The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-11-11

tirical speech, which he exercised with
impunity upon his wife-his wife, the
| line of whose descent was SO long that it
had worn to q colorless, attenuated thread
in her, thin, pale, languid woman, OF
| whose condition it expressed little to say
she dared not call her soul her own, be-
cause. in looking at her, or looking
through her, rather, it was not clear that
she had soul-a woman without intel
lect, without individuality, and almost
without vitality. Into this assemblage
More Van More had dared introduce a
person absolutely without a grandfather,
and whose grandfather, had she had one,
would have been named Shacabac!
Mr.. Van More and his household would
entreat this vile and vulgar intriguer.
who had thrust herself upon them, and
had thought to lift herself by pulling
them down, as she deserved. In their
heart of hearts they had a complete, if
inartculate, consciousness that no one
could have married the bridegroom in
question for any other purpose. And
More Van More received a letter of re-
pudiation from his father, disowning and
casting him forever into the outer dark
ness of the world of people who were
not Van Nores.
And who was More Van More? He
was young man of twenty-six years,
whose mental processes had mastered
the rudimentS of learning to such an eX-
tent that he could read the newspaper
and could make change. All attempts
to cultivate those mental processes much
further had failed if he entered the uni
versity at last, it was because tutors and
proctors and family influence, a fortui-
tous chance, and perhaps money, all
wrought together Entrance was all,
however; before the first term closed
Mr.. Van More had private but authorita-
tive information that unless he wanted
expulsion for stupidity approaching i'm
becility, he had better Withdraw his son.
In a hot and self-righteous fury Mr..
Van More turned the tables and expelled
the university. He withdrew his son
with wild show of anger and scorn for
faculty, curriculum, endowment and
career. They have graduated no man
who comes to anything in the last
twenty-five yearsr' he said. And that
the matter might be the sooner forgotten
he gave Mr.. More Van More a purse and
travelling companion and dispatched
him to the far West. 1t was probably
but case of retarded development;
perhaps he would do a little exploring
and discovering; when he should return
the affair would have quite blown over,
and he would marry him to some maiden
who had been so well brought up that
she would feel herself taking proper
place among Nominations, princes and
powers by marrying a Van More of any
cahbre. All the same, he did not fail to
make his wife'S life a burden to her by
sarcasms on her feeble wit that had been
strong enough to adulterate the strength
of the Van More, while the very sense
of his sons incapacity, thus forced upon
him, was another argument against the
woman who would marry an imbecile
for the sake of climbing into his rank
and position.
1t was not altogether to be wondered
at, then, if his wife did not fully sympa-
thize with him in this extremity. aud if,
being of an atfectionate disposition, so
far as she had anything to impart, hav-
ing impaired that also to her son, she
wrote a little surreptitious letter-she
who had usually not a thought nor Il
deed nor an emotion of her own.
MY DARLING Boy: send you all my love-
Any wife you choose to marry will be the dear
daughter of your mother
That was the letter written so secret
ly; it meant volumes to her; it meant
volumes to her boy. She was frightened
to a trembling ghost of her ghost-like
Golf ,Uban cbn Ctnrno1 tba oorr;o cra onJ
asked the foOtman to drop it in a street.
box, for she felt that if her husband knew
it it would not be impossible for him to
blow out her pickering flame of life al
together, or stamp its feeble spark into
the earth. He never had struck her, but
she never knew what he might do yet.
The fathers letter, when it came, was
not at all unexpected by Hero Van More,
nor was the mothers surprise. She
was girl of twenty, "divinely tall and
most divinely fair" Her superb mould
ings would have fed ulptor's eye with
rapture, her superb coloring would have
driven wild another than Titan; the
great braids upon her head seemed made
of strands of spun gold; she wore them
like a crown, as beca ne a daughter OF
the royal tribe of Judah. She was I'M
doubtedly a Jewess; but as Miriam, as
Deborah, as Susannah may have done,
she had the large beauty of that Clytie
in her Suntlower whom some think to be
Isis in her lotus. She waited in her faith
er's shop, and she sold Mr.. Van More a
pair of gloves there.
He had given his purse some time since
to his travelling companion, and he was
waiting in this little place till he should
receives fresh remittance from his father
When he saw Hero he had something
else to wait for. He hung round the
| shop corners, and when she went home
he followed her. Vera inceSSU pHt1tit dca
she stepped as if the earth were air;
he said to himself that it was because
his heart was under her feet He knew
intuitively that she would not give him a
second look. What were the Van Nores
out here in the wilderness? He was able
to see, flor all his deficiency, that she was
on higher plane of being than his own.
But il he could not hope he could al
least suffer; he could gaze at the star he
might not win, He bought another pail
of gloves. All, heavens! to feel the touch
of those pointed fingers of hers as they
stretched the kid from side to side of hi.
hand! The next day he bought another
pair. Before he was through he haC
bought the whole stock of gloves in the
! shop.