A Hoosier Chronicle

you say you w

ctober, grandpa,"

professor. "And to think that

t, ever since I can remember. And haven't I had

tened responsi

t table, where they had so long faced each other three times a day. Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would go on forever in just this way,-that they would always be, as her grandfather liked to put it, "shipmates," walking together, studying together, sitting as they sat now, at their simple meal

re fine ones and the cream was the thickest. She folded her hands on the edge of the table and watched him gravely in the light of the four candles wh

I wanted to part with you! You've been a fine little shipmate, but you're not so little any more. Sixteen your next birthday! If that's so it isn't best for us to go on this way. You must try your oar in deeper water. You've out

have; I don't know

ing? You know I've taught you a lot of things just to amuse myself and they can never be of the slightest use to you. I suppose you a

I coul

terested in getting her point of view, and it was

college, that would be the

ng-school? If you go to college they may require Gree

know a littl

, Sylvia. Ho

und on the campus one day. Nobody ever came to claim it, so I read it all through and l

moment's absorption: "I'm going to Indianapolis to-morrow and I'll take you with me, if you care to go alo

bags piled on the seat before them. On the few railway journeys Sylvia remembered, she had been carried on half-fare tickets, an ignominy which she recalled with shame. To-day she was a full-grown

meet people," said the professor when they had reached the

a station wagon driven by an old n

time. Mis' Sally tole me to kerry you

still another earthquake, as though the knees of the proud must at intervals be humbled. The one-horse station wagon continued to symbolize the quiet domesticity of the citizens of the Hoosier capital: women of unimpeachable social standing carried their own baskets through the aisles of the city market or drove home with onion tops waving triumphantly on the seat beside them. We had not yet hitched our wagon to a gasoline tank, but traffic regulations were enforced by c

led a space once called Circle Park, where the Governor's Mansion had stood in old times. In her hurried glimpses Sylvia was unable to account for the lack of sociability among the distinguished gentlemen posed in bronze around the ci

id Sylvia a little plaintively, the least bit

of means. You mustn't be afraid of her; she gets on best with people who are not afraid to talk to her. She isn't like a

t, and it was surrounded by the smoothest of lawns, broken only by a stone basin in whose centre posed the jolliest o

Mrs. Owen (he called her "Mis' Sally") had been obliged to attend a meeting of some board or other, but would

the city on some errands, but that he would be back

wn into the most charming of gardens. She opened her bag and disposed her few belongings and was exploring the bathroom wonderingly (for the

been lodged, and what the mistress of the house was like, that Mrs. Owen appeared, after the lightest tap on the high walnut door. Throughout her life Sylvia will remember that moment when she fi

ike this! I didn't know just when you were coming or I should have tried

Sylvia in the window-seat and took one of the cakes and nibbled it while they talked. Sylvia had never been so wholly at ease in her life. It was as though she had been launch

Other widows have to take what the lawyers give them; but while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I'm going to handle my own money. We women are a lot of geese, I tell you, child! I'm treasurer of a lot of thing

t she was sure it must be something both interesting and i

a Kentucky farmer and raised horses and mules. I never knew anything about music, for I wouldn't learn; but I own a stock farm near Lexington, and just b

lvia's knowledge of the world was the meagrest, but certainly she could never have imagined any woman as remarkable as Mrs. Owen. The idea that a mule, instead of being a dull beast of

any of us Hoosiers are Kentucky people, and your grandpa's father was. I remember perfectly we

he yard she drew a pair of spectacles from a case she produced from an incredibly deep pocket, put them on, and criticized the black man below sharply for his manner of running the machine. This done, the spectacles went back to the case and the case to the pocket. In our capital a woman in a kimono may still admonish her servants from a second-story window without loss of dignity, and gentlemen holding high pla

these black people. They've all worked for me for years and they don't any of 'em pay the sli

trifles play havoc with Fame's calculations. And so in our calendar the disbanding of the volunteer fire department in 1859 looms gloomily above the highest altitudes of the strenuous sixties; the fact that Billy Sanderson, after his father's failure in 1873, became a brakeman on the J.M. & I. Railroad and invested his first month's salary in a silver-mounted lantern, is more luminous in the retrospect than the panic itself; the coming of a lady with a

ckson Owen was at this time sixty years old, and she had been a widow for thirty years. The old citizens who remembered Jackson Owen always spoke of him with a smile. He held an undisputed record of having been defeated for more offices than any other Hoosier of his time. His chief assets when he died were a number of farms, plastered with mortgages, scattered over the commonwealth in inaccessible localities. His wife, left a widow with a daughter who died at fourteen, addressed herself zealously to the task of paying the indebtedness with which t

woe unto him who ever tried to deceive her! She maintained an office on the ground floor of her house where she transacted business and kept inventories of every stick of wood, every bushel of corn, every litter of pigs to which she had ever been entitled. For years she had spent much time at her farms, particularly through the open months of the year when farm tasks are most urgent; but as her indulgence in masculine pursuits had not abated her womanly fastidiousness, she carried with her in all her journeys a negro woman whose busi

Sylvia to be there, in the company of the first woman-so it seemed to her-she had ever known, except Irish Mary

. Marian is the daughter of my niece, Mrs. Morton Bassett, who lives at Fraserville. Ma

h she would have been perfectly happy if just she an

moment later, and vanished in her quick fashion. Then the do

me not to have asked before! Your grandpa in speaking of you alwa

Sylvia-Sylvi

her fine gray eyes. "You're the first Sylvia I have ever known. I'm just pl

rt and linen shirt-waist in which she had traveled would do for luncheon. She

he saw a golden head bent over a music rack by the piano. Sylvia stood on the threshold an instant, shy and uncertain as to how she should make herself known. The sun flooding the windows glinted on the bright hair of the girl at the piano; she was very fai

rrison," she s

ch other for a moment; th

. Aunt Sally told m

-shoes, and the bow of white ribbon at the back of her head. Sylvia, in her blue serge, black ribbons

ication in my case; that I could learn but won't. When mama comes she takes me to luncheon at the Whitcomb and sometimes to the matinée. We saw John Drew last winter: he's simply perfect-so refined and gentlemanly; and I've seen Julia Marlowe twice; she's my favorite actress. Mama says that if I just will read novels I ought to read good ones, and she gave me a set of Thackeray for my own; but you can skip a w

espond. Marian was astonishingly wise; Sylvia felt herself immeasurably younger, and she was appalled by her own igno

Kelton, right by Madison College, that's at Montgomery, you know. Grandfather was a p

o you escape?"

ee grandfather, being a professor, began tea

ool, where they make you study. It would be easy to te

"but it's so nice to have him for a teach

interest Marian, and she

k us all last year. We went to

vy, before he began teaching at Madison, so

's aspirations. "At least he says he is, though he used to talk about West Point. I hope he

. I think I shou

a girl right here in Indianapolis who did that, and it's perfectly fine an

Sylvia replied, on guard against

algebra?" dem

s I think

bout me! I'm sure I don't

; but it included fried chicken and cold ham, and there were several vegetables; and hot biscuits and hot corn bread; and it became necessary for Sylvia to decline an endless succession of preserves and jellies. For dessert there were the most fragrant red raspberries conceivable, with golden sponge cake. The colored man

Sally," remarked Professor Kelto

ody knows that the best things in Indiana cam

le Sylvia resorted to the fork. But Sylvia comforted herself with the reflection that this was all in keeping with Marian Bassett's general superiority. Marian conducted herself with the most mature air, and she made it quite necessary for Professor Kelt

in," said Marian, shak

too," Sylv