Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-12-04

session of q stomach if she was not
| with a mind.
| At this point in her meditations she
| closed her eyes and wandered still
further breakdown the winding road
that was but bridle-path across the
otherwise trackless prairies; back, far
| back to the little low ceiled, unpaint-
ed house amid a cluster of wild cher
ry trees where miles and miles of ILL
| noise prairie unrolled itself to the eye,
a waving, undulating ocean of blue
green grass all summer long, chang
ing at last to limitless dun rownplain,
traversed by roaring. gallo ping,
| writhing columns of flame in the
smoky autumn night.
There, in that dingy little house,
she was born in those early days when
Farmer Benton shouldered his gun in
the silent dawn and went out on the
north forty" for deer. Skulking
prairie wolves came slipping through
the grass up to the well when the
sloughs dried up in summer, and she
remembered waking in the starry,
winter nights to listen to their weird,
| mournful bowls, with childish ter
ror and sort of unwilling fascina-
ton. Then, little by little, came a
change. It was one day in early aut-
umn-she remembered so well that
a young man came riding down the
bridlepath to the cherry-trees and the
pingy cottage crouching beneath
them. Behind him, train of white
covered wagons prairie schooners"
the settlers called them-lumbered
heavily along the trail. They drew
up ia circle on the prairie adjoining
her fathers section; and in a few days
a ringing of hammers and the CHEEKY
shouts of the home builders floating
over in a softened way, to the little
cottage where Mary Liddy Benton sat
sewing on the farmers Bingham
shirts.
The oldest inhabitant, an irascible
Individual who had lived there when
| Chicago, some ninety miles distant
was the nearest market-town, where
they hauled their "truck" on ox-wag-
ons once a year, bringing back sup
ply of meal, a gallon or two of whiskey,
and calico dress for ''the woman, ="
now began to talk irritably of going
''out west" where the country was
not so thickly settled. Gradually the
plain of waving grass gave place to
fields of corn, and, one by one, little
implanted cottages sprang up like
solitary mushrooms all over the prai-
RE.
But to Mary Benton that one seem
| ed the beginning of it all-the day
that brought the line of prairie
sch ooners and the young man on his
black horse, cantering along in front,
with his face to the setting sun and a
shadowy film of a moon hanging in
the eastern sky at his back.
That was Herbert. Mary was just
Is then, and it was not long before the
black horse became accustomed to
spend his Sunday evenings paving
the ground in front of the sturdy
hitching post at Farmer Benton's cot
tage.
''That hole'n do fur suller when
we build, Mar" the old man remark
ed, nudging Charity loosely. But
when Mary was Is they were married,
and black Jim was interrupted before
he had extended his excavation suf-
fic1ently for a ''suller."
Then Herbert moved down to the
new town, through which the "keers'
passed twice every day, and started
his little paper. Children came one
after another into the neat little home,
but as the years went by, little hill
locks in the new "burying- ground u
were shaped and covered with prairie
sod. She had worked, and struggled,
and suffered SO long, and God had not
even LETT one child to comfort her now
that the work aud struggle was over,
and the suffering multiplied fold.
But He knew best! They would
probably be as much ashamed of their
Ignorant, awkward mother-as their
father was! But it was hard-it was
hard
| They had been almost equal in the
start-Herbert and Mary. Perhaps
| his education was little better OF the
two, but now he boasted in eloquent
words of being self-made man; one
who had risen from the depths of pow
erty and ignorance, and had gone to
school in his boyhood days with patch
es on the knees of his homespun panta-
looms. 1t was so wonderful and inter,
esting, and so heroic in the elegant
Herbert Agnes Pennoyer to glory ia
| his lowly origin and subsequent
struggle for higher ground, his fine
new friends remarked in very audible
whispers. There was no prompter be
hind the scenes to say:
MARY Lyddy made you. You have
absorbed her life, and strength, and
intelligence every possibility of her
past and future--ln your own race
toward the goal of success. You have
reached it; but where is she? Away
back at the end of the trail under the
wild cherry trees!"
! When Herbert departed from Cen
necticut settlement, having far out
stripped the country with which he
had started to grow up," he did not
take away with him the same light
hearted, fresh-faced Mary he had