Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1918 — Page 2

Vernon Pope

By JANE OSBORN

(Copyright, 1818, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) r Whenever Hester Fey had ten cents left in her purse after she had bought her luncheon, paid her carfares and bought her evening paper out of the 45 cents she allowed herself for money” every day, she went to a little basement flower shop and exchanged that silver piece for a rose or a couple of carnations, a few daffodils or pansies, or any other bloom that that small sum would secure. “Don’t you ever buy candy?” the girls in the office would say to her when she steadfastly refused to share with them a little bag of licorice drops or chocolates that they brought back with them after luncheon. “Every girl h as a sweet 'tooth; It’s funny you haven’t.” “Well, maybe I do like sweets,” Hester would say. “But to me flowers are so much sweeter than candy. And a rose on your desk ,will stay sweet for days, and the candy is all gone in an afternoon.” On her way from business she used to walk up the avenue past the big florists’ windows, and there look eagerly in to see the flowers, whose names she did not know, that were arranged to tempt the folk who could afford to pay as much for a box of flowers as Hester received for working a whole week. Then Hester read in the paper that a great flower show was t<j, be held early in the spring. The tickets were 50 cents, and, that meant that five dimes would have to be saved, and that five times when she might have bought a little nosegay she •would have to go without. To spend 50 cents for a single evening’s entertainment seemed like extravagance to Hester, so she determined to go to the flower show, on the day that it opened, as soon as she was through work at her office and remain there with the flowers till the doors closed. She would have from half-past five till eleven o’clock, if she chose just to wander about and smell the sweetness and revel in the color of the flowers that the paper said were to be even more gorgeous than in previous years. To be sure, this would mean going without dinner; but she bought a sandwich, which she ate rapidly at a lunch counter on her way to the show, and this satisfied her craving for food. At first Hester wandered about the great hall in a daze, now standing transfixed before a table on which nothing but roses were placed, and then hurrying from one rock garden to another, searching out in each new and hidden beauties, till she knew the characteristics, but not the names, of all the plants that ever found place In rock gardens. If any one stopped to notice the enthusiastic young girl as she stood with hands clasped and eyes gleaming before one of the exhibits, Hester did not know it, for she was too intent on enjoying the flowers every minute of the hours she had to spend to notice the other spectators at all. After she had wandered about for over an hour, she finally stood lost in admiration and almost perfect content before the tulip exhibition that had been awarded the first prize. It was the exhibition of the millionaire, L. K. Pope, whose world-famous tulip hothouses and gardens made certain his taking the first prize for this class of . flowers every year. Hester had not read her evening paper every day without knowing the reputation that Mr. Pope and his family’had gained in fields other than tulip raising. Mr. Pope himself, as every one knew, was at the time seeking a divorce from his third wife, and his only son, young Vernon Pope, had given interesting reading recently in the evening papers because of his elopement with a musical comedy star of considerable reputation. Hester didn’t in the least approve of the Popes, but she did love their tulips, and when she heard one woman who stood for a while beside her say to her companion, “I can’t even admire the exhibition when I think what kind of people the Popes are,” Hester wondered, for a brief minute whether she were weakening in her very rigid standard, because she could admire the Pope’s tulips as much as she did. It seemed to her, as she stood there | feasting her eyes on the sea of golden tulips, as pure as morning sunlight, that just to- grow flowers like that would make people want to be good and decent The exhibit, as every one said, was the most attractive of any shown, for tulips, in beds of red and yellow, pink, white, and of that rich dark red characteristic of the “black” tulip, were arranged about a little Dutch cottage that had a real little door and two windows with white muslin curtains. If Hester had any well-defined idea of heavenly mansions it was of some such little white-curtained Dutch cottage as this, surrounded by beds of glorious popples and paths of pure white pebbles like those she now gazed upon. A young man came out of the cottage, and Hester watched him eagerly. Of course, it was young Vernon Pone, and as he opened the door she looked to see if there was a girl in the cottage; if there was a girl, of course it was the dancing girt he had Sloped with. For a moment Hester

