A Little Girl in Old Chicago

by Amanda M. Douglas

I was very sorry to have her go. I had grown fond of the baby, who was a great chatterbox and extremely funny little chap, and M'liss was an excellent cook, good and strong, and housework was hard for girls and women in those days.

There was all the new part to clean and set to rights. We had a fine whitewashed wall and a thick soft rag carpet. My chamber opened on this room as well as father's. Then there was a big room upstairs that we did not need at present.

M'liss was married in the morning and went to her new home at once. We both cried at the parting, for we were to be nearly two miles apart.

"I don't mind anything so much as that," she said. "If I could run in every day or two and cook a meal for you. I don't believe that old Jolette will be worth her salt, and you've studied books so much that I am afraid your poor father'll starve."

Jolette was not so very old, perhaps forty, of rather mixed Indian and negro extraction, quite tattooed by the Indians. She had come up from Vincennes some years before, and had three children, who were bound out in various families.

"She'll do for the present," said father. "But I'd like to have some nice kind of white woman who could be motherly, and know what was fitting for a girl."

Father kept a boy now, a rather loutish young lad, just the kind to do the rough work, chop wood and feed the stock. Andy always came for me with a lantern if I was out in the evening where the Hayne boys could not see me home.

All the fall I had one happy thought in my mind—Norman would be home when the winter broke up. They had gone to New York, and were to visit Washington. Mr. Le Moyne was deeply interested in some trade relations that he expected to lay before the governing powers at Washington. Norman was delighted. To see the President and both houses of Congress was beyond his wildest dream.

There was quite a merry making at Christmas. March or before, Norman had said. And now what with railroads coming to the fore and stage coaches, journeys were more readily made, and letters reached one oftener.

Then came the heart-breaking tidings. A long letter beginning so bravely. New York had proved very interesting with its landmarks of earlier times and its peculiar location. Washington had still many signs of newness. It had not grown by accretion, but been planned at once, and all the plans had not been executed as yet. But the capital and the White House were superb. And the great squares that were to be embellished in the future, the historic points, the adornments progressing slowly, the Senate Chamber and House of Representatives, and the great men of that day were vividly described.