River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1902-05-22
Where the Man
with theHoeWon
by EDWARD q. CLARK.

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I L doesn't often happen, and no one
save a favored few knew why it
happened this time. There is a little
sunburn in this story, but no varnish,
and let those who like a lecquered
tale turn the page. She was bud
last winter and this winter she was
married. Most of the buds stay on
the stem a little longer than that,
but considering how many there
were who wanted her, the quick
plucking and bearing away is not to
be wondered at in anything save IN
the personality of the flower lover
who did the picking
Frances Marvin's father had no
money, but he held place in So
ciety by force of intellect and family.
There are not as many of those
cases as there used to be. The girl
was a beauty. If a novel writer were
telling about her he would say she
was regal. James Parker, stock
broker, was not novel writer, but
he thought Frances was regal, never
theless. He had thought of this
kind from the moment he saw her.
Parker followed Miss Marvin's move
ments as closely as he did the tape
in the stock ticker. He was a mem
Der of every club in sight, and he
drove and rode, and did all the other
things that a man of wealth in So
ciety does when he knows how.
James Parker was catch. Every
body said so, and the fact was pretty
strongly impressed upon the Marvin
family, bar Marvin pere, who didn't
care whether Parker was a catch or
not, for Frances was to be allowed
to make her own choice. Parker be-
came the girls shadow. He paid
court, however, unObtrusively and
with perfect tact. Frances was fiat
tered a bit by the attentions of this
man, for whom all the other girls
had made a cast, to use q piscatorial
simile, and had failed to get strike.
Now, there was as well as James
Parker one John Meadowcroft.
Meadowcroft had a big truck farm
out beyond Bowmanville. Curious
thing, but Meadowcroft worked his
something more than trifle awk-
ward, but with fine head and
good face. He had an education and
no capital except that which was
represented by some acres of onion,
carrot and potato beds and some
hundreds of square feet of glass, I'M
der which the roses and carnations
reached perfection when the winter
blasts howl and the optimistic snow
bunting whistles in the fields. John
Meadowcroft was a graduate of the
Amherst agricultural college. Just
what had turned him to farming peo-
pie did not generally understand. A
good guess would have made it that
Meadowcroft loved the country bet
ter than the town and took to gar
dening so that he could live at all
times where he could smell the soil
and see some clouds besides those of
smoke go drifting by.
One summer day number of
young people drove out beyond Bow
manville to see the massed color and
beauty of great field of flowers.
which the newspapers had made pic
lures of and written about. 1t was
''the thing" to go out to that spot of
loneliness during that month of bios
SONS. 1t was there that Frances
Marvin first saw John Meadowcroft.
farmer. He had pretty place for a
home. 1t was naturally pretty, and
John Meadowcroft knew how to en-
nance it's attractiveness. James
Parker was there that day, and be-
ing a man of acumen and worldly
wisdom he saw that Meadowcroft.
the farmer, thought that Frances
Marvin was more to be admired than
any flower of his field; love them all
though he did, from the tiniest bios
som to the big Haunting peony.
Meadowcroft had friends in the
city They were of some of the good
old New England stock, who in their
earlier days had known his father
and mother. Meadowcroft had way
of overcoming obstacles. His friends
say that some day he will be growing
green chrysanthemums, and will do
it without feeding the earth with
dyes. At any rate, he met Miss Mar
vim again and then again. She was
rather amused than otherwise at the