envied the dancing girl, just because she might claim admittance to the white-curtained cottage. But no girl followed Vernon, and there appeared to be no one left in the cottage. Vernon crunched his way down the whitepebbled path to the white-painted fence that hemmed in the exhibit. A young man that stood on the outside of the fence appeared to be a friend of Vernon. “Congratulations!” said the man on the outside of the fence. “I knew you would, get the first prize for tulips, but you’ve taken the prize for the best show of any sort in' the exhibition. I got it straight from the judges just now.” The smooth-shaven young Vernon showed supreme satisfaction. “You don’t say!” he comniented. “That certainly will make Pop happy. He was so keen about this cottage effect, and he spent so much importing those Dutch bulbs this year.” “It’s sure a slick show,” commented the brlnger of good news. “Couldn’t be better.” “Yes, it could,” corrected Vernon, and Hester permitted herself still to overhear the conversation. “We were going to get some nice little blondehaired girl to dress in Dutch costume and add local color to the cottage. Pop got the costume straight from Holland, and we were going to get one of the maids to dress up; but the only blonde one got huffed at the last minute, and the brunette ones wouldn’t do. I’m going to start out tomorrow and get one. The trouble is we don’t want the kind of show girl you’d get from a theatrical’ agency. We want a nice, fresh-looking girl, that looks as if she had grown. up in a tulip bed.” Just then the young man’s eyes shifted, and for the first time he saw Hester. There was a slight start in his manner, and Hester somehow became aware that she had flaxen hair and that she certainly did not look like a show girl. The young heir to the Pope millions lowered his voice and drew the young man he was talking to aside. Hester would have followed them to hear their conversation, but it was obviously impossible. However, she still stood there by the white fence drinking in the beauty of the color, and waiting to hear what she might when the young man returned to the fence. It was only a few minutes later when ' young Vernon returned, and, coming very respectfully to her, asked her with considerable embarrassment if she would be willing to be the Dutch girl. She was just the type, he said, And if she didn’t need the money contribute it to the Red Cross. He said that he was very anxious to have some one by -the next afternoon —Saturday, because his father was coming in to see the show for the first time, and he had so wanted a Dutch girl in the cottage. Hester thought a minute. Saturday afternoon was a half holiday. She could “give notice” the first thing in the morning. She was only a cog in the wheel at her office; another girl would do as well as she on Monday morning. For a whole week she could spend her days there in that wonderful tulip garden. She accepted, and before long she found herself alone in a little dressing room donning the Dutch peasant costume that was apparently made just to fit her small, plump figure. Of course, the young man fell in love with her, and, of course, when at the end of the week he told her so. Hester, who was a very strict principled little girl, was as troubled as she had ever been in her life before. -She really did like him; she felt that she could not let him go. Still — “But, what about that beautiful dancing lady you eloped with?” she asked him naively. And the young man laughed and laid his hands on hei shoulders tenderly. They were inside the little Dutch cottage a few minutes before the afternoon session of th* exhibition began. “You didn’t think I was Vernor Pope, did you, little girl? Bless youi heart, you thought that,did you? Why I’m only the head gardener’s son. Bui father and I get more out of th' Pope millions than the Popes do, foi we are lords of the estate that yoimg Vernon is too sophisticated to enjoy They don’t know one tulip from an other. They just ’go in’ for then because every millionaire has to gc in for something. So you’ll maSry me, won’t you? Even if I am Tom Dawkins, gardener, instead of Vernon Pope, millionaire!” And Hester honestly could not see why any girl would not a hundred times rather have married Tom Dawkins than Vernon Pope, with all his millions.

Opaki Hard to Capture.

The home of the opaki, in the western half of equatorial Africa, is a forest cloister 600 miles long, 180 miles wide and 700 miles from the coast — o a dismal and inhospitable region of unbroken. Wilderness. Into this retreat, inhabited by cannibals, strewn with the graves of thousands of white men and visited almost daily with terrific tropical thunderstorms, with Intervals of intense and humid heat from a torrid sun', the Lang-Chapin expedition ventured in 1909. For six years its members stalked the opaki, a mysterious creature, nocturnal in its habits,, with a sense of hearing Inconceivably acute, and so w’ary that only one specimen had ever been obtained. Few white men had ever seen an opaki, but, thanks to the determined efforts of Sir Harry Johnston, the gifted explorer and colonial administrator, the British museum was in possession of the remains of one of these animal recluses.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

