The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-09-03
SHE LOST HER FAITH,
II WAS AN "UNcoMMoNLY QUIET
AND ORDERLY NIGHT"

Ihe Ways of Lover Whose Habits Were
Not Such as Maiden Wants in
Man She Is to Tie Up to for Life.-How
She Made the Discovery.
have a young friend who has lost
most all of her faith in masculine human
nature. She probably still believes in her
father and brother, and, of course, her con.
fidence in her favorite clergyman is unim-
paired; but as for the rest Of the sterner sex
she thinks Of it as should dreadfully hate
TO have any one think of me. But l must
hasry to tell you just how it all happened.
My friend Miss Flora never mind her other
name) went TO Europe about five years ago
to complete musical and generally artistic
course in italy. As school girl of IL she
formed a fond attachment for
young Knickerbocker. They exchanged
rings and, as they both thought,
their alleged hearts in the bargain.
While she was away she was great deal
more steadfast to her troth, as girls ususally
are than he was, | think. At any rate,
she got good many hints from friends at
home, just before she returned, that made
her doubt whether his habits were just such
as she wanted in a man she was to tie up to
for life. The consequences was that when
she heard that she heard that her Charley
was going wrong she did something differ
ent from sitting down, as most girls would,
and having good weep First she wrote
to him all she had heard, and he, preferring
to lie rather than lose her and her half mil
lion, wrote back that he was saint and
whoever said he wasn't was a liar, SO to
speak.
A DARING SCHEME.
She didn't believe him, and she wrote to
me. II am coming home," she said, with
the most daring scheme that ever had, and
you and your cousin Bob are in it" knew
it would be something breathless but was
hardly prepared for what it turned out to
be. She wanted to get male toggery for her
self and me, and then have Cousin Bob to
introduce us as young foreigners to "her
Charley as she always called him l was
like Artemus Ward during the war, per-
fectly willing to sacrifice all my wife's rela-
tions, but I would not go myself. "My
figure is not exactly the sort for male attire,
my DEAR" said L; "but you'll do, with your
hair clipped, and you can have Cousin Bob"
She wanted to put in night around
town with her Charlie, and, as Bob knew
him very well, it was as easy as an old
stocking. Bob wouldn't hear of it at first
81 kick, ," he said. ''All right said /; ''kick if
you want to, but you'll either do what
want or you don't go anywhere with me or
my friends next summer" Well, he did it,
but he said I'd regret it the longest day I
lived.
Flora got herself up in the style Of a law
student-one of those buttoned up things in
black, with mouth and the handle of
cane always in it, and eyeglasses and tbs
stare of baby trying to look like an old
bachelor. She's born actress and she
looked true to life She went with Bob and
her Charlie and half dozen others, mostly
gold-plated young snobs, to see burlesque.
Flora pretended to be just from France and
unable to speak English, SO that no nobody
tried to talk to her except Bob.
AN HOUR OF wIcKEDNEss.
Her plan worked to dot She saw and
heard enough to saGIsry her To uss 4acr
own words: "If went to nunnery to-
morrow I'd have had more than my share
oil wickedness just from that night" Every
one of the young men, except Bob knew
some of the girls on the stage, and they
talked about them, she says, just as jockeys
might be supposed to talk about horses
One of the young men fiirted with woman
in the audience, met her after the play, and
went away to supper with her, while the
rest strolled to an all night chop-house on
Sixth avenue. Flora stood it there just one
hour She drank Rhine wine, to which she
is accustomed, but the conversation of the
young men, the stories they told and the
way they behaved with the mattresses who
attended them caused her to beg Bob to
take her home He told me that he had
81, l. +t,oA e..
1T was nothing extraordinary, sail he;
"in fact, it was an uncornmonly quiet and
orderly night the boys were having, but
they talked freely, and although l should
have thought nothing of it ordinarily, still
when knew that sweet and innocent girl
was listener and looker-on there suffered
such torture as / never did before in my
life. 1t gave me a new view of life, and
ever since then / have been half ashamed of
myself in feminine company"
AS for Flora, I can't tell you what she
said She came and flung herself on my
bed and cried, the next day, till / thought
she would weep herself crazy. Beasts"
and "brutes' were the only words she could
find to apply to her companions of the night
before, and she assured me that in all the
French novels, all the criminal reports and
all the startling talk shc had ever read or
heard she had never conceived tenth of
the perfectly awful horriblsness of these
young men.
TO CAP THE CLIMAX.
Well, that Is not ALL There is more to
Flora's case, and in fact, come in here my
self Flora wrote to her Charley, telling
him that she was the French student who
spent that evening with him He tried to
see her, but she said she would rather touch
q toad. Then he wrote to her that he was
far better than ar average young man; in
fact, that he was rather Enodel-sober,
honest, Industrious, and without being ad-
dicted to any vice except smoking. To cap
the climax, her own people took his side,
and she has had assurances that he is an un-
commonly nice young man from-whom do
you think! Why, from two clergymen,
from cousin Bob from great reformer,
from college professor, from banker and
from male relatives score in number.
Flora is disheartened and disgusted She
has not given up the sex. She means to
find some decent, clean, manly, self-respect-
ing ambitious fellow, who leads one life as
open as a book, and she means to point to
him, and tell all who have assured her to
the contrary that it is not impossible to be
decent and be man at the same time But,
my gracious It's been a revelation
Clara Belle in Cincinnati Enquirer.
Enormous Death Rate at Panama.
But started to speak of the death rate.