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About Lincoln County leader. (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1897)
'Y'M? rii'A !;m 'V l-rp'rl 7 ESEEHfflHSBeSffiHSHSEEHEHBS THE GOVERNOR'S TR m m H AS tlic Governor rode past my grandmother's house on the spring morning when lie left the Stun' forever he wore Ills uniforiu ami carried the sword with which he after wards leil the charge nt San Jacinto. 11' was a tall mini, broad-shouldered iiinl well-knit, with a certain graceful tslateliuess which, though he hail it by nature, he hail not left uncultivated. It was held In lliose days to be a mark of the person of uallty, nail from the lime when us a boy of 10 he had lain on the puncheon floor of his father's cabin spelling out Pope's l'.hul by tlis light of a pine knot, the Governor had always felt himself a person of quality. My grnudinothor was on the porch as lie passed and he bowed low to her, ceremoniously dotting his hat, as he al ways did to ladies. It was 4 he last time she ever saw him, and though she had beeu his warmest frieud, he kept his own counsel with her as with every one else. To the day of his death, he never ex plained hlinse'.f. "Sir," he would say, In response to every attempt to draw hi in out, "let us speak of something else." And the bow villi which he said It was conclusive. When he had just reached the summit of what had been his ambition; when he was Governor of what was then the pivotal State of the Vulon, with the Presidency as a pcssiblllty for him, and the United St ites Semite for life a certainty, why It was that he chose to dress himself In his uniforiu and ride out into the wl'derness beyond the J ississlppl, nerer to return, ills biographers have no! been able to explain except In vague generalities. How my grand m it her knew the story I cannot say, further than that she was the friend not only of the Governor himself, but f Virginia r'ra.er and of John Kudi eott, the Governor's private secretary, wlm made the trouble between them. "It Is true, my dear," said my grand mother to me, "that Kudieott was n Yankee and an impecunious school teacher, but lie was a Harvard grad uate and a gentleman. The Kndicotts are an excellent family almost as good 4is our own, or as Virginia's. And t lie Governor, you know, though one of the best bred men I ever saw, lacked the great advantage of descent from well bred people." Those who conc'.ude from this that my grandmother was something of a Tory will nut be wholly mistaken, but If they had known the charming o'.d lady us we'.l as I they would forgive her as easily as I do, even though which Is not likely they are as radical In their politics as 1 am thought to be by mime. The Governor's honeymoon was bare ly over when lie left the State. The fact of his resignation, which ho had addressed In due form to the presiding olllcor of the Senate, was not generally known until he was IHHI mile away, hilling In n Cherokee cabin, smoking an Indian pipe, as silent and Impassive ns any other savage of those around lilni. For that was undoubtedly his Idea nt the time 4o renounce civilization forever unit live a barbarian among barbarians. Mm. Krazer, Virginia's mother, was n famous match-maker and one of the Governor's stnuuehest partisans. "If lie was born lu n cabin," she said to my grandfather a few days before the wedding, "he has more brains than nny other man In the State. I expect to see It I in President yet With visions of Virginia in the White House and herself as the power behind the throne, she was correspondingly elated on the night of the wedding. It Is no part of iny purpose to attempt to ilescriue tier reelings when the cntiis trophe came ami she found herself face to face with the elliunx of one of those tragedies which compel silence In nil who are Incapable of reslgtwi tion. When Kudieott first met Virginia r ruier ne was not more man ;:,, very handsome, and with nil unassuming self-possession which made nmeuds for his luck of the oeremouloua courtesy habitual to the society Into which he wait thrown. There hud been a umrkd attraction between him and Virginia from their first acquaintance, and Dine who did not know her mother expectvd It to be a match. I!ut Virginia, before any one knew of her engagement to the Governor, hail begun to hold Kudieott at arm's length, and after the climax there was never the slightest scandal connecting her name with his. She was not more than 'M at the time of her marriage. Six weeks later, when she stood before the fireplace of her sitting-room as the Governor entered nt 11 o'clock at night, she wore the niuslln whose contrasting whiteness had so heightened her brunette beauty on the day after her marriage. The Governor had just come from a con ference of his political friends and was Hushed and hopeful. His wife did uot move ns he entered the room. Her face was half averted when, with Ins usual impressive gallantry, he took off his hat at the door and crossed the room to kiss her hand. He had taken It In his and his lips had almost touched It when she hastily almost violently withdrew It. Slipping past him, she stood in the center of the room facing him as lie turned, not understanding her at all and thinking that she