Blue-grass blade., 1891-02-14

mf mcntary ul5appOlhJinent,
appreciated the compliment wher
was told, sub rosa, by a dclcga.
ton of the young girls that [ was
to go with the strange girl, and
they postc me as to her peculiar.
tiles and | was put under all sorts
of injunctions to exhaust every
resource at my command to en-.
terrain her.
| As / passed by smoll store I
filled both pockets Of my swallow
tail coat with dried herrings.
/ started out to talk as college
boys usually talk to the girls Of
college towns. It was uphill
business. She didn't say much.
When we got to the stream |
found a place most beautifully
overhung with vines and wild
flowers and we sat there.
We fished for some time with
out a bitc-my luck in fishing to
this dap.
Finally | pulled the bats off
our hooks and stuck a dried her.
ring on each and threw them out
into the stream.
It was the first thing | had
said or done that seemed to arouse
any enthusiasm in her. | pulled
in my fish and commenced eating
it. She did the same. put
two more dried herrings on our
hooks and threw them out in the
stream, and we ate them after
they had soaked awhile.
After q while she made some
commonplace, but exceedingly
sensible, remark. There was
something so matter Of fact about
it, and utterly homogeneous with
the eating of dried, or rather wet,
behring's, in our wonderfully ro-
mantle surroundings, that it In
pressed me, and made me see
that / had been making a fool of
myself by trying to entertain
girl of her kind with the silly
things 1 was talking about.
/ fell into her trend of thought
aud we sat and talked and ate
behring's, after batting them on
and fishing them out, with a re-
enforcement of crackers that we
finally got, long after we had
ceased to regard the fishing per-
Torrance as a joke.
The girl seemed to have been
making a study of me, and final
ly to have concluded that there
were the possibilities of making
some interest out of me if she
could direct my mind into the
right channels.
We spent hours that day in
that same spot, and l listened
with strange interest to the oldest
ideas 1 had ever heard come from
enc so young.
We sauntered along together
back to the village, and then l
understood from Others that she
had been writing for publication.
Not long after L saw her name
-Rebecca Hording-signed to an
article in a magazina and then L
saw it signed many more times
to articles in Harper and other
prominent magazines, and then |
saw it signed Rebecco Harding
DaOis
She had married Lewis Clark
Davis, of the staff of the Phila-
delphia Ledger, and for years
now | have seen her name to
very many articles in magazines,
and my children are now reading
a story about Wheeling, Virginia,
close to where we were fishing,
in the Youths Companion of
Boston, that | think has a circ u
lation of two hundred thousand.
Richard Harding Davis is her
son, and cut of him in Lex
ingtOE Leader that lies by me
shows him to be a very handsome
young man. Young as he is he
must have had years OF established
reputation for journalism before
he could have been called to such
a position as that he now occu-
pies.
My plain girl partner in the
fishing party has now been heard
of by a hundred times as many
people as all the rest of us put
together.
If girls would start ont early in
life to do their own thinking, in
stead OF trying to be leaders OF
society, we would have more
great women, and when they be-
come the mothers of sons we
would have more great men.
Rebecca Harding was poor,
and it generally takes poverty to
make great men and women:
;hough her son isprobably an ex-
;eptlon.