Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1909 — MATCHMAKING. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MATCHMAKING.

A Story of Love Between Intellectual People. By WAYNE 8. BORROW. [Copyright, 1909, by American Frees Association,] A little dark woman dressed in a kimono was arranging a mahogany tea table, with claws to its legs, on which ■re a teapot, dainty china cups and ulcers, cream and sugar bowls. The apartment was as daintily furnished as the tea table. Persian rugs were on the floor, damask and lace curtains hung in the windows, while a profusion of bric-a-brac was scattered about It was an apartment that a man would never dare enter, for should he turn around suddenly his coattail would be sure to sweep some valuable bit of china on to the floor, of course breaking it into fragments. A woman large and fair entered. “You poor thing! You look fagged to death.” "I am, dear. I’m dead already. This is my ghost that wants a cup of tea.” The little dark woman in the klmonc pushed the large fair one into an easy

chair, dipped out batplna and die-

posea oi tne gorgeous picture hat that crowned a blond pompadour. •Tm sure you’re an angel. Laura. Perhaps this poor ghost has got to heaven.” “Tell me about it,” said the other sympathetically. “You haven’t lost flesh over It, Anne.” The visitor laughed ruefully. “Do I lose flesh over anything?” she Inquired. “But 1 have taken what Jack calls my annual vow and swear-off from clubs. The federation may federate in any town it sees fit. I’ll not go near it. No. I’ll not!” as her hostess laughed and refilled her teacup. “This vow is not to be annually broken—only annually renewed. “You see. it was like this: It was worse than an ordinary federation meeting, for 1 had Myra Reed Morton and her daughter Lily’s love affairs on my mind. You know, Professor Henry of the university has been desperately in love with Lily for a year, only be doesn’t know it, poor soul! He’s bo wound up in his ’ologies and knowledges that he doesn’t understand what be wants.” “And you were trying to help him, you matchmaking creature!” suggested Laura. “Of course I was! Isn’t Myra Reed a widow and one of my dearest friends, and isn’t Lily the sweetest and best girl of her age 1 know? I’ve invited the professor to my bouse and listened to his theories till”— “Till you’re very, very tired of it,” agreed the other sympathetically. The sufferer nodded. 'Tve given him every chance in the world to be alone with Lily, and I’ve tried—well, it sounds brutal to put it Just that way—but I’ve tried to shield Myra’s little idiosyncrasies from the son-in-law 1 hoped she would have. “Then along came this miserable federation meeting, and the evil one counseled me to put Myra on the program. Some madness led me to think that she would actually follow instructions and give me a paper on colonial families of Virginia—that for the Daughters, you know. In my besotted state of mind 1 ran and invited the professor to be present at that particular meeting. To invite him It was necessary to Invite the entire faculty unless I wanted to seem desperately special. Ob. Laura, 1 don’t know whether 1 have fortitude to go on.”’ “Yes, you have,” her friend insisted. “Take a wafer and several long breaths. Did Susie Allingham faint? I heard the most garbled account of the thing.” “Faint? No more than you or I. She had promised me to have a paper on traveling libraries and a full report. Five minutes before the reading | asked her how long her paper was

