consent to their marriage.
Marry my daughter" choked the old
man; "why, Mr.. Brown, you are crazy. l
have educated her upon the combined
principles of Rousseau, of PestaloZzi, of
Froebel, and of Herbert Spencer. And
youl you only graduated at Yale, an old
fogy medieval institution No, sirl not
till meet philosopher whose mind has
been symmesrically developed can 1 con-
sent for my Emilia to marry"
And the old man became so frantic that,
10 save him from the mad-house, Emilia
wrote letter, at his dictation, to young
Brown, peremptorily breaking off all rela-
ions; and he, a sensitive, romantic man,
vas heart broken, and left the village He
,nly sent farewell to his friends the day
before he was to sail from New Bedford on
! whaling voyage. He carried with him
he impression that an unaccountable
,hange of mind in Emilia had left no hope
or him.
To prevent a recurrence of such an un-
oward accident as this, and, as he ex-
pressed it, :" to bring his daughters mind |
nto intimate relations with nature" the !
anatical philosopher established the town |
# Lindsleyville, determined that no
amily in which there was young man
hould settle on his town-plot, unless, in |
Iced, the young man shoHld prove the |
Daragon he was looking for.
Emilia's motherless life had not been q |
heerful one, subjected to the ever-chang-
ng whims of a visionary father, with |
Vhom one of her practical cast of mind |
ould have no point of sympathy And |
ince she came to Lindsleyville it was
arder than ever, for there was no neigh
or nearer than Gager's, ten miles away,
nd there was not woman within fifty |
niles There is no place SO lonesome as a |
rairie the horizon is so wide, and the |
arth is SO empty
Lindsey had spent all his own money
0ng ago, andit was only the small annuity
f his daughter, inherited from her
lother's family, the capital of which was
led up to keep it out of his reach, that
revented them from starving. Emilia
7as starving indeed, not in body, but in
oul. Cut off from human sympathy, she
sed to sit at the gable window of the cabin
nd look out over the boundless meadow,
ntil it seemed to her that she would lose
er reason. The wild geese screaming
D one another overhead, the bald-eagles
uilding in the solitary elm that grew by
ne side OF the river, the flock of great
Ihite pelicans that were fishing on the
each of Swan Lake, three miles away,
7ere all objects of envy to the lonesome
cart of the girl; for they had companions
f their kind-they were husbands and
ives, and parents and children, while she
here she checked her thoughts lest she
lould be disloyal to her father. To her
isordered fancy the universe seemed to be
wheel. The sun and the stars came up
nd went down over the monotonous sea
f grass with frightful regularity, and she
Ould not tell whether there was a God or
OF. When she thought of God at all, it
Tas as relentless giant turning the crank
nat kept the sky going round The uni
erse was an awful machine The prayers
er mother taught her in infancy died upon
er lips, and instead of praying to God
ne cried out to her mother Un-protest-
IL IAC cCn6lluCub lOIDtdT
lying that this talking to the dead is one
f the most natural things in the world.
o Emilia the dimly remembered love of
er mother was all of tenderness there
as in the universe, the only revelation of
cd that had come to her, except only the
ther love, which was to her a Paradise
,st. For the great hard Fate that turned
le prairie universe round with crank
lotion had also, so it seemed to her,
latched away from her the object of her
've This disordered, faithless state was
i the fruit she tasted of the peculiar edu-
ltion so much Wanted by her father. She
ad eaten the husks he gave her and was
ungry.
l said she had no company An old da-
lerreotype of her mother and carefully
idden photograph (marked on the back
a rather immature hand: "E Brown0
emed to answer with looks of love and
when she wetted them with her
ars. They were her rosary and her cru
fix; they were the gifts of beclouded
fe, through which God shone in dimly
pom her. rr-rT Tr.--.rr
This poor girl looked and longed so for
lie company of human kind that she
,unted those red-letter days on which a
alf-breed voyageur travelled over the trail
/ front of the house, and even party of
egging and beggarly Sioux, hungry for
u they could get to eat, Offering imnor-