The herald., 1896-03-14

JOHNNY TOOK THE LAVA TIP OUT OF
dull, loving ignorant gas filter hold or lose
his girl?
Well, it all depends upon how you look
al it,
The result OF the talk that night was that
in September Annie took the long. expen-
sive journey East, and entered on her four
years course of study. OF course. there was
no coming home for the holidays; the fifteen
hundred dollars in the bank would not stand
that; nor did she have to come back in the
long vacation, which would have been
serious expense, for the president of the
college, who was greatly impressed by the
girls ability and character, found for her
an opportunity to teach some little chill
dren during the summer, and permitted her
to live in one OF the college houses SO
that she was not only able to keep on with
certain branches she had taken up, but
she earned enough money to pay her board
during those twelve weeks. and she did
not have to draw on the cherished bank ac-
count.
It was a strange life to this young girl.
The quiet, refined atmosphere, the beauty
of culture, the conception of spaciousness
and dignity, and the awaking of that sense
of fitness which is called conventionality.
To Annie these things were like the open
ing of the eyes of one born blind. By de-
grees the small niceties of life revealed
themselves to her; the delicacies Of serv-
ing the delicacies of living the delcacies
of manner and voice, and thought. She
felt them all with passionate sort of joy.
1t is curious to observe that by the pure
and virgin mind these things, which may
be so worthless in their lifeess formality,
are seen in their real and fundamental no.
bility, and are accepted with the instinct of
religion. At first, Annie was so normal
" unconscious of her antecedents that it
did not occur TO her to proclaim that all
these things We're new. And then, by and
by, having eaten of this tree of the knowl-
edge of good and evil, there came to her
a certain deep, spiritual experience; she
recognized how the root of conventionality.
the beginning of the sense of fitness, lay in
character; therefore she knew no shame
that her father ate with his knife, or sat
in his shirt sleeves, or did many unlovely
things. She did not like them; but she
knew no shame only love. But it was
then that. very simply, she took occasion
| to say that her father, who was merchan-
| ic, had sent her here to college. She said
| this because she recognized another point
| OF view, and recognizing it, felt certain
| lack of straghtforwardness in keeping
| silent, and also because she was proud OF
| Johnny Graham; and then she forgot it.
| 1t was too unimportant to think of.
| She assimilated all these new ideas, and
! felt them, and lived them, as though she
| had been to the manner born Her very
face reflected them. She was almost a
| beautiful young woman. Her deep eyes
looked out from under her straight, pure
| brows with a certain high drectness of
glance and traquil self -pose which gave a
| sense of breeding which was inescapable.
The fact that she had said that she was
| poor was only in its way another proof of
| her superiorty-so some of the college girls
said who went into schoolgirl ecstasies
about her
you know it's vulgar to be rich" a
young man told her one evening, as they
talked together in the June dusk. 1t was
| Annes fifth year, ard for the first time
| she was going home in the long vacation
| A scholarship, and four summers of teach
ing some little children in a country house
| on the outskirts OF the village, had meant
that for the last two years Johnny Gra.
hams bank account had been recuperating
very, very little; at all events, there had
been no drain upon it. And now Annie was
| going home. She had won the highest hon
ors of her class, and had even been offer
ed position on the college staff, and hel
| happiness was as frank as child's.
But as Commencement approached, an ex
citement that she did not understand-ar
excitement which was not part of this hap
piness-took possession of her.
'In so many weeks I'll see father. In b