Frill Epoch For Children’s Wear

New York.—Do not take, the fashion of children’s clothes for granted. Do cot fall into the error of going on the old methods. There is as much ebb and flow in the tide of juvenile costumery as in adult, so watch straws and then go with the current, is the advice of a prominent fashion writer. Patterns cannot be handed down from one child’s wardrobe to another. What was worn last season is usually out of the picture by the time the new season begins. Things were not always according to this schedule of variation. For centuries children were dressed alike. Glimpse backward over the portraits that hang in our museums to prove this. The torturous clothes that were put bn Infants three centuries ago will most probably make the modern woman, filled to the eyes as she is with the schedules of hygiene and sanitation, want to scream alQud at the misery that was inflicted. _ Even the wooden sabots and long full skirts of the small Dutch girl, with her white rabbit, stirs in the mother of the nioment a violent feeling of reform. We grieve far more for the discomfort of the young man than for the actual grief of the old. As near to nudity as the law allows has been the modern interpretation of children’s clothes, and we have felt that by hardening their legs and arms through constant exposure in the formative years, we are handing them a talisman against weakness and disease in the settled seasons of life. The elimination of the garter that binds, the corset that restricts, the skirt that hampers, the sleeves tliat cover, the shoe that pinches, has aided the doctor and the teacher. Touch of Military. Does your particular memory go back to the days when to dress a boy child as a Highlander was to prove yourself in the fashion? The swagger of the Gordons was not even omitted from the clothes for] small girls. Scotch bonnets were as common among children as they are now among men. Whether or not it brought the passionate and rebellious shame of Penrod, plaid kilts were placed on boys I whose faces burned with indignation at the thought of wearing skirts and showing their knees. Rakish bonnets with a gay feather were perched over scowling brows, and only the Lord Fauntleroys of life were pleased with

The cape takes on new grace as worn by the younger generation. Immensely useful for seashore or country is this cape of navy blue serge lined with old rose and blue figured silk.

themselves. And now, when the “Ladies from Hell” have made the costume the cause of wild admiration of every half-grown .boy on two continents, the designers will not reinstate it, nor will chastened mothers request their boys to wear it. So that in itself is good evidence that we have wisely and, let us say, forever gotten over the desire for the foolishly pictorial in Juvenile clothes. But it is not possible for the war to leave all forms of dressing free from its sinister influence. Itjouches the clothes for the young In a gentle way, and the way is not objectionable;. Middle yduth, aS it is expressed at seventeen and younger, finds the avion of France and Italy the most picturesque fields from which to draw a fashion here and there. The oblong cap, the flowing cape with one end draped over the shoulder, are neat and attractive fashions to use up for the summer season. An illusive kind of Sam Brown belt is becogolng a bit common, but it too finds

an abiding place on the coat of a slim little suit Now. however, that such a big ma-, jority of young women find that public opinion permits them to wear breeches, cap and coat for war relief work, they are less apt to use up the military ideas in the more feminine costumes.

In children’s clothes there is little of the war that can be adopted, but

Entirely demure and feminine Is the effect of this pink-and-blue flowered muslin frock. The fichu Is of white organdie; the girdle of -blue taffeta fastened with pink rosebuds. The hat is of blue straw, with deep ruffle of taffeta and pink rose over left ear. Long velvet loop finishes the Kate Greenaway picture.

the plaid sashes from Scotland and Naples and Rome, the short black coats, the multiple pockets, are evidences that war has thrown its shadow\4osmward to the cradle. Adopting Fashions of Age. Between the nursery and middle youth there is a mass of children that must be dressed well throughout the hot season, and for these the designers have turned out enough fashions to supply the demand of a continent of grownups. They smack of sophistication, some of them, and are taken directly from the clothes of their elders. There is the surplice bodice, the Martha Washington collar which resembles a handkerchief, the patentleather belt, • the umbrella skirt, and the short sleeves —which, after all, age has merely, pilfered from youth this spring. There are still touches of an older war in the retention of the top hat and cape coat in two colors, which was adopted from the directoire and the consulate, after the designers could not force them upon women with any degree of success last winter. The organdie frocks, which spring like mushrooms from Bar Harbor to the Florida coast this year, are found to be admirable for youth when it is parading itself in the afternoon. It goes well on even the smallest girl. It is chosen in colors as well as white, and now that colored ribbon sashes are revived by old and young, the organdie takes on the atmosphere of the flowery part of the nineteenth century and fits into the landscape as the sport clothes never do. Grown-Up Fashions In Miniature. It is a fact that you cannot fall to observe, if you have had occasion to study the recently produced clothes for little girls that some of the styles borrowed from—or, rather, suggested by —the styles launched this spring for mamma’s clothes have done rather better in the juvenile version than in the adult. Whatever may be the fate of the eton jacket in grown-up costuraery, true it is that not one woman in ten can wear it to advantage. In short, the eton jacket style goes very much better with children than with their mothers or big sisters. Likewise the collar that is always part of lha picture with the eton . jacket—the round-about collar, that seems to make double chins triple, and hides all the prettiest curves in the grown woman’s neck without concealing any of the ugly ones. It is eminently becoming on, a little girl; in fact, one' never knows what an entirely adorable spot is to be found at the back of a little girl’s neck until one has seen it in thia eton collar. I (Copyright, IMS, by the McClure NeWspe . par

