Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1901-01-15
A WOMAN OF THE M0DfRNS
BY n. s. Garfield.


copyrighted, 1900: Daily Story Pub. Coz
The thing which Edith Wharton did
would never have been known but for
two facts: ~ She kept diary. (2)
a vagrant wind blew it through her
open window whence it fell into the
street, where is was picked up by god
less young man, who persued it with
interest and offered it 20 other goddess
young men. Anyhow, she is happy and
size does not know that her heart-secret
is the property Of hald of the populace
Of Natural Gas, Indiana. so there is no
great harm. This story is written be-
cause it is better to have the plain
truth set down than to have a half
truth flying from lip to lip and growing
| less like the truth every day.
| Despite her frame, which is big, and
her level brows and somewhat pro-
nounced chin. Edith Wharton is not of
! the masculine type of woman. Indeed,
she is tender of heart and, while adj
vanced in her views and believing in wo-
man suffrage and the cO-educatiOn of the
sexes and the single standard of moral
ity and all that, she will mount a table
and clench her skirts about her in pres
! ence of a mouse as quickly any di-
minutive fragile. trusting, clinging sis
| ter of them all. The habit of stating her
opinions frankly, of being utterly self
reliant and of refusing to admit the
Superiority of the male merely because
! he is male is due to her education. Her
disposition really is to attend to her own
business, leaving other folk the blessed
privilege of attending to theirs. She
! hoes not thrust herself forward. If she
times, it is only because she is a fluent
| and forcible talker and her women
Hriends insist upon her obliging them
! with few remarks. If she writes for
sociological magazines, it is only be-
! cause she knows the world needs i'm
provement. If she has positive views as
| to her own particular brand of religion
and is in arms the moment the purveyor
of another brand hcaves in sight, it is
only because she feels deeply and has
pure soul and wants TO see every living
man and woman on the right path to
Heaven. She knows, of course, that her
path is the right path and that while
, some other paths may eventually lead to
the haven they are twisty.
| Educated at an eastern college and
a teacher of higher mathematics by pro-
fession. widely travelled for a woman and
and took her place in it's college when
she was twenty-eight years old. Healthy
and Of normal tendencies, she had never
felt a touch of love. She knew that it
existed. but it had passed her by thing
for which she was not sorry. She had
read a good deal about it, however, had
seen it dissected on page after page by
analytical nOveiSts and had studied it
scientifically in the works of neurolO-
gsts.
When she sat in her pew one Sunday
perfectly gowned in gray, with sober
men and thought intent upon the Epis-
copal service, she glanced up as a
strange vioce fell upon her ear and saw
the new Citrate. He was assisting the
Dean of st. Marks in the service. She
knew instantly what was the matter
with her. She was too retrospective,
too self-exploring not to feel that this
strange, sweet. semi-painful emotion was
the indescribable something which has
sci up and torn down empires and swept
the world with flame She made her
responses mechanically, but she could
not have told what they We're for the
life of her.
| To the ordinary observer there was
little in, or about, the Rev. James
Montgomery to cause this bounding of
the heart in any one, much less ma
ture spinster with a mind of her own.
, He was understood, pale, slim, narrow
, shoudered with refined girlish fea-
: lures, two beautiful wisps of side
whisker a weak chin and fair hair
| exquisitely brushed. His voice was
high. but pleasing, and he intOned as
effectively as IL he had been bred in the
!, Vatican.
There is no accounting for these
: things and Miss Wharton was in love
She kept her secret, but lost no time
in meeting the curate. Natural Ga.