The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-11-19
The Firm of Thompson & Go.
BY FAITH HARPER.

BY FAITH HARPER
Farmer Thompson laid down the |
Weekly Forum with grunt.
"Well, what's the matter now ?"
queried his good spouse, Minerva, who |
sat mending double compound fracture |
in the right leg of pair of unmention-
ables. .....
'Oh, nothingr' was the response, ut
tered in tone of concentrated sarcasm |
which, rightly interpreted, meant that
in the opinion of John Thompson "all the |
the world and the rest of mankind"
were on the high-road to destruction.
Now, Minerva justified her name, for
she was a wise woman and held her
peace, we'll knowing that she would not
long be kept in ignorance as to the
cause of her high lords disturbance.
While John is silently chewing the
cud of his bitter faneies, and Minerva
heals the rent in JOe's pants, let US
make their acquaintance.
The Thompson homestead comprises
some two hundred acres, and is one of
the finest farms in the Empire State. It
has descended to it's present owner from
father and grandfather, the latter hav-
ing been a soldier of the Revolution.
John loves to boast that his ancestor
"came in with the COngueror," and is
wont to display with no little pride a
document bearing General Washing
toms signature, and certifying that "the
bearer hereof, Jonathan Thompson,
having faithfully served the United
States six years and five months, is
hereby discharged from the American
Army" Said Jonathan also received a
badge of merit and six hundred acres of
bounty land in what was then "the far
West" to which he duly transferred
himself and household, and proceeded to
make home in the wilderness. So in
the course of time it came to pass that
grandson John found himself proprietor
of gOodly patrimony overlooking the
sparkling waters of the beautiful
Cayuga. But he did not receive his in
heritance unincumbered, for the Thomp-
son family were numerous, and many
legacies must be paid off before he could
be styled, in country parlance, 'inde-
pendent" But with stout hands and
heart, and the help of faithful, loving
wife, the task is at last accomplished,
and now he can sit serene in the assur-
ance that, let the winds of financial
panic howl their fiercest, his barque, at
least, is safely moored and out of danger.
country lassie of twenty-five, with no
nonsense about her, consented to be-
come Minerva Thompson, she knew, as
well as any woman who ever marries
can know, just what she was undertake
| ing. Born and bred farmers daugh-
ter, she had no expectations of ease or
elegant leisure; and now we see her, al
though the mother of five children, and
the mistress of farmhouse for twenty
years, as wholesome, CHEEKY a matrOn
as can well be found, looking at least
| five years younger than the record in
the big family Bible warrants. Perhaps
this is owing, in some degree, to the
fact that having been trained in habits
of cheerful industry, and endowed with
goodly share of shrewd common
sense, she has troubled herself very lit
tie about any other Emission" than
that of doing faithfully the nearest
duty. But she is by no means a mere
household drudge, with no ideas beyond
baking and buttons. Her father, Cap
tain Hyde, who fought, bled, and died
for his country on the battlefield of
Fair Oaks, came of staunch New Eng
land stock, and was a man who did his
own thinking, a trait which was trans
mitted to his children in no small
DCAlEo O SoACGo AONSA vi OOOHNSi
he possessed, what was rare among
farmers thirty years ago, a very re-
spectacle library; and it was not un-
common for the Yankee peddler, struck
by the sight of well-filled bookcase in
a farmhouse, to inquire if the sold gen.
tleman" was doctor or minister. He
was an "abolitionist" from the early
DAYS when to bear that hated name i'm
piled little less than social Ostracism
and his son Tom, who stood by his
fathers side when he fell, and himself
came home from the war with one arm
, and colonePs uniform, fought his first
battle for freedom behind the old brown
school house, where he administered 6
sound thrashing to graceless eompan
ion who had ventured to point thu
! finger of scorn at the dauntless boy wh(
, would "hurrah for James G. Birneyn y
during the exciting Presidential contes
of IA.
Growing up in the atmosphere o
: such a house, it is not strange tha
Minerva occasionally INDUCED in pro
gressive notions which were sometime
rather startling to the steady-goinl
T John, who belonged to a more cOnserva
, tive race. But he was not pig-headed
, and although the leaven of new ideas
= WHICH lIequeuLly IOuHu lOuS nShI III Ii
mind through the instrumentality o
i his wide-awake wife, did not alway
r produce its legitimate result withou
= considerable sputtering and tizzing, ye
he generally ended by accepting tn
views of his help-meet, for whose opin
3 ions he entertained a most profound re
| spect. -.-
a At last Joe's neither garment is in OF
, der for another days campaign, an
Minerva takes up the paper. With th
instinct of true house mother sh
turns first to the page devoted to famil
interests. After a few moments silen
perusal, she suddenly exclaims, "Good