Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1907-09-19
s-S-i.'t-f@'t"f-'5EE.'T
MelirA.a's
4. BY CECILY ALLEN.
{. BY CEcILY ALLEN.
1ted, 1907, by c. H. suteline.


linda had come from up state
,ore her arrival in the big. busting
>fy she had studied stenography aud
/typewritlng In an up state business
college. She was good stenographer
too. and would have done well IN the
city-if she had stuck to stenographic
pot hooks and curlycues.
But Melinda would read novels, and
when she had secured position and
settled herself In a hall room at the
working girls club the novel habit re-
asserted Itself more strongly than ever,
this perhaps because there was a sec
ondhand bookstore just around the
corner, whore she could buy novels
for 10 cents and exchange them for
different ones by paying just cents
more In fact II was a circulating H.
brary system that made Melinda feel
particularly elegant and independent
and saved her a triweekly trip to the
city library, mile away.
Melinda did not care much for the
girls she met at the working girls
waists, and most OF them worked In
factories at less salary than Melinda
received. She would not have remain
ed at the club only she had to send
her widowed mother some money
every week. and the working girls
club was stern necessity In the adj
justment of her finances Melinda was
also a little bored with conversation
about shirt waists because she had
to make the ones she had brought
from home do her all season. SO what
was the use of discussing bargain
counter styles In blouses?
1t was much more fun to read nov
els, particularly the sort of novels
most common at the secondhand book
shop, stories OF English working lassies
and schivalrous lords and dukes, who
abandoned scented drawing rooms and
red coated hunting fields to besiege
the hearts Of the aforementioned honest
working lnssies.
Just about the time that Melinda had
absorbed her three hundred and forty.
ninth novel the boolxkeeper gave her a
couple Of passes for the theater. 1t
was just his luck. he explained, that
the baby had the whooping cough
when those passes came his way, but
Of course he wouldn't leave his wife
alone Of an evening under such cir
cumstanccs. Melinda did not stop to
consider that In a humble, twentieth
century fashion this was rather a
knightIy thing for an underpaid book
keeper to do. but she took the theater
tickets gratefully and invited the as
sistant matron at the home to acconi-
pany her to the theater.
Il was a wonderful play. called "The
Road to Yesterday" and the natural
climax Of Afelinda's course In novel
reading, for In II young girl and her
lover and many other folk were trans
ported back 200 years and did all the
things Of which one reads 10 novels
centuries old. It's moral--or one Of
them-was that the old spirit Of knight
hood lived In the twentieth century
man. though It sometimes had rather
= practical way Of manifesting itself.
From that night perhaps because o.
the play and perhaps because dog
days eet "A, Melinda read fewer novels
and hunted mefhodicaIly for her TWEEN
tleth century knight II was too hot
IT, Der 70 light the gas n the small
han room or even to burn q lamp.
md e was just r1oht % ait On the
Gtoop and watch psring 6gures that
m14ht suddenly blossom out e kniehts.