Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1901-03-21

EraSure Of Jan SigurdSon !
BY II. S. Confield.


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Copyright 1901. by Daily Story Pub. Coz
You go to the neighborhood of Riven
Rock, Minnesota, and ask any Norwegian
farmer for information about Jan Sig
urisson and you will learn just as much
as if you had staid at home and asked
yourself. Your query will be followed
by grave shake of the head, stolid
look from blue eyes and the wholly ire
aevant remark, made confidentiaHy:
LAY ban tankin' bout sowin' da.
w'eat mo- many max var.
The beginning of it was Petra Lind
st Pm and the end of it was surmise. 1t
came about in this way: Jan was hon
est, industrious, who,ehearted and SIM
pie. For fifteen of his thirtyfve years he
had worked first upon one farm and then
upon auOthsw. sometimes getting good
wages and sometimes bad. but al way,
laying by something. He had 81, 800 in
the bank and not an idea what to do with
1t when Petra came out from Norway to
make her home with her uncle, Ole Lind
strom. who lived on the Cedar Valley
rod. She was not more than twenty
with skin of roses and cream. a mutin-
Gus mouth. t'p-tilted nose. long, bril-
d
digestion and a determination to better
herself. Plump as partridge and vigor-
GUS as a buck in spring, with a massive
beautifully turned figure great should
ers, deep bosom and a voice like a bell,
she caused stir in the congregation at
the Norwegian church on the first Sum
day after her arrival. AS for Jan. he
forgot the infrequent Streaks of gray in
MS yellow beard and his heart turned to
water and flowed out toward her.
III the man had a virtue so pronounced
that 1t dwarfed all others 1t was the vir-
tue OF persistence "a logged immovabil-
ity of purpose that would have made him
gr at If it had been backed by brains. IT
was this characteristic which now stood
MIN in stead. Petra had admirers in
plenty, for every young FELLOW for
twenty mfes around Riven Rock was
smitten. They did not win her because
IKE herself, they were poor. They had
hoth'ns to offer save honest hearts and
wiring hand and she wanted cash or
lands. or both. Suffering the agonies Of
the damned, Jan Sigurdsson called upon
her once week. endured her chilliness
and the fonting of his younger rivals and
muttered in his beard as he .shamblea
home ward: II viii have her YET"
Virtue Is not always it's own reward
but the human male who wants a human
female badly enough necessarily to pun
sue and bide his time nets his quarry in
ninety-nfme cases in a hundred. In the
hundredlh case he would have succeeded
If he had kept on little longer. The
seasons rolled around and Jan had worn
down his swicter and younger foes. He
had become the recognized attendant OF
Petra. She chafed at this, but saw no
way 10 help herself If she had dismissed
him. she would have been left without a
courtier and even man. of IS is better
than no man at all. At first she re-
belled against him: then she suffered him
then she began to endure him with less
effort; then she liked him. She got no
further than this. When the hillsides
had twice turned green, the wheat twice
ripenei, and the Mississippi river three
miles away had twice become solid ice
from bank to bank. she permitted Jan to
hold her hand of evenings. This meant
that she would marry him some day.
He was in no hurry at all. He now
had s. 600 out at interest and es imatei
that in another year CHS sum would be
swe,led to $780, With $500 he could
buy the Sygtryd Hanson place of 100
acres with comfortable farmhouse on it
and stabing for the cows. Petra fancied
hers If writing home describing her prin-
cipa,ity, and she could see the envy Of
the Norway gillsa the letter was passed
from hand to hand.
Another year passed, and it was decid-
ed by Ole Lindstrom that this niece
should have a public betrothal. This
matter of keeping company for three
years and saying nothing to outsiders
about it, was, to his way Of thinking.
=
things wholly when he did them at all.
He rented the Chosen Friends hail in
Raven Rock. He had band of two
violins and an ACCORDION from the
country town, twenty miles away. His
wife and Petra baked cakes in dozens.
Three barrels of Norwegian home
made beer were hoisted to the floor of the
hall and stood in far corner Alcohol
in two-gallon jugs We're imported at
tremendous expense to the manage
ment, which was Ole. Invitations by
word of mouth We're sent through all of
the countryside. He did not know when
his nieces and Jan We're to be married.,
but he wanted it understood that the
event would occur some day. Once pub
licly pledged, they might sit in his lit
tie parlor by his little stove and hold
hands until doomsday for all he cared.
At this function the bride-to-be was
very beauty in her white maiden cap,
god hair and bushes and Jan was the
happiest and most awkward man in the
room. They led the first dance, and
afterward the less fortunate youth
who had courted her in turns two years
before crowded about her and filled
her yellow head with nonsense.
She was sitting, happily conscious of
her power and unhappi!y conscious that
she ought to have made better match
when her uncle stood before her and said
i'm Norwegian:
Niece Petra, let me introduce Ingulf