Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1898-03-24
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COMRADES.
o BY Louise E. Van Norman.
TEss1E and I were friends. We had

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was when 1 was five and she was four.
We were, from that time, always to-
gether. Like brother and sister, you
say? More than this. For brothers
and sisters are not always close friends.
We were chums. She went everywhere
l went and did everything I did, and,
as we grew up to boyhood and girlhood,
we were inseparable. Even when 1 had
attained the dignity of long pants I
preferred her society to that of my
male friends, for there was nothing
soft about Tessie, except, perhaps, her
eyes, and they were beautiful, soft
hazel.
She was strong and athletic, but of a
slender build; could drive, row and
swim as we'll as 1 could; and had q
complexion we'll Drowned by long and
intimate acquaintance with Gods sum
light. A brave girl, too. I remember
we'll how once she swan across quar-
ter of mile of choppy river to get the
doctor for that grumpy old Sarah Tore,
the lighthouse keepers wife. She loved
the cross old woman, she said, although
no one else saw anything in her to love.
Then Tess went to boarding school
and came back at the end of three years
with a little of that horrible tam
that's what her proper sister Laura
called it-gone out of her checks, and
just the faintest trace of city manners
about her; but Mt heart the same dear
old Tess as ever.
Now, although my girl friend and I
had known each other so long and so
intimately, yet we had never fallen in
love with each other. am positive Of
this, because when 1 got soft on Jennie
Bingham and lavished all my money on
flowers for her, Tess only laughted.
Then there was the time fell head over
heels in love with dashing Cora Sands.
Why, then I had it bad. I got to the
stage where you moon around street
corners and carve her name on old
stu1nps and gate posts. I even wrote
my name and hers together on the mar
rage page of the old family Bible, just
to see how it would look, and then
rubbed it out in guilty haste. Even then
didn't Tessie get up the lawn party and
maneuver so that Cora and were part
ners for the whole evening. And then,
there was the Jack Manners episode.
Jack quite lost his head over Tess, and
asked her father if he could marry her.
1 think he even proposed elopement to
Tessie. But she didn't love Jack, she
said, and so wouldn't hear of his vast
ing any time or money on her. And I
didn't feel bit jealous. 1 am sure I
didn't. So you see it's quite plain that
we had not given the mischievous lit
tie god Cupid any work to do for us.
But now I was 20 and Tessie 10, and
somehow, as I took the shapely little
hand she offered me to welcome her
back, after those three years at school,
somehow it came to me suddenly that
Tess was a beautiful girl, and that her
eyes were bewitching. And there came
into my heart strange, uncomfortable
feeling - dissatisfaction, jealousy
what was it? 1t certainly was not
pleasant. Suppose some one should
take it into his head to fall in love with
Tessie and marry her? Confound him!
But then, what was that to me? I was
not in love with her. Of course not.
We were only friends. And yet in
stinctively disliked this fellow who
might make love to my girl chum.
The summer 1 wish particularly to
tell you of, the one following Tessie's
return from school, our folks and her
folks decided to spend the hot season
at little mountain hamlet with an I'M
pronouncable name - mixture of
French and Indian-30 miles or so to
the north of Lake Superior We had al
ready spent one season there and knew
of a good boarding house where they
gave you enough to eat, and were too
unsophisticated to charge q ruinous
price. It was one-horse sort of a place,
containing about a dozen families,
mostly French Canadian habitants,
primitive as Noah. Two or three hay
seed Yankees came there in the logging
season and spent the summer in Du-
luth. The population numbered about
100 persons. The town was perched
right on the side of a 1,3OO-foot-high
hill. Dover mountain, they called it.
Directly back of this hill-in fact, al
most q continuation of it-rose tall,
pointed mountain about 1900 feet high,
which the French habitants called
Ducre's Spine. This eminencc, us we'll
as the hill on which the little village lay,
as though it had been dropped there,
was very thickly wooded. Just little
space close about the houses had been
cleared of trees, while for miles around
extended the dense virgin forest, most
of whose heavy growth of pine, cedar,
chestnut, oak and hickory, besides n
rank underground of sumac and scrub
oak, had never been desecrated by the
woodlands AK.
The folks were to go up to this wild
retreat early in the summer, and I was
to join them in August, when I got my
vacation.
The railroad by which one reached
this out-of-the-way place followed the
shore of the mighty Lake Superior for
about 100 miles from Duluth, and then
struck into the forest for short dis
lance to avoid a great mass Of basalt
rock, too hard to tunnel through, the
tracks coming close to the waters edge
again about five or six miles from where
they left it. Just where the road was
farthest from the lake, at the most
northeasterly point of the detour, the
train slowed up moment to let off any
passenger for the place with the long
name. The hamlet boosted no station,
only platform Of rough, unhewn logs.
From this point there wound up
through the thick forest narrow, tor
tuous road, rough and stony, and dark
even in the daytime, from the overarch-
ing trees. up to the houses on the hill
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