One Woman's Life

eans permitted. Horatio's resources were squeezed to the last dollar, and the piano came

ver she derived this social passion-obviously not from Grandma Ridge-it had been and would always be the dominant note of her life. Later, in her more sophisticated and more introspective phase, she would proclaim it as a creed: "P

the light housekeeping, at the thought of losing familiar faces. A number of her casual friends came to the station to see her off, as they always did. She kissed them all, and swore to each that she would write, which she promptly forgot to do. But she l

der families still lingered, rooted in associations, hesitant before new fashions, and these, Milly at once divined, lived in the old-fashioned brick and stone houses along the Boulevard that cros

aves and wooden pillars, belonged to the Claxtons. The grounds about the house ran even to the back yards of the West Laurence Avenue block,-indeed had originally included all that land,-for the Claxtons were an old family as age went in Chicago, and General Claxton was a prominent man in the state. She also knew that the more modern stone house

had grown sallow under the smoke, with chocolate-brown trimmings, like a deep edging to a mourning handkerchief. Its appearance pleased Milly. She felt sure that the best

with the air and the appearance of the congregation that first Sunday and made her father promise to take seats for the family. The old lady, content to have the wayward Horatio committed to any sort of church-going, made slight objection. It mattered little to Horatio himself. In religion he was catholic: he was ready to stand up in any ev

The second Sunday the minister's wife, prompted by her husband, spoke to Mrs. Ridge and called soon after. She liked Milly-minister's wives usually did-and she approved of the grandmother, who had an aristocratic air, in her decent black, her thin, gray face. "They seem really nice people," Mrs. Borla

ghter, of about Milly's age,-a thin, an?mic girl who took to Milly's warmth and eagerness at once. As Milly succinctly summed up the minister's family

people Milly had ever encountered. And so when Eleanor Kemp called at the little West Laurence Avenue house, Milly was breathless. Not that Milly was a snob. She was as kind to the colored choreman as to the minister's wife, smiling and good-humored with every one. But she had a keen sense of differences. Unerringly she reached out her hands to the

d my saying it!" she exclaimed the firs

ly Ridge,-"That funny child!" varied occasionally by "That astonishing child!" even when the child had be

aired and set up her tea-table near the black marble fireplace. The next time the banker's wife came to call she was able to offer her a cup of tea, with sliced lemon, quite as a matter of course

superior way, for she was "travelled," had visited "the chief capitals of Europe,"-as well as Washington and New York,-and knew perfectly well that the solid decoration of her library and drawing-room was far from good style. The Kemps had already secured their lot on the south side of the city

be moving soon-and there'll be nob

r Kemp

an!... People like

here always," her

aken a five years' lease of that horrid house. I jus

n laughed at M

yet for someth

oss the street, Milly saw a number of people who came into her life helpfully later on. General Claxton was still at that time a considerable political figure in the middle west, had been congressman and was spoken of for Senator. Jolly, plump Mrs. Claxton maintained a large, informal hospitality of the Virginia sort, and to the big brick house came all kinds of people

us far done a goo

er. Her first religious fervor lasted rather more than a year and was dying out when the family moved from St. Louis. Its revival at the Second Presbyterian was of a purely institutional character. Although even Grandma Ridge called her a "good girl," Milly was too healthy a young person to be really absorbed by questions of salvation. Her religion was a social habit, like the habit of wearing fresh underclothes and her best dress on the seventh day, having a late breakfast and responding

e state of unrealized vice. She encouraged them to go to church by letting them escort her. It was the proper way of displaying right intentions to lead good lives. When one young man who had been a member of the Bible class was fo

ed about her own salvation. It seemed so far off-in the hazy distances of stupid middle age or beyond. So, like thousands upon thousands of other young women of her

ndation, ye sai

er while his wife lived, knowing his own unregenerate habits and having a healthy-minded male's aversion to hypocrisy, now went to church with his daughter quite regu

eyes and open mouth, standing shoulder to shoulder with the little man, each with on

my God,

ling behind a lit

to Thee-