Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1902-12-04
Cupid at Waterloo

From the Atlanta Constitution.
Cupid at Waterloo
BY WILLIAM BLOSs.
Copyright, 1901, by Authors Syndicate.
ltSS"@1ISTRESS MARGUERITE
HAW NJ II Antoinette Carroll was
INV AA sophisticated and wholly
asssN worldly person Of six or
Ii@MXU seven and twenty years.
tNESYS8TIf To begin, she had money,
lNINlN|tHI more money than 10000
tEHHEkeNI of American women ever
IAA1XM4H4I dream Of in their hopes,
or hope for in their dreams. To con-
tinue, her social position was impreg-
nable. 1t had an edge of gilt and
full morocco binding; it was Is carat;
the real thing; a very Kohinoor among
social positions. Mistress Marguerite
Antoinette Carroll was not only a
Daughter of the American Revolution
but a Colonial Dame as well, not only
had ancestors of hers Haunted their
curls through the Carolinas at the
heels of the hard-riding Swamp Fox
and helped to pen the unlucky Corn
wallis into the bear trap at Yorktown,
but other ancestors more remote had
braved red warriors from Virginia
stockades and pursued them into the
rank tangles back of the Chesapeake,
for the greater glory of the king, and
the greater safety of the sucking colo
MES, long before ever Washington
had trodden a cisatlantic shore. Now
these things be but vanity, it may be,
but Marguerite Carroll Rugged them
not the less to her heart, and held high
her head because of them. But let us
proceed with this schedule of possess
sions.
TfoTn. An education which op1h r.o o.
ed familiar knowledge with half the
capitals and courts of Europe.
Item: A face and figure that artists
raved over; a crown of shining hair
that seemed thicket to entangle even
Cupid himself.
Item: Miss Carroll was her own mis-
tress, having neither parent nor guar
dian nor trustee, to coerce her humors
or advise her vagaries.
She resided, when she felt like it,
with her Uncle Henshaw and her aunt,
in Washington. Sometimes she paid to
New York and her grandmother a win
ter visit long enough to make her an
admired spectator at the horse show or
the opera. Then she would flee to Cal
ifornia or the Riviera; to the City of
Mexico or up the Nile; anywhere her
fancy pleased, dragging along by a
gilded chain her cousin, Julia HenShaw,
and some conventional chaperon of en-
inent respectability and impartial
blindness.
Nevertheless, however much one
might think to the contrary, Margue-
rite Carroll was as wholly dissatisfied
with existence as could be a woman
who possessed neither wealth nor
health, birth nor beauty. She did ex-
actly as she wished, yet would have
preferred to be one mans loving slave.
She loved the world, yet would rather
have been shut within some cage of
home, subject to the beck and call of
lord and master. Her soul was
starved for love- She sighed for the
heart ties of an adorer whom she could
herself adore-and found it not. The
ennui of safety which has drunk up
the wine of pleasure until one looks
upon the very bottom of the glass pos
sessed her restless spirit and rendered
petulent her strenuous nature, hungry
for love- Under the blue ice of her
habitua1 demeanor smouldered sapphire
passions needing only vent to rise to
devouring volcanic flames.
Wooers, yes, in scores, she had had,
and toyed with archly, but not one had
come beneath whose mask of words
and conventional protestations she had
not read, or fancied she could read, the
insincerity of the hunter of fortunes,
the perfunctory laudation of her I'M
deniable but marble beauty. She had
no soul, all her suitors said, as one by
one they re1inquished the seemingly
impossible task of kindling a fire upon
the frigid altar of her heart.
Therefore, at last, from the crucible
of her discomfort, of her increasing
years, of the unrequited cravings of a
nature ardent at the core had emerged
a woman who sought to revenge her
self upon mankind by artful1y awaken
ing passions she did not return, by
arousing hopes she nurtured only that
she might uproot. She declared a Sc
cret war against the race of what Nine
Sarah Grand had dubbed 't.mere men,
and pursued her campaigns vindictive-
~. Since it was denied to her, alone
among women, to find the soul mate
she would select, she would at least be
happy in the making of mankind mis-
cradle.
Thus it was, as the season waned.
that Miss Carroll, her cousin Julia. the
discreet Mrs. Sylvester Beaumont. their
travelling sacrifice to the properties.
hurrying eastward from a summer vow
age to the great Muir glacier, Sitka and
Alaskan waters, stopped at Minneapo-
lis to catch their breath. and that Mar
guerite decided to rest for a week amid
the enchanting autumn restfulness of
the Minnetonka shores. They found at
the great Hotel st. Louis a half emp
tied house and the quiet the imperious
mistress of the little company had so
suddenly and capriciously sought.
It was glorious there The ozonic
airs sweeping the hill-pinnacled cara
vansery were rarest medicines for
WEAKNESS. The vagrant shore lines
spread about the broadening vista of
the queen of lakes fed the eye with
VARYING beauties to which the wooded