Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-10-01

=
And after that death Georgina May |
nard was never again the same woman.
She had been LETT just enough money to
live in fair ease with her two boys,
while at the same time faithfully effect
ing their education. When the boys
were a little older she removed with
them into the country and took up her
dwelling not far from that parsonage
Of her dead father where Maynard had
first met her and won her love. Folk
said of her that she had grown sour and
hard, though it was true that her reli-
gious devotions became perfervid with
the fresh lapse ofyears. As fact, nearly
all her cold curtneSs OF manner was an
outCroyvth of that mental fret wrought
by remorse; for though the smart of a
burn may rouse in US temporary forces
of endurance, what if no lotion should
ever dull its pangs, and the nerve CEN
tiers where Turk our sociality and anna
bility should in consequence turn as
unfit for their Office as the slackened
cords of violins? 1t was this dreary
state of living that caused Mrs. May
nard to be thought the grimmest and
harshest woman in her quiet native
English village. She could never re-
frain from shutting out all her spiritual
sunshine with the dark realization that
she had dealt her husband his death.
Not that she was ever able to believe
her act in destroying the flask a really
wrong one. Still, it's results (as she
gloomilv accounted them had proved
appalling, and for years ceaseless
battle was waged between her shudde1-
| ing conscience and the self-justifying
| d:cta of her sectarian faith 1t was
| battle in which neither side ever gained
| a victory: her soul was the field in which
| it continued to be fought. Under its long
series of cruel shocks her health at last
succumbed. She died almost friendless,
| and with her two sons, now youths who
verged on manhood, standing fearless
though reverent while her grave was
closed in the placid little English
church-yard where her father had long
ago lain down to rest.
Not that Sylvan did not mourn her
death. He was now in his third year at
Cambridge, and much in the shaping,
the caliber of his mind resembled her
own He was profoundly religious, and
at one time had thought of taking
orders Then he had been visited by
sense OF unworthiness-a doubt of his
capacity to play any save the meanest
part in that throng of humanitarian
churchmen whose creeds he honored,
vet whose intellects he might never
equal. More than that, his health was
somewhat frail; he had inherited his
fathers delicate constitution; the wear
and tear of such an ecclesiastic life as
the one he should struggle to live would
flnr-pa
wears before she died his mother per-
ceived this. and her negative counsels
formed his final reasons for not enter
ing the church. On the other hand, she
had fed in him an inclination for legal
pursuits. and now that she was dead he
b.ooded upon her advice. He would by
no means be penniless; the law was an
eminently polite" profession; one could
practice it thriftily without either
oratory or any other sort of 3ptltude.
To be a light in it was another matter,
but to be prosperous in it was another
still. Poor Sylvan did not perceive the
full sarcasm of his changing from a
would-be clergyman to would-be
barrister. But one day, not far from
the time at which he quilted Cam bridge
with decent honors, an American tel
low-collegian who was taking his de-
gree in the same year made him very
cordial proposition. This young gentle
, man was named John Wilks Rathbone
Sd. and not the least sign of character
and personality which he possessed was
a marked fondness for Sylvan. lie
liked to record himself as the grandson
of Judge John Wilks Rathbone. now or
, the verge of seventy and still shining
in New York as that unhappily too rare
parsonage, one of our judges whose re
! pute no fieck of soilure has touched
Sylvan's friend was an amiable youth
with slender mental endOwmentS and {
love for his native land which English
. | association could not annul. Il N al
= American and I'm proud OF 1t,
, ! was phrase nearly as otter
>, on his lips as the Morris
, cigarettes which he bought largely il
. | St. James street. He had been sent t
Cambridge by his renowned New York
grandsire. and perhaps an importan
: factor of his fondness for Sylvan wa:
: the serui-Arnerican parentage Of Egber
;. Mavnard's son. Incessant ASSOCIATION
with English people had never altered
his American accent. and at the time o
his departure 1ISIl NIit1DA iNAe7N A
. spoke. as the phrase has 1t, no les
Through his nose" than when he ha'
d. lust planted his foot, several years past
on British soil. He was the acute OF
. posite of the Yankee Anglomanlac, ant
= though he let Poole attire him with
modish felicity that might have foun'
favor at Sandringham itself, there wa
a keen cut of his thin face and la
abandonment in his lank figure that toll
persistently of transatlantic birth.
Come along with me to New York,
he kept persuading Sylvan, "and STUD,
for three years to be lawyer at Tn
Columbia College Law-School. You sa
You haven't got any relations III Amer
lea except cousins ever so far removed
All right if you haven't Grandfa
Their II give you start, l know 1rano
father II do any thing | want him &c
now that I've humored his whim that
should 90 through Cambridge. Besides
your father was an American, and 70
ought to go back there and live. Or
it's magnificent country, Sylvan, an
there a mans a man, l can tell you. ID
doesn't have to take off his hat an
truclzle and grovel to every lord
meets
| TTo BE CONTINUED
Working Into the Spring.