Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1916 — Approximating the Ultimate With Aunt Sarah [ARTICLE]

Approximating the Ultimate With Aunt Sarah

From Life

Aunt Sarah was sixty- three years old. Uncle John was sixty four years old. If you spoke to Aunt Sarah about any new fringe on the tapestry of the Intellectual loom she would say: “Oh, yes, we 'proximated that line of thought In 1893. It is near, but uot quite the ultimate.” If you spoke to Ujjcle John about 3chopenhauer he would reply: “ I don’t take much stock in them new fangled cultivators.” Uncle John and AUnt Sarah had lived together in the old homestead for thirty-eight years. Aunt Sarah always, had intellectual curiosity: she had left the old Baptrit church in her girlhood to join a joy cult; shp had followed with her mental telescope the scintillating trajectory of William James’s flight through the philosophic heavens-of America;.she bad known about eugenics long before the newspapers had made the subject popular knowledge, and she had played in the musty, rickety garret of occu-t ism at a time when the most daring minds in science were sitting tight In the seats of the scornful. But there was a shadow in the sunlight of Aunt Sarah’s mental advancement, an opaque spot in the crystal of her mysticism, an unresolved seventh in the harmony of her simple life in the Wisconsin backwoods — She was ij#arried.She was married to Uncle John! At six o’clock in the evening of June 1, 1915, Aunt Sarah glanced up from reading Bennett’s “Folk Ways and Mores” as Uncle John entered the kitchen door. Uncle John had just come from performing the vespertine chores. "Pa, we shall have to get a divorce!” said Aunt Sarah, shutting Bennett with determination. “Marriage is a worn out convention; it is only one of the thousand foolish folk ways that hinder the advancement ol science among the masses.” "Very well ma.” jjijjlii “We will get a divorce.’’ “I quite agree, ma.” “Don’t attempt logic with- me, John. I said that we would get a divorce.” Uncle John shook his head. “When will it be?” he asked. “Tomorrow.’’

Uncle John smiled, dropping his armful of kindling into the wood box be hind the kitchen range, and began to lay the Brobdingnagian bandana handkerchief that served them for a table cloth. Aunt Sarah finished the preparation of the bacon and onions and set the coffee pot back when it began to boil. After supper Uncle John read the seed catalog and Aunt Sarah resumed her Bennett. The following afternoon Judge Thompson, who lived in the biggest and best house in the little county seat, was surprised to see from his chair in the big hay window an antiquated carriage drawn by a retired farm horse draw up before his castiron negro hitching post. In the carriage were Aunt Sarah and Uncle John. Judge Thompson was on the porch in time to receive bis guests. “We’ve come to get a divorce,” said Aunt Sarah, with a direct gaze; then she added, with the sang froid of 6ne who is wise, “What’ll it cost?” -The judge motioned them to seats In the wicker chairs on the porch, and then replied:

“But you must have grounds ’> “Everybody knows it. In compatibility of temperament.” And the judge, smiling, humored Aunt Sarah, for he knew her and the community in which she lived. “It will cost you just ten dollars,he said. “Make out the papers,” Aunt Sarah replied. One hour later Uncle John and Aunt Sarah left the judge’s house together, separated for life. Moses, their horse, looked at them out of one corner of his good eye as they apprached the carriage. Uncle John paused, but Aunt Sarah stepped firmly into the vehicle. Uncle John followed her and took up the reins. Moses knew the way home by a clairvoyant sense, and he took that y?ny at his own peace of prophet like dignity. At the door of the old homestead Uncle John handed Aunt Sarah down from her seat in silence. Then he put Moses into his stall. And when fie returned to the house he found Aunt Sarah beaming upon film through her gold rimmed spectacles from her place at the table, which was loaded with a supper such as she alone could cook. Aunt Sarah was jubilant. She was living at last with a man to whom she was not married; no longer was there a blot on the 'scutcheon of her Intellectual progress; no longer did a black beetle mar the pellucid amber of her simple life of Advanced Ideas: no longer could the acolytes, in off moments when they were not engaged in trundling the spheres through the 'macrocosm, gaze sternly down ,upon her through interstellar space and say. "Aunt Sarah is nearly, but not quite, an intellectual.”