The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1915-02-25


they asked to go up to the M%idthornes'.
Therein lies the distinction and also the
difference.
h narrative will not deal at length
with the children of THE Giants Cas-
tle.' 1t is the purpose of the narrator
TO make his hearers acquainted with
the three of them while they were very
tiny persons, and then to carry them
over he years as quickly as possible.
In the mean time. we may all come to
know Horace Blagden and his wife bet
ter, besides getting something of an lr-
ward view of other people who attend
ed them in the capacity Of subjects.
First. let us locate Cornith- blythe
Sea. 1t is a place of some 5000 souls.
three hours from Boston by rail, and
not half SO far as the crow flies. 1t is
OF no Importance which direction one
has to travel from Boston to reach the
little seaport, north or south. Suffice it
to say. it is an old town, and its first
families Of today We're known by the
same names 200 years ago. 1t is a
thriving place, after a slow and digui-
fed fashion. There is a port there.
where coa steamers call, and freight
ers put in; while from its little har-
Dor a half hundred prosperous fish
ing boats fare forth In season to reap
a harvest from the sea.
+. 1t is said that once there was a time
when Corinth was without a Blagden,
but the period was of short duration. 1t
seems that Horace Blagden's great
grandfather went off to London to re-
side, taking with him his sons and
daughters, his wife, his men servants
n his maid servants, but not his
asses. They remained in Corinth. In
time the men servants and the maid
servants returned, and then the wife.
The war of the revolution was over.
She put the old house in order, and then
came her husband and his o n and
daughters. for none of them married in
the land across the sea. Since then
there has always been a Blagden in
Corinth.
Generation of them accumulted the
fortune and the prestige that served
to make Horace Blagden, in his day,
the great man of Corinth. More tia
this. he was a recognized force in the
vast money centers of the land, for he
was rich ever unto the point Of COM
Blagden & Co., bankers, % Blagden
street, Corinth. was a powerful con-
Germ. 1t could lend money when times
were so hard that other institutions
trembled.
Horace Blagden, when he came out
Of Harvard, went into the bank with
his father. Then he set out, not I'M
like the princes of old, to find him a
wife from amon the lordly of the land.
He journeyed far n came at last to
the walls of a city called Gotham. He
stormed a castle there and escued a
beautiful maiden from the ogres whom
nature a constituted her father and
mother, just in time to keep them from
delivering her over to the mercy of an
English gentleman who owned a
coronet and a ducal palace. and nothing
else, except a ripping stud.
She was a Van Dykeman.
Then, out Of a Fashionable school for
young ladies, came Horace Blagden's
only sister, Mary. She came u pre-
maturely, it may be added, to run away
with and marry the gallant youth who
afterWard became the father of the
two Midthornes. cousins to Chetwynd
and wards, of their unhappy mothers
brother.
1t had always been easy sailing for
Horace Blagden. He stepped into his
fathers shoes. SO to speak, when the
old gentleman vacated them, n be-
came at once, when he was little past
80, the great nan of Corinth. He had
not married for love. On the other
hand his sister had, because she pos
sessed the power to love. Perhaps that
is why Horace had such placid waters
on which to sail, while Mary had for
ever the roar of breakers in her ears,
Mary came to grief. She loved in
~tensely-and once too often.
Briefly, let me explain it came to
pass hat her children found them
selves securely established in the grey
house on the hill. unloved but tolerated
with a resignation that even they
small as they We're, could not fail tc
appreciate.