THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
25
the command of our once little senior boy, Herbert Reinken. He had
held wireless communication with him and Herbert told him they were
frozen in by the ice, but hoped to return to America that summer. This
was perhaps the greatest surprise of all to us.
\\ e were delighted to see Callista who had grown into a dear little old
lady with gray hair and spectacles. She bashfully told us she was no
longer Callista Rainville for she had married and built a home on her
allotment at Athena, Oregon. She had left her two little sons at home
for fear they might want to stay in Chemawa and she could not spare
them. Joe read us the letter which Ethel Wilson had written to explain
her absence. We were not surprised to know she was now a Red Cross
nurse, but of course we regretted with her that she could not make the
trip from Seattle to be with us on account of a serious case under her
care.
At last we separated to prepare for the class reunion in the evening.
We were now all accounted for but David Billings and Maude Lowry.
Joe seemed very anxious about Maude’s arrival, but we all hoped the
last car would bring them, or at least some word from them. Nor were
we disappointed, for as we were all gathered in the gymnasium the
door opened and they came in. David explained his late arrival. We
all knew that after leaving here he had entered O. A. C. and graduated
later into a scientific farmer. He told us that he had taken up land in
Southern Oregon and had been kept so busy mending irrigation ditches
he at first feared he could not be with the class. However, at the last
minute he had boarded the train and taken a seat and he was more than
surprised to find that the lady sitting in the same seat was no other than
Maude Lowry. She probably had reasons of her own for being so late,
but had not told them to him.
Maude was then called upon to give an account of herself. As she
arose and laid aside her long cloak we noticed she was dressed in an es
pecially dainty white costume. She told us that she had attended busi
ness college and had been a stenographer for several years; later she
lived in her cottage home in California. But she was lonely there and
was tired of keeping a bachelor girl’s hall. Upon this, Joe stepped to
her side, and Rev. Paul Kininnook came forward carrying in his hand
a book which looked suspiciously like the Marriage Ritual and this was
Joe’s surprise for us. The ceremony completed we were in the midst
of offering congratulations when I was suddenly brought back to the
present by hearing my name called to deliver the Class Prophecy of 1913,