and would sEe please let me glance over it The shameless creature hadn’t the scratch of a pen. She said she was going to give us a little talk, and she was shaking like a leaf with stage fright right then. Oh. yes, she pretended to faint!” “You can't quite say that can you? You didn’t have a physician present or test her with a redhot iron?” The president of the Bpare Momenta club giggled comfortably. “1 rather think the latter. J e Courtney—you know what a soldier Jane is—oh, a grenadier! Well, perhaps Jane had been on foot all day looking after the refreshments and various things that nobody else wants to, and when she saw Susie keel over she turned around and remarked: That Allingham girl looks a sight with her bonnet knocked over one ear, and her switch Is coming loose. Good gracious. It’ll fall off In another minute!' “ There was soft murmur of appreciation from the other side of the table. “And Susie?” “Susie opened one eye to see who it was talking, and then she changed her mind about fainting. My, but she was mad! She wept. L had to fill her number on the program with some music. I didn’t care. By that time it was all a mad, seething, boning whirlpool of managing to make something do for something else anyhow.” “But about Myra?” “Oh, yes! Well, Myra came, and so did all the professors. 1 had no idea those men were so interested in women’s clubs. What do you suppose that woman had done in place of anything on earth about colonial Virginia?” “Something wild, of course.” “Something wild? I like your phrase. It was bloodcurdling! She had diagrams! 1 thought 1 should sink when she drew those diagrams out. You know, she’s a fanatic on some new ism about reforming the world by setting down and holding your breath and thinking about something else.” “Not a bad idea,” with carefully preserved gravity. “And you put it so lucidly, Anne. I think I could do that myself.” “Ob, well, you know! The kind of thing that used to be in the front of the first readers when you and I were babies at Bcbool. You sit down and shut your teeth and say, ‘l—am—in—it, he—is—in—it,’ or something like that.” “No. dear. It’s ‘assertions’ that you mean. You build them into your character by saying them over that way.” “Laura.” in a tragic tone, “you’re almost as bad as she is! I don’t want to build things into my character. You talk as if it was a summer cottage. Oh, dear me. 1 haven’t a shred of character left since Myra disgraced me as she did! She got to talking about things that weren't quite nice, it seemed to me, for a mixed audience, and 1 was in agony because I bad Lily portioned off with the professor there in the back room.

“1 could see the other men trying not to laugh. and 1 felt so apologetic—so abject! If 1 could have crawled out under the seats, dnsting those men’s boots as I went I should have been glad. Then came the diagrams! A large' pink thing meant your natural affections. Laura, do you love people In that shade of pink? Because, If you do, pray never love me any. "A blue wedge was for your—for your—lntellectual capacity, I think. 1 hadn’t any by the time that came Some green streaks, she told us, stood for patience, but mine was at an end. I pulled the back of her frock and whispered to her, ‘Where is your paper on colonial Virginia families?’ Laura, that aggravating creature looked across her shoulder at me as serenely as she will look at her son-in-law when she runs right over him, and she said, loud enough for everybody to bear: ‘Oh. this is a much more Important matter, my dear. This concerns the source and origin of man and his cosmic destiny.’ Laura, what is cosmic destiny? Do you suppose you and I each have one?” Her hostess got breath finally from the smothered laughter that had greeted the diagrams. “Never mind your cosmic destiny, honey,” she counseled. “Teil me what the professor and Lily did.” “I was in agony for them. Some of Myra’s remarks were very plain and hardly the things for young girls to hear, let alone girls accompanied by gentlemen. But there 1 I might have spared myself worry. It seems 1 am only a plain fool.” “Oh. no,” remonstrated her friend slyly. “Nobody would ever say that of you.” “I’d rather be a plain fool than a pretty one,” retorted the other. “And that’s what Myra Morton and her like call me, 1 know! It seems that Myra is a brilliant woman and that 1 had only made trouble and retarded things, instead of helping.” “How was that?” “Oh, the professor is deeply interested in the particular ism that Myra is exploiting just now. 1 suppose be loves Lily in that shade of pink and does his thinking In blue wedges and has streaks of green patience. Anyhow, he said that Myra’s diagrams were very Illuminating. He was up lu the crowd congratulating her on that disgraceful performance. 1 saw that both be and Lily looked mightily pleased about something, and after the thing was over he told me confidentially—l have been encouraging his confidential talks, you know, during the past year—that the bearing of that paper had removed the last shadow of a barrier between himself and Myra’s daughter.” “Barrier?” “Oh. yes; I have been trying to tell him shoot Myra and prepare him for what he might expect, and 1 suppose my opinion of her crankism and Professor Henry’s don’t precisely agree.” “They wouldn’t naturally.” slipped from Laura’s lips, and then was remitted.

’Don’t you tell me that 1 mean well!” taming sharply. “I’ll bear anything but that No doubt it’s what the professor and Lily and Myra Reed Morton are saying of me this minute. They are sitting and holding their breaths and thinking about something else and saying that 1 am a well meaning creature who lacks sense.” “Well,” commented her friend crisply, “if they can do all that at one time 1 believe I’ll investigate the system myself.”

" GREEN STREAKS." SHE TOLD US, "STOOD FOR PATIENCE.”