had begun to develop an unaccustomed playfulness. She did not leave him long In error. "Do not toucn me!" she said In a voice which, though It trembled wMli excite ment, showed the decisiveness of long premeditation. "Do not touch me. I cannot bear it." The Governor stood motionless, with the puzzled look of one whose Intellect is overcome. She might have pitied him nud receded had she beeu callable either of seeing or understanding, but she had liecome a mere automaton, governed by long-suppressed emotion. "I cannot bear it!" she repeated. "I do not love you. I have never loved you. I have tried to learn. I cannot. I have tried to become a true and duti ful wife to you. I cannot. I have tried to forget the only man I ever loved. I cannot. There must be an end of It all, and it must come now!" "Virginia!" said the Governor, help lessly. "Virginia " "Do not stop me!" she went on, with Increasing rapidity. "I am not Insnne, though I am near It. I am a good wom an, sir. At leant, I have nothing with which to reproach myself, except the shame of having allowed them to make you believe I love you. It was all my mother's fault and yours. Why did you follow me? Why did she force me on you, when I did not love you, when never can love yon; when I have ceased to wish to love you?" She paused a moment for breath. The Governor did not move. He had leaned his e'.bow on the mantel, and now, with fallen around her face. As yet the Governor's mind hud assimilated hard ly auything of what she had said. It had come upon him a supreme calamity at the climax of his good fortune. He seemed to himself to have died sud denly and to he striving to wake to consciousness in another world. The one idea which shaped itself clearly in the chaos of his brain was tint his wife had never been so splendidly beautiful ns now, when she stood with head thrown back and flashing eyes, lifted above herself by the stress of such an effort as no one person ever makes twice in a lifetime, as very few ever make at nil. A moment later, over come by Hie inevitable reaction, she had rushed sobbing from the room, leaving the Governor still standing at the mantel. Immovable, ns he had stood since she began. He had made no attempt to follow her. She had gone only a few minutes wheu he stood upright, threw back his shoulders, walked twice up and down the room and then took his seat before a writing desk, drawn close to a win dow overlooking the river. Settling down in the chair with his elbows on lis anus nud Ins hands locked across his breast, he looked steadily out of the window, motionless, ns the clock on the mantel struck the hours, one nfter another, until the small, square window panes began to grow luminous with the dawn. Then he rose, and un locking a drawer in the lower part of his desk, took out a mahogany box with silver-mounted corners and a heavy silver plate in the center oi Hie lid. He unlocked it deliberately, nnd, taking from It a pair of the long blue steel dueling pistols of the period, tried the lot ..i of both, nnd then look ing nt them, snld aloud; "They are the ones Kenton gave nie 'The same, sir, I had the misfortune to Wimm mm . A 1 IT WAS Til It IA8T TIME SI1K SAW niM. i-i tat mPPe Iff THK OOVKF.NOK 1)111 NOT SIOVK. SAVAGE ASSAULT ON FORT LUNDIKqTalT his hand supporting his chin, he stood looking nt her blankly. "I will not be stopped," she said, intehlng her breath with a sob. "I will tell you everything, everything, the whole miserable truth that Is killing me. I love John Kudieott. I have never loved anyone else. I never will. He does not know It, and ho never, can know K. unless you tell him. Now you know what a wretch I nm, and you kuow what you have done to make me so." As she stopped she drew herself up and threw back her long black hair, which had escaped from her comb .! be obliged to use In my difficulty with my much-ref,pected frieud, Gen. Jack son." ' Before be had concluded his uncon scious mimicry of Kenton's presenta tion speech he recognized the fact that he had caught the solemn pomp of that statesman's carefully-modulated peri ods. The Incongruity of the idea grew uion him, and as he turned one of the pistols over nud over in his hand he almost smiled at the u'ter lack of log ical sequence In his own mental processes. Simultaneously 'he seemed to have reached a conclusion, for he replaced the pistols nnd locked the case. "No," he said, "I will not do It. Ho Is a good boy and It Is not his fault nor hers either. She Is ns good a woman as ever lived, and I am a fool." He spoke now with the decisiveness he had shown nt Horseshoe Bend, where, as everyone knows. (Jen. .Tuelr. son had called him the bravest man In the army, lie was almost cheerful ns he rose nud left the house, walking towards the bluffs, ns was his morning muni, wuii tue light, swinging step lie hud learned ou the trail with the Che rokee friends of his boyhood. He did not return until 11 o'clock, nnd goit-g straight to his ollice he found John Kudieott, his secretary, waltlm? fur him with a formidable bundle of papers. l so your own Judgment, my boy, ou nil that will not keep until to-morrow. I nm busy to-day with work that .au uot wait." He passed Into his Inner rooms ns he said this, and began