Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1915-12-07

Appended to this was a postscript
SO badly written that It was hard to
decipher. IScould guess that her
cheeks had colored as she wrote it.
maybe, after all, am grand
stander. + did get awfully tired. and
I pretended that he was looking on
and was swimming out to help me-"
"By Jove," snorted Mansfield, She's
ripping good sort. wonder who
she pretended was looking on"
Turn back" suggested. 1T may
tell"
z Yet 1t was only after some search
ing that we found him duly cataloged.
and even then she gave him no name.
and had evidently never experienced
the pleasure Of meeting him.
But In trailing him through the
pages, we did come to know her quite
well, and to render sincere glance.
She was not at all conventional. She
was one Of those rare discoveries up
on which the prospector in life comes
4 only when he strikes an 81 Dorado.
/ She dared to think her own thoughts
and did not grow into, the stereotyped
mold Of imitation.
We felt from the clean, instructive
courage Of her tone and viewpoint
that if i'll chance had marooned her
with us on this imperiled ship. she
would bear herself more CALAMITY
than we could hope to do, and that
She would tread these filthy decks
with no spots on the whiteness Of her
skirts.
In her early writings she had shown
for something of tomboy, and there
were hints Of elderly exhortation to
tread more primly paths which were
deemed maidenly. Yet from these tat
tered scraps of life and outlook, we
could piece together some concept of
her. soul fabric.
This girl was woven Of pure silk,
but not Of flimsy silk-there, was
strength and softness, resoluteness
and tenderness; a warp and wool for
the loom of noble things and charm. h
Often l felt as though were invad-
ing temple in which ! had no place
as communicate, and into whose
fanes and areas should wish to come
reverently, with the shoes Of my
grosser soul in my hands.
One night she had been sitting in
the moonlight on the beach. and tie
sea had talked to her. What she wrote
that night was pure poetry. I shall
not try to reproduce it from my faul.
ty memory. My heavy masculine hand
would mar its beauty On this occa-
sion she was thinking of the mksteri-
Gus man she had SO quantity idealized.
Had the lucky beggar, whoever he
was, read those lines, he must have
felt that, in the lists Of life, there
rested on him the sacred obligation
to bear spotless shield and q true
lance.
Besides these passages there were
others sparkling with nerriuent OF
spontaneous humor. Our writer was
no Lady Of Tears. She was as many
sided and many-hued as the diamond
whose facets breaks light into color.
She frankly admitted to these pages,
intended only for herself, that she
was beautiful, though she wished that
her eyes were blue instead OF gray.
brown. and that her type was diner
ent. Evidently she had cut her teeth
on compliment, and fed from child
hood on that type Of admiration which
beauty exacts. She seemed to be a
little hungry for tributes of differ
ent and deeper sort.
In her society days, as in the more
youthful period, we found references
to the unnamed man who still held his
undeserved and paramount place as
an idealized personality: a human
touchstone by which she tested the
intrinsicness Of other men-always to
the detriment of those on trial.