SAINT SURELY WOMAN HATER

Colomba, it Must Be Admitted, Cartied His Aversion to the Feminine Sex to an Extreme. - - ■■ Women have been forbidden on several islands ruled by the Catholic clergy. One of the most famous of these is lona of Icolmkill, called also I or Hy, a small Island of the inner Hebrides, nine miles southeast of Staffa, and separated from the Island of Mull by a channel one and a quarter of a mile wide, called the sound of loe of Icolmkill; It is in Argyleshire, and has a population of about three hundred, whose only occupations are fishing and raising black cattle on the bleak moors. From earliest times the island has been accounted holy and it is still known to the Highlanders as Eilean nah Druineeh —the Sacred Isle of the Druids, for whose rites it was the chief seat. In 563 Conal Christian, king of the Northern Scots, granted it to St. Colomba. Brude, king of Picts, confirmed the gift upon' b el pg converted. Colomba built a chapel and a hospice of wicker and mud thatched with heather among the 360 gray Druidical monoliths, on which rude crosses were sculptured by early converts. Colomba’s aversion to everything feminine was such that he forbade even the keeping of cows on the island, for, he said, “where there is a cow there must be a female, and where there is a female there must be mischief.” Any married tradesman of lona must keep his wife on the neighboring “Woman’s isle.” While the lords of the isle were brought to lona for burial, their wives were buried on the Isle of Finlagah.

WATER NECESSARY TO LIFE

All Vitality Has Been Well Called an “Aquatic Phenomenon,” as FrenchStudent Expressed It. All life is lived in water. Where no water is, no life can be. The necessary machinery may have been already made, as in a completely dried seed, but that seed eannot actually live until water reaches it again. To live is to be wet; or, in the phrase of a French student, “Life is an aquatic phenomenon.” When the supply of water is withheld from living things, they may survive, but their life is slowed down, as it were. In the completely dried seed, life is arrested altogether, yet the creature is not dead. The French call that a case of vie suspendue—or, in our language, suspended animation. After astonishingly long periods, such* seeds will germinate if they are watered. The astronomer tells us that our planet is only one of many belonging to Innumerable suns, and he wonders whether this little “lukewarm bullet” of ours is really unique in bearing a burden of life. There is one path that leads to the answer of his query. If he finds no evidence of water on other worlds, he cannot expect to find life there.

Getting On In Life.

Someone whose hair was growing iron-gray said: “I dm getting on in life.” His friend, who knew him very well, had his doubts. He mistook getting on in years for getting on in life. He was morally and spiritually just about where he had been 30 years before. Nobody gets on in life except those that achieve spiritually. When boyhood’s bad temper persists into manhood, When one is irritable, disobliging, selfish, haughty, proud, self-sufficient, immoral, godless, one should not talk about getting on in life, even if one is as rich as Croesus. To get on in life is to rise in moral stature. It is to have a soul big enough to love and admire without envy, to be content with treasures of the mind, to set character first of all. The man who is. “rich in faith” gets on. The others drift down the years, or accumulate great possessions, but in the essential 'things, the things of eternity, they are waterlogged and stationary.

His Wonderful Memory.

Horace Annesley Vachell, playwright and novelist, had an extraordinary memory, which stood him in very good stead when he wrote his play, “Searchlights.” He composed the play very rapidly — straight off on his typewriter, in sact — and did not trouble to take a copy. In these circumstances, he refused to intrust the precious manuscript to anyone less careful ffian himself. Hailing a motorcar, he brought it up to town, and promptly left it behind him on the seat of the cab! He set himself to retype the play from memory, and just as„he had finished Scotland Yard recovered the missing copy. Mr. Vachell found, on comparing the two scripts, that he had rewritten the play almost word for word!

