The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-04-20
VOLUME vi.

marrying a whole familyw
Had Mrs. LaSelle been a wife of older
experience, or had she as a bride been
less infatuated with her husband, she
would not have permitted her ideas of
self-dependence to lay dormant under
this covert thrust, for she well knew
that her own labors as wife and house
keeper possessed an intrinsic value far
in excess of any remuneration she was
likely to receive for them.
But women have thought through all
the stages of historic human develop
ment that they must lay aside all self
hood and merge existence and aspira-
tion into the embodiment of their idea
of the husband they love, and it was
too much to expect of Aunt Judy that
she should prove marked exception to
the general rule.
Heroines, like heroes, are born and
not made, and we may theorize to the
end of life's chapter, but we will always
fail TO find our fullest expectations real
ized in anybody.
When the evening for the promised
entertainment had come, John Smith,
the legal arbiter of Edna Rutherford's
destiny, was in the zenith of his glory.
To be ''door-keeper' at his wife's "ben-
eft" was his highest ambition, and
when the miners, some of them, de-
INJURED, he had but to exercise hus-
bands authority to make everything
bend to his wishes.
1t is a noted fact in human ethics that
men and women are much more readily
inclined to act honorably when rules for
their regulation of business affairs are
necessarily voluntary than when laws
and bars and bolts are everywhere en-
ployed to hold them in allegiance.
Three-fourths of the miners in Idaho
Flat could have availed themselves of
the use of the benches in the open air,
under the star-lit skies, where they
could have listened without let or hind
rance to the evenings exercises, but
there was not man in the mines who
would thus have dishonored his self-re-
spect.
All paid the admission fee promptly,
John Smith accepting the silver as it
dropped into his hands, and from thence
into his many pockets, with a relish
that would have been pardonable under
the circumstances had he not needed
guardian to keep him straight while
holding it in possession.
The entertainment, coined as it had
been from Edna's brain, under her dire
necessities, and amid a harassing per-
plexity of conflicting interests that
would have appalled, the strongest man,
was a success in every way. True, ii
would hardly have succeeded at Wal
lacks, and might not have been encored
at Maguire's, but it was thoroughly ap-
preciated in Idaho Flat, and Edna be-
came SO deeply absorbed in her work
that for once since her marriage she was
oblivious to John.
Two hours passed in alternate songs
and recitations, in which "the grave
and gay, the lively and severe" were
alike intermingled. The miners were
half wild with varying emotions.
One had lost little daughter in tht
far-off flats of Jersey, and the pIaintiv,
strains Of "Under the Willow She'
Sleeping" awakened a resolve in hi
soul to return at once to the bereaveC
and lonely mother of the "Fair, fair
and golden haired" darling that hat
: lain for years beneath the flowers ant
i grasses. Another shed tears of meltin,
tenderness over the plaintive minor O
: "Thou hast learned to love another" a
he remembered rustic maiden of th
y days gone by and the fact that she ha,
Tilted him and set him adrift, a deliver
y unloved and alone, who no longe
sought home or happiness, but instea
i was in constant quest of means where
e with to go back to the old haunts an
e set up a bachelor establishment tina
e should make both his old-time fam
u and successful rival half frenzied wit
envy.
e Still another, and scores of yet Others
10 were convulsed with laughter over be
d quaint witticisms of the Betsey Bobbit
It order, and when, at last, the imaginar
se curtain fell upon the last act, and th
Te crowd was at liberty to retire from th
8. unusual feast, and Edna remembers
ID her children and Sue, and turned {
l. seek for John, she found the forme
ID safely housed with her infant charge
n and the latter missing.
D. John was nowhere to be founC
le Search was made for him in all the bu
is rows round about, the general suspicio
er being that he had met with foul pra,
le But Edna knew better.
ar "Let them hunt for him to the
lg hearts content" she said to Sue. an
D. only dread is that he will find himse
er sooner than we desire. have no doul
but he ran away to see what he couI
1e do toward building up his shattered fo
De tunes by gambling in a new quartz
of He must have collected five hundrs
n, dollars at my benefit A pretty ia
as beginning for a faro table at Boise
IN Lewiston, you know"
u "But I'd pursue him with the la,
L