White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1930-11-14
THE
VALLEY
OF
FORI'ITUDE
By FANNIE HURST
3EG2&2&2Es3is23&&E3&
"a by Mcclure Newspaper syndicate.l


And there she was to remain, lit
orally, for a period of fifteen stricken
years, encased, as mummy might be
encased, in a plaster cast that held
her body rigid.
AS the star woman reporter on the
biggest metropolitan daily, Edna Oil
yer, rushing down the corridor OF an
Office building on a scoot for big
story" had stepped into an elevator
shaft, thinking the cage awaited her.
The result had been devastating and
had resulted in a partial paralysis.
The Edna Oliver of fifteen years
after this calamity was scarcely to be
recognized as the alert vivacious and
talented young woman who had sky
rocketed to position of Importance
on the reportorial staff of gigantic
newspaper. Pain, mental anguish and
unutterable fatigure of spirit had told
their story in the face of Edna Oliver,
and yet, as is so often the case with
the afflicted in body, she had come
through the trial-by-fire with special
and rather magnificent kind of tri-
umph.
With the fifteen years spent on the
fiat of her back, strange VISIONS had
come to Edna Oliver. Those brilliant,
compromising eyes of hers had
looked inward, so to speak. Out Of
the solitude, out of the pain, out of the
contacts on the sun parlor with other
souls as stricken as hers, had come a
new, tolerant, spiritual Edna.
The friends who had stood by her
in all these years, who had visited her
religiously,. cared for her creature
neede, noted with certain kind Of
awe this change.
Toward the end of the fifteen years
the spirit Of rebellion in Edna had
died down. There apparently had
come to her in the watches of those
long nights, some of the secrets of the
sainted.
To visit with Edna Oliver was to
leave her bedside feeling chastened,
humbled, and little reverent. To
sit in her presence was not only to
leave it grateful for the benediction
Of your own health, but grateful for
the benediction of soul like Edna
divers upon this earth.
Lying on her back, gazing out Of
window at rectangle of sky, had
sweetened this woman with what
seemed almost knowledge Of the
infinite. A spray of lilac in a vase
could be her universe. Some one had
given her a radio, and the voice of
the world outside filed up her little
hospital room and kept her in warm
sympathetic touch with the great
milling scenes of the metropolis with
which she was so physically out Of
contact.
During her years in that hospital
Edna had formed friendships with the
afflicted ones around her as we'll as
with the physicians and nurses who
served her. She had come to learn
the strange, thwarted psychology of
the lame, the halt, the blind; and at
the same time the incredible mental
and spiritual triumphs that they could
accomplish over physical defeat.
1t was little ironical, as her sub
mission to her destiny ripened and
grew into the something that was
spiritual that the poor twisted spine
of Edna Oliver should begin to gather
strength. There came day when her
physician could hold out to the strick-
en- girl promise of partial, if not
complete recovery.
Curious, but the old Edna, at the
prospect of that, leaped into harness
like fire horse at the call of bell.
Old ambitions came flowing back. AS
she told her favorite physician, Doctor
Alonysious, who had served her we'll,
crying upon the back of his hand,
something that she had thought dead
within herself had lifted it's head
In the months that followed, it is
more than probable that sheer grit,
determination and rehabilitated hopes
in Edna Oliver accomplished at least
two-thirds toward her miraculous re-
covery.
Sixteen years to the day from the
horrible one when she had hurtled
down an elevator shaft, Edna Oliver
walked out of the hospital.
Her return to the newspaper was
an occasion for festivity long to be
remembered even in the feverish an
nails of journalistic New York.
Edna returned to her work with
the prestige, the acclaim, and the
honor Of general returning from
successful battle. Her colleagues raj
lied around her to the man. Every
hand was held out to give her fresh
start in the work that had been SO
cruelty interrupted. There were flow
ers on her desk from every depart
ment in the organization from old
and less fortunate friends still lying
prone on their back in the hospital;
from Doctor Alonysious and his entire
staff.
The return of Edna Oliver to the
busy, squirming, struggling world was
the return Of conUuerOr But right