Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-02-03
JUST LIKE A STORY.
BETH DAY.

BETH DAY.
"Oh! DEAR" and Bertha Manning
threw down the paper she had been
reading, "Why cannot people write
things as they are, not
as they ought to be, Or as they
would like to have them. Nothing
ever happens in the real world as it is
pictured out in the paper-and-ink
world. In that there are no lasting
5isappointments and no failures. The
hardhearted parents relent, the rich
uncle dies, the lost letter, or ring, or
bracelet, is always found; the needy
hero legins life a poor clerk, without
experience, and in less than year is
rich and indeoenlent, with an offer of
u junior partnership and the hand of
the daughter Of the house in the near
snture. The raw country heroine,
either makes her appearance in the so
ciety of the city's elite. which she takes
by storm, or she becomes literary, writes
some poem, OF song. Or story, without
preparation, education. or training,
mind you, and becomes famous in q
night. If q heroine's lines are cast in
unpleasant places, there is always q
recompense, sure, swift curtain. We
have not found it SO in the real world,
.Mc. tel"
"Perhaps because we were not hero
ines, Bertie," replied her sister,
"Then let us become heroines as
soon as possible" exclaimed Berthe
II do wish that once, just once, some
thing could happen to us just like a
story. All I want is justice, little of
the poetic justice that is pictured out
IN the literature Of the day. But there
isn't any of it in the real world about
us. Take your own case," she added,
glancing over at her sister; "see how
you have worked and struggled to keep
Fthe home for us both-that noisy,
stuffy school by day and your writing
by night. Do L not know why your
light burns so late? but poems are a
drug in the market. Five years
since we were left orphans; you have
done this, and to what end? You have
supported us both, but your health and
strength are broken; the mortgage
which we have no means of paying falls
due next week, and the fossilized old
humbug who holds it thinks to force
you into a marriage with his very un-
desirable self by taking away our
home"
II have done some good work in
those five years, Berthe"
cit would have been just as good,
Queen Nab, if you had received
better pay for it. No, Mai, there
is little of the recompense we
read of comes into real life. The real
stories are the ones that do not end
we'll, and editors will not take them.
"Think of Aunt Max now. Was there
ever q sweeter, purer, better, or more
lovable woman i'll the world than Aunt
Max? And just see what her
life has been. She loved Gerald
Harding, but because of q lost
letter, or some such trihe, they
rEpsrted, and he out Of revenge, I sup
soose, married that brainless fyaway,
Bess Halton, and a sweet time he had
of it, too. What life she led him,
through her jealousy on account of his
former attachment, until she took his
two children and ran away, for no
other reason that I could ever see but
that she might follow us out West and
annoy Aunt Max by her presence.
AHush, BERTHE, she is dead!"
And small loss, too, Nab. There,
DON'T look so Mortified, Mabel I never
could see why, just because person
has gone cover beyond" they must be
eulogized and praised, and counted
faultless, when all their lives they had
made people as miserable and unhappy
as they could, and when, too, the best
thing they ever did was to die, and
they wouldn't have done that if they
could have avoided it.
"Then Gerald's death with that
party of excursionists almost the
same day that she was killed in
the railway collision. leaving three
penniless orphans in the place
where no one knew even the names of