sorting the papers In his private pigeonholes. Kudieott could hear hi in tearing them, but If he wondered, he nskod uo questions, nnd the Governor kept up his work long nfter his usual dinner hour. When he went home he found what he had ex pected. Ills wife had gone to her mother, nnd he never saw her again. It Is said he wrote her a most affec tionate letter, but if he did, nothing he said in It changed the course of his life or hers. "Xonseuse. Ills heart did not break." said my grandmother. Why. all the world heard of him nt San Ja cinto. A brave man's heart never breaks while he has work to do." Perhaps she was right. At any rate there was uo tremor In the Governor's voice as he spoke to her that morning riding with his horse's head turned to ward the old Cherokee trail that led across the Mississippi through Arkan sas to the Iudlnn Territory. "Hood morning, Mrs. Tupton," he said as he bowed to my grandmother. 'It Is a beautiful day, and your roses are almost beautiful enough to be worthy of you."-Utioa Globe. The Hcaann. Kessle-Is your friend Longhair to. lug out to play football? Barbara-What made you thiuk so? "Why, he's headed that wj." Yon, ers Statesman. lis ipraiBiOfr 1? full i&p V tl: Lund! Kotal Is one of the forts nf .hp Tv-hri.l i.. prluclpiil pnsa In the mountains twpuiutliig lmlia frJ irea AiKimuiNiuu. nerore me recent capture of tliepbnf the hostile tribesmen It una ernrrlsniiPfl hv n mwiu J vnnwn nm tin lv huhot Hon n-l.l.li ....t i A BritWiCoiunlsnder. I'"1'1 by Ul I"'l'an Governniont.-Klnck and White MADE FLOUR FOR TROOPS. Old Mill In Cumberland Gap Which Did Service in the Civil War. There Is standing at Cumberland Gap, Just across the State line from Mlddlesboro, Ky., an historic old mill, which during the civil war ground the breadstuff for thousands of Confeder ate and Federal soldiers. The mill is located at the foot of the famous Pinnacle mountain ou the south side. It has an overshot wheel of the old-fashioned kind nbout the same size and almost a duplicate of the noted waterwlieel which attracts so much at tention near the entrance to the Ten nessee centennial. The mill was built by John Locke, who came from North Carolina about l.SOti. The stones which formed the foundation of the structure were hauled from the old north state at a cost of $1"(). Locke operated It successfully for ninny years, and after he had accumulated a small fortune he built n flour mill just above It. He also erected n carding factory and an up right sash sawmill. All the machinery was run by the famous enve spring of the 1'lnnncle mountain, which gushes Gen. George Morgan ordered Ibtq to be fired, us lie did not wish th remain in operation and glvesucw the Confederacy. Accordingly ana of men was detailed to do the lit They bad just set lire to the Jon mill when the Confederate bate from the adjacent mountains op fire on the Federal works. TheM lost no time In getting under cora.w ns the wind blew the tl.unes nwsjfni the corn mill It wns saved. It ouii been In operation for several yeinuS may never grind again. Origin of "Blue Blood." The origin of the term "blueW Is most suggestive. After the w Moors were driven out of Spain aristocracy of Spain was held tin slst of those who traced their llm back to the time before the Slw conquest. These people were wii than those who had been miieM Moorish blood. The veinii upon Ifl white hands were blue, while thetM of the masses, contaminated bj 1 Moorish infusion, showed black H their hnnds and faces. So the w Spaulurda of the old race came If 4 LKil'l Hit (nil, Mi dhl lite .ll.fr f. 4"f .feir h Tlf 4na I Ml L fee i llio jkir ,n 3 TUE OLD LOCKE MILL. out of King Solomon's cave 300 feet above the level of the valley. It comes from the mouutuln side a verltuble torrent, foaming, hissing, seething, carrying huge bowlders be fore It and cutting a channel through the everlasting rocks tu Its mad rush to the valley below. This torrent, ac cording to the estimate of mechanical engineers, would furnish 100 horse power, and although old man Locke harnessed only a part of the turbulent stream to his wheels he secured suffi cient power to operate the machinery for many years. At his death a few years prior to the war John C. Newly bought the plant and he owned It when the. war broke out. He furnished the Confederacy with thousands of bushels of meal and hundreds of barrels of flour ground by these old mills, and when the Federal army took possession of the Gap the same burrs made bread stuff for L'nele Sam's men. When the Confederates began storming the Gap prior to the Federal forces evacuating elare that their blood was "1 ...i.n amnion DeoC nunc tiuu vi i Frllrl bluck. The phrase passed to r j wnere It had no sucu si---- .j was, In fact, quite arbitrary. ' 1 it came to England and An- Revlval of Old J"lr'' mi.. 1.-otrv la C0BIW fashion again. Women are the old curio shops, trying . .... . . Ilka thoM' ueauiuui oiu ctuuw .-dM years ago. iuc Is rarely changed, the Qua'Wj and twisted gold being consiOT . , ... .i..i Tim old and rings are especially J and bring found. remarkable pr" reople around a drug store oJ . it...... annul " i Know someiuii'X .- Thev never use theni. iTiiR The only wfly to mT with a woman U to keep me"
