The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1882-11-09

AN SOuAA 1lSbh IidlSS All ttbOCLiPNo
to cultivate those mental processes much
further had failed; if he entered the uni
versity at last, it was because tutors and
p%roctors and family influence, Q fortui-
tous chance, and perhaps money, all
wrought together. Entrance was all,
however; before the first term closed
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
with a 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 yearsT" he said. And that
the matter might be the ooner forgotten
he gave MI. More Van More a purse and
a travelling companion and dispatched
him to the far West. 1t wa probably
but a 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 a proper
place among Nominations, princes and
powers by marrying a Van More OF any
calbre. 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
yoran rrho yor11 f,anr.rsrr nm Ip,hnnt1n
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, and if,
being of an affectionate 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 a
deed nor al emotion of her own.
"MY DARLING BoY: Iserdyou 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
self when she stopped the carriage and
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 a surprise. She
was a girl of twenty, ''divinely tall and
most divinely fair" Her superb mould
ings would have fed asculptor'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 became a daughter OF
the royal tribe of Judah. She was I'M
doubleday a Jewess; but as Miriam, as
Deborah, a Susannah may have done,
she had the large beauty of that Clytie
in her sunflower 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
receive 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 i1cessu patuit dea
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 moi 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 wa;
on a higher plane of being than his own.
But if he could net hope he could al
least suffer; he coult gaze al the star he
might not win. He bought another pail
of gloves. All, heavens! TO feel the touch
of those pointaR 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 had
bought the whole stock of gloves in the
shop.
Of course this attracted Der attention
and she made some inquiry concerning
him. "You had better go away" she
said, when he came in again. You dc
not need gloves, Or ties, or any of oul
goods. You are making yourself ridicu
lous."
" have nothing to do with it," he
replied. /" 1 wa made so when l wa:
born"
And so one word led to another, and il
the course of time he had told her his stor,
which somehow seemed full of wrongs
the story of a atherfeeble-minded you'll
who had been snubbed and brow-beatel
and ill-used by a disappointed fathe
from his birth. Her heart was stirred
with pity; she let him come to the house
Hope bounded within him. If the sta
should fall from the sky to his arms
He wrote his father-I forgot to say tina
!, he could write-that he wanted his in
fiuence to help him marry the mos
lovely, the most %virtuous, the most bril-
liant of women, who waited behind tn
counter of her fathers little Jew-shop
The answer to this letter made his hal
, stand on end. Cold, sneering, vindic
) tive, cruel, threatening-what should h
do but show tito herP Her blood woul
, have been cold and thin stuff had tha
r not made it boil. 81 can never go bac
to him." said More. ''1tis the last bio,
j, he shall strike me-"
: "Would you be happier here in tn
shop helping mep" she asked.
Beyond measured" he cried.
SO she told him to see her father thu
:, night. She meant about the situation
. he meant about a wife. And her fathe
y in as good and strong contempt as M
Van More himself could feel, ordere
= . the fellow from the house.
''The worthless .varletr' cried the Of
g man. "Can he earn his salt? What q
n 1 care for his name and his family an
his entailed moneys-the dog of a Chri
e tian! He can lave them all; but he can
e marry my girl to an idiot!'
d "Heis not an idiot, father" said Her
= There is more in linn than any see," an
she calmly canvassed the subject. "E
d has been made to look up till he do
# not know how to look straight ahea'
Some day he will assert himself"
1t stYou?" said her father. s'You?
l. believe you care for the lout! When "
h have sweethearts to fill q regimen