Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1901-06-06
The Log Rolling.
BY Ethel. NJ. COLSON.

Copyright, 1901, by Daily Story Pub Co)
Back in the Muskoka region of On
tario, Canada, the country is at once
30 wild, so beautiful, and so difficult
of cultivation that thoughts have been
seriously entertained, from time to
time, of setting on foot projects to
reserve the entire region for sort
of governmental hunting part. But
the time-honored, ever-popular drama
which has for its motif and principal
characters the lore story of a man
and maid is played out there in ways
as varied and as perpetual as all the
world over. 1t would be played oftener,
perhaps, but for the fact that the
young men of the farming districts are
so seldom at home. In the winter
nearly all of them head for the
camps where the logs are cut and
made ready for transportation; in the
summer great numbers of them go to
the great Northwest" SO mysteriously
attractive to all the young denizens OF
the Muskoka, the great Northwest
where wages are supposed to be SO
much higher and times SO much better
than at home. A halo of the glory OF
success shines about the returning
train-loads of eager young men.
The schools in the Muskoka are
fairly good nowadays, but even the
girls are not able to attend school very
long in their teens unless there are
plenty of younger or older sisters to
assist with the household tasks and
look after the inevitable and numer-
GUS babies. The boys, alas! are usually
seized with camp fever" just as soon
as they are big enough to serve as the
cooks assistant or chore-boy of lum-
Der camp. Miranda jenkins was the
middle sister in family of nine, Fred
Portman was the only son OF his
mother and she a widow. This was
how it happened that while Miranda
was fairly well educated and reason
ably learned in the ways Of the con-
ventional world, Fred still talked in
rather nasal fashion and did violence
to the English language. And Fred
loved Miranda so devotedly that he
had serious thoughts Of saving up"
and attending night school in To-
ronto just as soon as his mother had
been made comfortable, financially, for
a year or 80, Just because Miranda had
urged this course upon him. For him
self, Fred didn't banker after an aug
mented education at all. But when
Fred came back from the Northwest
for the last time Miranda seemed to
have suddenly removed far from him
by the new accession of quiet grace
and daintiness which had followed the
winter passed in Toronto, learning
how to make dresses.
Fred went right to work at the log
rolling" for which he was famous. The
logs were placed in the river about ten
miles farther up" than the Jenkins
homestead and the farm which Fred
and his mother owned between them,
and it was Fred's part to keep them
from becoming caught and piled up in
the stream above the rapids. To do
this he danced from log to log, above
the seething. hurrying.r hungry-look
ing water, and kept the logs moving
with a long, pointed pole. One day
iSiss Stephens, the city girl whom Mi
randa had brought back with her for
a chance to see the grass grow green
in the meadows and the early viOlets
come up expressed great great desire
to see the logs sent down the river.
She had watched them rushing madly