Functions of Marrow.

A writer in the London Lancet suggests that marrow has a twofold function, not only to nourish, the bone, but to supply a most important internal secretion. As bearing this out, he ? cltes the mortality of 98 per cent in “prlmary” cases of amputation high up the thlglrwhen the patient is in the prime of life, with “secondary” cases in which the mortality is only 60 per cent In the secondary cases, where a diseased condition has existed for some time, there is less shock, according to the writer, because the system has become gradually accustomed to getting along without the marrow In the thigh bone, which contains one-sixth of tbs total amount in all the bones.

HOME TOWN HELPS

MAKE REPAIRS WHEN NEEDED House Owner Owes It to Community to Keep His Property Looking Always at Its Best Keeping the house in repair should be the endeavor of every home owner, for the house in poor condition rapidly decreases in value and the ultimate repair bill is far beyond the expense necessary to fix it at once. A house should be carefully watched for needed repairs, as there are many little leaks and tears, which might require attention that are unnoticed unless then house is systematically gone over once in a while. A shingle or a square of slate found in the yard Is a good Indication that the roof needs attention, and the matter should be attended to at once. If it is delayed the next rainstorm might cause enough water to soak through the roof to ruin the celling and possibly Injure the floors. A broken pane of glass may seem unimportant to attend to at once, but if the wall paper or polished floor get a soaking it will cost much more than the expense of a pane of glass to repair the damage. If the broken window happens to be in the cellar it may cause the freezing of the water pipes or the boiler. The paint on the exterior of the house should receive a share of the attention and should be renewed at least every third year. The life of the house depends on its ability to withstand the ravages of weather, and/ if the paint is in poor condition th'ej house is bound to decrease in value. 7

CITY MUST LOOK TO FUTURE

Timely Comment Made by Indianapolis Newspaper Is Worth Consideration at This Time. City planning is of Immediate interest to many cities In Indiana besides Indianapolis, remarks the News of that city. Many of them are growing rapidly.' They haye enjoyed business booms due to war orders, and this prosperity, even though it may not be wholly substantial, makes necessary permanent Improvements. Municipalities are among the ffew businesses conducted today without a„ definite end in view. Cities grow as the result of conditions developing from time to time. A private enterprise may—and generally does —expand along definite lines. The desirable condition for a municipality would be to apply similar methods. “The time Is ripe,” said a Boston official, who made a tour of our cities, “for the state of Indiana to have a cityplanning commission law, which will benefit your city (South Bend) as well as every other city In Indiana. . . • Seven states have enacted city planning legislation. The state of Massachusetts was the first to adopt such legislation, and according to the law, every city of 10,000 population must have a city planning commission. No improvements' are made in these cities unless the plans have the approval_of the commission, which is composed of five members elected by the people.”

Successful Community Garden.

To relate the experience of a small borough in northern New Jersey last year may encourage others to go and do likewise. The Inhabitants subscribed to a guarantee fund to finance a community garden. The local clergyman was put. in charge of the enterprise. A half day’s plowing was donated, but all other labor was paid for, being done largely by the local boys’ club. Two sacks of potatoes were planted. The crop was largely sold to people who bought them by the bushel in the ground, doing their own digging. The net result was about forty bushels, and the profit, $5.81, was donated to the Y. 11. C. A. war fund. The members of the committee donated their time and the assets were a few hoes. The guarantee fund was never called upon. If every borough or town in the country could do as well the potato crop next year would be Increased a million bushels.

Improvements In House Details.

There are odds and ends about a house which, with little renovation and Improvements, add to the beauty of the house. Front doors are in this class. Formerly wood was used to great advantage and still has not gone ouHrf favor, but glass and metal are slowly becoming popular in this line of house adornment The new idea, that of glass and metal, may be used with taste provided the combination is not ridiculous and in striking contrast to the architecture of the house Itself.

Plan to Beautify Iowa Capitol.

The state executive council expects to employ a landscape artist to work out the planting scheme on the capital extension grounds. It Is highly Important that this work be done by one who is more than a mere tree planter, or one who has trees for sale. The beauty of that future park will depend to- a very large extent upon having a real plan, made by a real landscape artist, and then adhered to. —Burlington Hawk-Eye.