12
By C I C I L Y A L L E N
:
Copyright, tool, by A. S. Richardson
The woman who writes was not
obliged 10 go to the office every day.
She went principally because she liked
the great, noisy building, with its rush
of hurrying feet, the dramatic en
trances and exits of newsgatlierers and
even the hammering of the stereo-
typers. This was her life, and it helped
her to forget.
She lived far up on the heights in a
white stone apartment house, whose en
trance was gorgeous in upholstery and
palms and whose windows overlooked
the glistening river.
The elevated
trains whirled her through the tene-
u»ent life of the great city, and she al
ways laid down her morning paper
when she reached the point where the
windows of the dull brick houses almost
touched the Iron railing of the road.
So it happened that there came a
morning when the woman who writes
leaned forward in sudden wonder. In
one of the dullest, dingiest tenements a
window shone out like a solitary star
in an overcast sky. It had been washed
H IIE T O S S E D
IN TO T H E W IN D O W A U U I i K Y ,
OMLONU P A C K A G E .
and polished till it gleamed like French
plate, and between the prim ruffles of
un old fashioned dimity curtain peered
a face in whose soft, blue gray eyes
hopefulness and homesickness strug
gled for supremacy.
The train had slowed up for a curve,
and she studied the quaint picture hun
grily till the cars swept round the
bend. The next morning she watched
for the clean window, the dimity cur
tains and the sweet English face and
the next morning and the next.
The figure In the window was not
always idle. Once the supple hands
were polishing tinware, which, to the
woman who writes, recalled n faraway
farmhouse, where rows of milk pans
once gleamed in the sunshine. Follow
ing an unaccountable impulse, she
nodded cheerily. The blue gray eyes
opened wide in friendly surprise, the
flush on the fresh English face deep
ened. and from that day the morning
greeting was exchanged regularly.
The summer quivered and shimmer
ed into fall, and fail tossed its smart
colors and sparkling hours into the
outstretched arms of winter. The
wiuds howled and the storms raged at
STRONGEST
IN THE WORLD
Everybody knows that “ Strongest in the W orld” means
T h e Equitable Life. R ates no higher than other companies
T. H. PETERS, Special Agent,
306 Oregonian Building, Portland, Or.
ONLY
70 HOURS
P o rtla n d to Ghicago Via
O. R. & IV. Go.
Oregon Sh o rt Lin e ,
Union P acific and
Chicago & Northwestern Railway
The only Double Tracked Railway be
tween Missouri River and Chicago.. .
Tw o Through T ra in s Daily
You c a n g et o n th e t r a i n i n P o r t l a n d a n d
n e e d n o t £et o f f u n t i l y o u a r r i v e i n C h i c a g o
See that Your Ticket R ead s Via the
G. & N. W. R Y .
A. G. BA R K ER , GENERAL AGENT,
C. E . BOCKMANN, PASSENGER AGENT,
No. 153 Third St., Portland, Or.
white ashes. Then she crossed to he-
desk and wrote:
My Dear Robert—It has all been ■.
wretched mistake, this thinking l . u wr
could set along without each otlv r. 1
have been a little slow in fin ’. ¡rg it cut
hut now I am sure. Do not thinls i hnvt
seored a failure and then have turned to
you. My work never looked s.< prom.sing;
but. oh. the emptiness of it all! You said
once I must come to you. Well, 1 am
coming, dear—coming because I can't
stay away any longer. I am writing to
mother to send Rob-your Rob and mint.
Just think! I’ve not seen him for sir;
months, and you’ve not seen him, oh, it
must seem like years. I've been selfish,
Robert, but I never saw it that way—un*
td today. Cable me Just cue word—
“Come." I will understand. Yours.
EMILY.
1 ik
FROM WINDOW
TO W IN D O W !
the tenement window, now closed and
stuffed about with bits of rags. The
blue gray eyes still smiled their greet
ing across a row of scarlet geraniums
to the woman behind the car window,
who, after the train had swept round
the curve, would lean back half wea
rily and weave romances of the life
behind the white curtains and crimson
blossoms. She could see the English
husband coming in from his work. He
would be strong and straight and
young, of course, very gentle and ten
der with the girl who had come to him
from across the seas. Wherefore the
happy lovelight in the blue gray eyes
if all these things were not so? Then
a frugal supper, smoking hot, would
be placed on the table. The teapot
would be of brown and yellow stone,
like the one at the farm. Hut the
woman who writes never mounted the
narrow stairs leading to the tenement
room. She had been disillusionized so
often.
