Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1909-03-27

always comes bearing rich gifts She brings glass
boxes very wobby at the corners and bound with rib
bon OIL painful shrimp pink She brings Judges and
bouquets OF apple blossoms. and made lace hand
kerchiefs until the very sight of lace handkerchief,
of themes strapped together with rubber band She
leans upon the ends of the desk with looks OF
the afternoon when she should be the fresh air.
she trerbles and turns pale and loses the power of
matter With tnG be Whv Soes Sb bs wna t .n
Has anybody had it before, and ought it to be
stopped?
The song the singer and comes back most to him;
The love is to the lover and back most to him;
1t cannot fail
Sometimes the friendship of an older woman, col
legebred and touching the world at more points than
her parents do may be of infinitely wider import to
a young girl than any personal inspiration.
Thora Ingeborg was big, silent Swedish girl who by
continued carelessness the part of the faculty had
wriggled through to the senior class Nobody could
have explained just how she had ever. passed up her
geometry Even in the English and history courses
it had been her go off into six hours
in the library because she had CHANGED upon
book the development of the Greek drama the
life of Jesus, and to into class the day
with depressing darkness of mind about the bust
ness in hand Nobody took her into account, though
the observing might have suggested that she took every
into account She stood the outside and
English teacher One day when Miss Prentice Was
reading lines from "Comus aloud, she looked up
catch upon the face of the skinned girl the
end OF the third strange, frozen look OF atten
ton. concentration that was almost avidity.
When the senior class took examination in the
first two acts of Macbeth Thora forgot to answer
any of the questions about the of the supernatural
element in the play the fanting of Lady Macbeth.
but she six full pages of description of the
ing with the witches the heath; the vast darkness
with its somber fire, the wild, bearded figures seeming
to bubble from the GARTH each laying its finger upon
its skinny lips the moody general wrapt in his
his eyes bent upon the ground starting with pallid
fear when he heard his thoughts voiced by The powers
OF the air. his aide at his elbow prickng him to speech
it all there in living, white-hot words straight
out Of the mind of queer, cool-eyed Swedish girl.
bora proved to have power of alteration which
mace ove-afalr look pale and lstless and she pro-
ceeded with great promptness to lavish it upon Miss
things for which she longed Little by little Miss
Prentice learned the conditions OF the girls life, the
tragic background or peasant brutality and peasant
mysticism, the poverty, the feeling for beauty, the
starvation, and deep beneath it all, lofty secret
sense. of power.
One Saturday in early Spring it was arranged that
they were to go to Ware Island for the morning to
look at birds The perfume breathing Spring had Just
touched the land with pale yeows and green's it was
drenched in bright, gltering mist, surrounded By
the sea rolling IN upon the yellow Shore and hanked
by high cy walk with volets and delicately veled
May flowers thick upon the rising bank After. they
had been out an hour, Thora to bac-
chanalia as the tragic Morse temperament can get
> Her life seemed to huer to the breeze and unroll
itself to the sky. What was she to do? What was
she to do? She just wanted grow and at last to
make something beautiful.
Through the long morning they talked. First she
must go TO college, said Miss Prentice that was the
first thing 1t Thora's custom dissent from
anything Miss Prentice said, but she listened in TN
Conserving silence. She had father, her mother
worked in knitting factory; they all worked-worked
in the narrow serfdom which left no margin for in
vestment in the future. But she had capital of kind
OF which Miss Prentice knew the value. She had
strung and wholesome body with quality in it like
steel: she broke the ice II her pitcher morning