The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-09-29
CHAPTER l.

CHAPTER l.
There was mourning in the home of
Solon and Susan RutherfOrd-mourDing
that far exceeded the great grief that
had wrung the hearts of the husband
and wife fifteen years before, when
three-year-old baby Ethel, twin COM
panion to the now grown and married
Edna Rutherford, had closed her blue
eyes beneath the shadows of the great
NAPLES and folded her tiny hands un-
der the mysterious influence of the
death-sleep.
81 thought my heart was broken when
Ethel was taken," said the sorrowing
mother; "but 1 had the comforting as
surance that God took her, and that,
somewhere in theillimitable vastness of
the filmy hereafter she would blossom
into a more perfect angelhood than
could be reached in the earth-life. So 1
trusted in the Lord and was comforted.
But now
Great sobs choked her further utter
ance, and she leaned languidly upon the
sofa pillow-the pillow that Edna had
so often shaken up and arranged for the
comfort of her aching head-and the
blessed tears fell like summer rain.
Solon Rutherford was stupefied with
an overpowering loneliness. Seven
children had been born to the house
hold, of whom four sons had grown to
manhood and settled themselves upon
farms adjacent to their parents in the
valley of the Missouri. The eldest child
was a'daughter who had married young,
and had also always lived, since mar
riage, in the neighborhood adjacent to
the old homestead. The early ambition
of this daughters parents, who had
marked out for her-as what young par
ents have nOt-a career of brilliancy,
having its root in a fortunate matrimo-
nial alliance, had so long been thwarted
that their fond anticipations in relation
to her were well nigh forgotten. Not
but that the eldest born had married
reasonably well; her husband, plain,
unpretending Thomas Jones, having
proved a plodding, well-to-do farmer,
who looked upon wife as something
handy to have in the house, and as be-
ing his own, by law and gospel, with
out any sentiment of love or any sense
of obligation to cherish and protect her
further than to keep her in good work
ing order through the busiest seasons
SO her father and mother had long ago
laid away their early parental dream,
but had cherished a new and intensified
longing for Edna's matrimonial sue
cess-a longing which had spared them
neither pains nor expense in providing
her with many accomplishments.
Four years at fashionable school fol
young ladies had FINISHED" Edna's ed
ucation. At least, as was very unusual
in the great West among farmers
daughters at the time of which our story
opens, she could play superbly, sing di-
vinely, and talk like an educated parrot
or an animated dictionary. If she haC
learned aught of the practical lessons o.
life at school, her mother failed to dis
cover it; if she had imbibed knowledge
combined with understanding, relative
to the duties of wifehood, motherhood
and above all, of womanhood, nobody
was able to discern her progress; but sh,
was pretty, witty, and brilliant, and haC
emerged from school thoroughly imbueC
with the ideal extravagances respecting
the divinity of the other sex, which ar
the bane of all the pupils in any one
sexed school. Why parents will not SCI
the folly of bringing up their children
in schools where the sexes are who'll,
represented, in order to unfit them for
life wherein the sexes are to live to
gether in the most intimate .relation
ever afterward, is one of the anomalie
of human inconsistency, which, Will
deprecating its existence, we will 20
here attempt to account for.
For brief season after Edna's returl
from school she had reigned in the rus
tic vicinity in which she had been era
died as a star of the first magnitude
True, the young ladies disliked her, an
their mammas unanimously dubbed he
"a forward MINK" but she was queen @
hearts among the gentlemen, an
swayed her scepter with royal hand
Why she had fancied John Smith, no
body could imagine. She had ha
scores of other suitors, far better look
ing than he, and certainly quite as in
tellectual; but Cupid is a capriciou
marksman, and there is little certaipt
in the aim of his arrows.
1t was enough for Edna that her PAL
ents disliked him. While in boardin
school she had slyly read many a move
wherein the heroine had figured as
much-persecuted maiden, and the love
as a noble-hearted suitor, and a perfeC
Adonis in form and feature, whom, a
ter much tribulation, the enrapture