One morning in early spring she
caught her breath as the train slowed
up before the window. No face peered
between the ruffled curtains. A friend
ly hand had bowed the sliutti i s to the
glaring sunlight. That afternoon she
hurried to a shop win re all sorts of
dainty baby garments are sold. When
she had selected a piece of flannel rich
ly embroidered and a robe of sheer
linen, edged with filmy lace, she actu
ally felt angry at the careless fashion
in which the clerk tossed tlie small
garments to the wrapper. It seemed
almost like a desecration. As she car
ried her package to the waiting han
som she said to herself:
“It is perfectly absurd, considering
their station in life. But how her eyes
will shine!”
She could not send her gift, for she
knew neither name nor exact address,
but she waited and watched. At last
one morning the shutters wer*» thrown
back, and in a high backed rocking
chair, close to the window, sat the little
English wife, her blue gray eves shin
ing proudly above a long roll of white
flannel, topped by a very small arm
very red face.
Then the woman who writer: did a ie
markable thing. She took ddfberata,
eareful aim and tossed Into the tene
ment window a bulky, oblong package.
For more than a week she had carried
that package back and forth every
day, waiting for this very opportunity,
and yet her arms felt strangely empty.
All day long between the woman
who writes and lier work came the
proud mother light in those blue gray
eyes. Wherever she turned it haunted
her till her pen lost its cunning and
her heartstrings thrilled with a vague
longing and unrest.
When night came to her brilliantly
lighted parlors, where clever men and
women gathered to laugh at her witty
sayings and to drink the punch she
brewed with cunning hand, she was
the gayest of them all. Never had she
looked more queenly iu her clinging
gown of scintillating Jot; never had the
clever words come so easily to her
smiling lips. She would forget it all—
the narrow, pinching life in the tene
ment, the red geraniums, the ruffled
curtains—yes, even that tantalizing
mother love in the other woman’s eyes.
Hut when they had all gone, the men
who admired her and the women who
feared her, the memory of the blue
gray eyes came back with insistent
strength. She turned out the lights,
leaving only the dull crimson glow
from the tulip shaped lamp, and under
that she sat long and silently, her
broad, white forehead resting on lier
Jeweled hand.
When she rose, a pink flush was
creeping over the pearl gray heavens.
The other woman was doubtless awake,
too. Intent on her husband’s early
breakfast. The woman who writes
glanced round th* room. Here were
drooping roses, there three or four
empty punch glasses and yonder a
small bronze tray piled high with dull
per barrel. Whisky was worth SU
gallon, rum $2.75 per gallon, tea $1
pound, corn $1 a bushel, tobacco [
cents a pound, sugar 2G cents
pound, loaf sugar 31 cents a poul
cambric -$1 a yard, dimity $1 per yJ
molasses $1.44 per gallon, raisins j
cents per pound, shfrting 38 cents |
yard, potatoes 44 cents per bushel. I
and wheat $1.53 per bushel, red ill
nel 88 cents per yard, oil $1 per
The drinker and the smoker ha<|
good time in those early days, and I
family man had it not nearly so goj
Now, happily, whisky and tobacco cj
more and necessaries cost very,
much less. Dress goods and foods*
now be used freely by those who,I
living in 1815, would have had a caj
dress once in several years and
sugar but very seldom. The "old daj
were not as good as these.—Retail
cers’ Advocate.
She addressed the letter with a fever
ish hand to I ’aris.
When she threw open the window,
she saw a workingman in overalls and
blouse hurrying toward the city. Per
haps the litti* Englishwoman was
standing in her doorway watching her
stalwart husband off to work, with his
A P h ilo s o p h e r .
kisses fresh on her lips and her babe
Rivers -W h at do you do "hen
cradled in her arms. And on the lips of wake up in the night with j 11’1’1!
the woman who writes trembled a hap toothache? Brooks—I try to be ti>|
py smile.
ful it isn’t galloping consumption.
Som e
P ric e s
In
1815 .
From an old journal that was kept
in 1815 by a merchant of Oswego It
would appear that it cost the citizens of
that city something to live in those
days. Anthracite coal was unknown,
am] for Illuminating purposes candles
ar.d whale oil were used. Salt in those
days was as much a necessity as now,
but it cost $1,125 per butlicl, or $0.38
T ry in g
to
F o r g e t It.
Mifkins— Hello, old man!
I
you think of that cigar I gavejo J
night? Bifkins— Don’t ask me to >j
I ’m trying to forget It.
Let those who complain of
work undertake to do nothing,
does not convert them, nothing