The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-07-11
~EEy 90 80

grinned sheepish-
ly when she passed, and nudged each
other and the women looked the other
way and pretended they didn't even
! see her
One day the woman from behind
! the tracks" bought a house uptown
and moved into tia neat, pretty little
house, with a garden and trees, and
she dug in the flower beds and water
ed the lawn and put out hanging bas-
kets, and she went to market in lit
tie checked Bingham, and she looked
wistfully over the fence when the
neighbors went by, but nobody ever
spoke to her at all.
One night a baby was taken sick in
the neighborhood and the woman from
behind the tracks" saved its life The
next day she stood out on her porch
and waited to see the baby's mother
60 by. And the baby's mother went by
and did not see the woman from
behind the tracks" at all. and the
woman from behind the tracks" went
and sold her little new house and the
garden and all, and went back "be-
hind the tracks" to live-and all the
people in the village pursed their lips
and said, She's gone back-they al
ways do"
Good story, wasn't it, and a good
slap at the narrow minded little moth
er, who wouldn't make friends with
the woman who had saved her baby's
life?
WHAT DID SHE EXPECT?
fa Gle hot
We women; and yet
| wonder what the woman from "be-
hind the tracks" expected when she
bought the pretty little house and the
garden, and went to live among decent
people?
Did she think they would get out the
band and meet and greet her at the
doorsteps, or what?
You choose your friends because
you like them, and like their kind
mot because somebody else thinks you
ought to like them.
If the woman from behind the
tracks" had come to the village from
somewhere else and nobody knew a
thing about her, do you think the
neighbor women would have liked her
any now L QOn I.
She wasn't their kind; never was,
never could be. She belonged to a diff
ferent world, and every time she turn
ed her over-blonded head and every
time she opened her good-humored, too
easily-pleased mouth, and every time
she laughed her rather coarse laugh,
she would have told what she was,
and no woman of any fneness of per-
ception could have been mistaken in
her for minute.
No, don't mean what she had been.
That isn't what would concern kind
~ woman who was trying to decide
whether she wanted her for neigh
Dor or not. l mean what she is. A
Bingham dress doesn't change the beat
OF woman's heart; a g1rden hoe
doesn't turn her from a coarse, easy
going, blunt-hearted person to a gen.
tie, delicate, lovely woman, does it?
don't believe it.
A LESSON FROM HOME.
Once l had a mazda strange, ST.
lent, stubborn gorl with blue eyes, so
hard that they were like a flint She
had a strange, measured walk and a
strange, controlled voice. and she al
ways acted as if she thought some
one was watching her.
One day l saw her in a blue print
dress of peculiar cut and shade, and
knew-she was a reformatory girl I'd
seen her before, at the reformatory.
l didn't say word. l treated her ex-
actly as l had always treated her, but
one day she was gone and she left
letter for me. In it she said many
things. One of them was this: You
know me; don't you? believe you do
] thought l could be different, but
can't. You've been good to me, but
amt happy here. l amt comfortable,
SO I'm going" and gone she was, back
to the people with whom she was
Comfortable" poor thing. Back to the
people who were like her and who had
her ways and her point of view. l was
sorry, but didn't go after her or try
in any way to reach her.
Perhaps I should have-Ive often