The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-09-05

dirty taDle. "A little 1artner down neStleo
the village of Alexandria, seen only when
looked for. and indefinite always Beyond
the brown plain of corn in the bottom lands
were the Missouri bluffs. ten miles away.
making a hazy sky line that served to sep
arate the fields from the clouds, and, by
their distance. to add the quality of i'm
pressiveness to the view. The one thing
with definition was the Mississippi. cutting
the ground from under ones feet.
AS Mary Stoddard sought the one tangi-
BILE thing to grasp. one definite axiom on
which to build the proposition, the only
thing that came to her was the memory of
the words of the Rev. Mr.. Bradbury. They
had seemed easy to overcome at the time,
but they continued to stand out like the
Mississippi in the view before her. and she
felt that, however stagnant they appeared
in themselves. they had force enough to
change the drift of her life. 1t was not yet
dark when she walked to her room and
wrote the letter to Shacklett which,
indirectly. caused the greatest po-
ltical surprise one Of the Ameri-
can capitals had ever seen. When
Monday came she drove to Warsaw for the
mail. incidentally she passed the depot
and stopped to talk to the telegraph oper-
ator about the Sunday school.
Miss Stoddard did not reply meekiy when
old Barbara chided her for keeping dinner
waiting until 2 o'clock. She led the gar
dener a merry chase the rest of the after
noon, showing him contemplated changes in
the flower beds, and at evening she went to
her room instead Of coming to supper.
When the electric lights in her room flashed
ha cfa I'm
started for the night, she turned them off
at the lamps. She was born twenty years
too late to cry, under the circumstances,
and she thought more of the past than of
the present
When the moon shining through the win
dow made the room as light as poor lamp
would have made 1t she petulantly remem-
bered that the moon could not be extin-
guished, as an electric light, and wondered
whether the time would ever come when
men of science could accomplish even that.
A little later she was on the settee where
the bluff fell away from the edge Of the
land down into the indefinite depths, at
the bottom Of which the river shone out
strong and clear. and more mighty because
of the moonlight tipping the tops of the
waves and making them each recognizable.
There was nothing now to suggest man:
all spoke of the God who wrote his char
acter in his work. The very essence of
peace pervaded everything-the sweet,
beautiful peace that passeth understanding
and is fairly tangible from Mississippi
bluff when all Is still.
Then a note of discord was struck when
into view came a steamboat with its red
signal light high in the air and it's dim
yellow glow shining through the openings
of its cabin and engine room. Slowly it
crept over the FURNISHED river like planet
over the disk of the sun, and suddenly
Mary Stoddard started.
After all. what had made the river what
1t was? Millions of years of calm had left
it only a peaceful picture. with savages in
the foreground and heather monuments in
the middle distance. But a hundred years
of burning hot steam had brought churches
and colleges and civilization to an empire.
What came with the steamboat was in
justice, oaths, the violation Of each and
every one of the commandments. and what
men call modern conditions. Did it pay?
Would it have been better to have left the
river to flow on in peace than to have
stirred up the mud from its bottom with
the revolving pdQOle wheels OF SeInSn StTlIe,
after cutting the line that for so long held
men fast to the old, godly ideas?
The boat passed on into the night. The
girl did not see it disappear. The thing
she was the line of fiat tombstones
marking the graves of her ancestors, each
Of whom had lived cody life of peace
and slipped out of view as the boat had
done. They had without doubt saved their
own souls, but what else had they done?
Her father had become county clerk, and
her grandfather had built the old stone
church. Her brother had had some hope
of becoming county superintendent of
schools, and his real ambition was to make
the address of welcome at the old settlers
meeting. Her grandfather. she remem-
bered, had made the pleasures of this home
possible by venturing out upon the fur
thermost edge of the frontier and stopping
only where the river made the boundary of
settlement. She had chosen the only
right road-the road that leads to the peace
of a clear conference.-the felt sure. But
would il pay her to glide through life to
the sea when the gain is in inertia and the
loss in energy? 1t was four days before
she decided that question for herself-and
for Shacklett.
ITO be Continued