Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1897-07-06

tlbule OF the great Office building with
the thought that q visit to DR.. Perevin
would answer the double purpose of re-
hevlng his mothers anxiety, and of
enabling him towear out q half-hour of
the afternoon in a chat with the old
family physician; and he went the more
willingly since the half-hours had of
late taken to dragging rather discourage
1ngly, especially in the afternoons.
That they dragged was due to a number
OF causes, the chief of which was that
Thorndyke was an unsuccessful idler.
His father had been q hard-work-
ing attorney, gathering and leav-
ing an estate which would have
been q fortune elsewhere than in
New York, and which was COM
petence even in that city of mil
ionaires. The will gave Philip half,
and the irksomeness of its possession
had not made itself felt until after his
postgraduate course in the law had
left him q squire of danes, and lack
ing the spur of necessity which might
have made him successful in his pro-
fession. Up to the moment when he
stood waiting for the next ascend
ing elevator which should lift him to
the altitude of DR.. Perevin's chambers.
his life had been as umeventful as his
mothers solicitude could make it.
There had been no invigorating heights
to scale and no nerve-trying depths to
explore. In his college course, and in
the choice of a profession. he had fol-
lowed in the footsteps Of his father, talk
ing the one and choosing the other for
no better reason than that both were
selected for him by his parents. Summed
up, the young man who waited for the
elevator was very fair example of
the neutralizing effect Of prearramge-
ment in domestic affairs; a logical
product of a cut-and-dried system of
home training which makes no allow
ance for individual needs in the SUBJ
ject.
And it Thorndyke had been given no
voice in the matter of his bringing
up, he had had quite as little to say
about his engagement to Helen Nor
risson. She was the only daughter of
his fathers law partner, and the al
lance OF the two families in the persons
of their: respective heirs was treaty
which had been discussed, ratified, en-
crossed, docketed, and filed among, the
partnership archives long before the
persons most nearly concerned were old
enough to be consulted. Contrary to all
precedent, the young people made no
difficulties. On the part of the young
girl, the loyal friendship of childhood
had grown with her stature into very
real and earnest love for the man who
was her betrothed. And if Philips &C.
ceptance of the part assigned to him
was not sufficiently demonstrative to
please his mother, it was due quite as
much to the fact that the two had
grown up together as to any underlined
inclination on the part Of the young man
to rebel against the conditions which
had forestalled, the growth of his. in
In a tranquil and dispas-
sionate way Philip was devoted to the
young woman of his mothers choice;
but his love for Helen was rather the
of an obedient sense of the
fitness Of things, urged ON by just
of Helen's beauty and
goodness, than the spontaneous and
compelling passion which is no more
to reason than it is subordi-
nate to q sense of duty.
From passive Indifference to active
discomfort is but step in life from
which the objects Of legitimate ambi-
ton had been removed. The dead level
of an existence in which the trivialities
Of the daily social round'are the only
mile-stones stretches away before the
weary pilgrim into a limitless and arid
region whose sandy wastes forbid the
growth of any sturdy tree of effort.
Thorndyke had been journeying
through some such desert of boredom
on the day of his visit to DR.. Perevii,
and one of the vagrant thoughts which
followed him to the doctors door
turned upon the well-worn question
as to whether, after all, life were real
ly worth the effort. The answer was
deferred, but the suggestion was dis
tinctly negative. An hour later, when
he stood before the latticed door of the
same elevator waiting to be shot down
to the level of the street, the point of
view had veered so suddenly as to leave
him gasping like an exhausted swimmer
under whose feet there had lately been
the decks of the stanchest of vessels.
For the first time in his experience
with elevators, the swift rush down the
shaft made him dizzy, and he had to
sit down at the cigar stand in the vesti-
bule minute before going out into
the street. A line Of periodicals was
pinned to a string in front of the cigar
vendors counter, and Philip saw the
word ''Allacoochee'' in staring capitals
on the title page of one of them. He
bought q CODY of the DaDer and read