Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1902-06-19
JUDITH Of SOCIETY.
By Nixola Greeley Smith.

THERE was no reason why she
l should not have been called q
beautiful girl, though her slimness
was such that when seen in her slip
shod home attire she looked more
like the X-ray picture of one. But
in the street, built out to the fash
ionable size, and equipped with that
self-assurance necessary to complete
effectiveness, she would have been
noticeable anywhere.
Very tall, with a smooth, low fore
head, an exceptionally straight nose
and large brown eyes that looked at
men and women with the. same glance
often of disapproval, sometimes
of easy friendliness, but never of
coquetry or sentiment-it required
q hypercritical observer to remark
the expression of fretfulness that
often married her small, rather thin
Tipped mouth. But for this there was
some excuse
Brought up in comparatively easy
circumstances, upon her graduation
from a fashionable school, whose ed
vocational value may be judged by
the comment of Il friend that Life
is too short to realize what Elizabeth
doesn't know" she had anticipated
several years of uninterrupted pleas
ure, and had been met by the failure
of her fathers business, and, six
months later. by his death. .
For the first disaster Mr.. Coles held
one man alone responsible, the Hon
orable Reading Payne, a politician
welded to his art, and, incidentally,
married to a pocketbook. Their en-
nifty was of long standing. Having
come to New York from a western
town, they had known each other
as boys, had lived in the same board
ing house in the city, and, possibly
from the difficulty of making out
side acquaintances, had both fallen
in love with the landlady's pretty
daughter. And Coles had married
her.
The disappointed lover had subse-
quently congratulated himself upon
an escape which made it possible for
him to wed Miss Longstreth, whose
father owned the best-paying patent
medicine in America. But it had
been widely said that Miss Long
streth must have sat for the before
taking" pictures of the celebrated
anti-dyspeptic tablets, and often, in
looking at the blooming and effect
i've Mrs. Coles, the Honorable Read
ing Payne would momentarily forget
his father-in-law's ten millions and
feel the old hatred of his rival rise
hot and insistent in his heart.
He had been one of the first to
know of the threatened failure of the
large wholesale business the Coles
had established in the city, and at
the outbreak of the Spanish war,
when the firm was making feverish
efforts for government contracts, his
political pull had turned the scale in
favor Of another New York bidder,
and made the Coles failure inevitable.
1t was in the midst of the con-
fusion attending the firms assign
ment that Elizabeth had returned
home to a mother wholly occupied
by the demands of a peevish sol
and a father almost hysterical with
rage and hatred. The debut, the
fine gowns, the pleasant attentions
to which she had looked forward for
three years were now, of course, out
of the question, and when her father
died and she emerged from two years
Of mourning, it was into q society Of
small requirements and lower tone.
Yet, despite her undeniable beauty,
her tomboy ways and careless
speech, she went about with these
men to ball games, and to the opera,
returning, of course, after midnight
with perfect safety, attributing
their unfailing respect to some in
nate dignity of ner own, and never
dreaming that with q girl Of less
beauty and more attraction they
might have been less sedate.
Among these young men there was
but n person-and he was almost
u personage-she appeared to like,
the others all ranking according to
the luncheons and theater tickets
they provided. He was a young col
lege professor, who, with a small tai
ent for natural science. and a genius
for responsibility, had worked his
way in life by slow and p~ainstaking
effort, and was trying to fall in love
with Miss Coles by the same method.
Singularly enough, the most fire.
ouent manifestations Of their NIL
tual Partially was an excessive rude
ness to each other. Miss Coles
thought the professor eonceited, in