A Little Girl in Old Chicago

by Amanda M. Douglas

I settled down into a housewifely body. Father said now and then, "Oh, that is so like your mother."

He could not discard his crutches. He still kept up his interest in the Prairie Farmer, and had begun to write other articles. The water works were occupying a good deal of attention. The lead mines were inexhaustible. Yet it took almost a week to get to New York. The Illinois and Michigan canal was opened. There were some brick buildings, and two aristocratic blue limestone ones that were pointed out as curiosities, having been built of stone that had been brought in ballast from the lower lakes. Michigan Avenue that was.

The Chicago River was being widened. Sidewalks were laid as the streets were filled up. Old Chicago was passing away, just as the Little Girl had vanished, though father often used the name. Dan had given me all sorts of pet names at first, then he settled down to Ruth.

And so a year passed, two years. Dan was much interested in city affairs, father was making money in the old ways. We had settled down, and I supposed I had all the happiness that comes to married life. No, not all. There was no child to gladden our hearts and draw us together. Homer had another little boy.

In the third year of our married life an incident happened that, perhaps, was an entering wedge in the dissatisfaction that came afterwards. One day father received a letter from a cousin who had married another cousin by the name of Gaynor. She had been left a widow some years before. The homestead had been willed to the eldest son, subject to her life-right in four rooms one side of the hall, and her living from the farm. The three daughters between had married, there was one son, now sixteen, who did not get on at all well with his elder brother. He was a smart, bright boy, with a fair education. Now, he was wild to go to California, but she could not bear to think of the rough life and the temptations, so she was emboldened to write to her cousin, who she heard had done well in Chicago. "Could he put John in the way of anything?"

There was an appeal to old memories that touched me. Father so seldom mentioned his people.

"That's queer, isn't it?" he said, looking up with a dry sort of smile. "John Gaynor! Why, I had forgotten that I had a namesake."

"You might send for him," I suggested. "Sixteen. And if he is a nice boy—why do you give that absent sort of smile?"

"I was thinking. When I was a young fellow of nineteen or so I fell headlong in love with a second cousin, Sarah Parks. She was twenty-three. She reasoned me mostly out of it, and I found she had a fancy for an own cousin, Luther Gaynor. So she married him. Then I went to the western part of the State, and when I had managed to get a little together, married your mother. She sent me a paper with a notice of her husband's death, seven or eight years ago, and I wrote her a letter. It is odd how the old things come back to you. I recovered from my penchant for Sarah when she settled into a regular common farmer's wife."

"Then first love isn't always the best or truest," I said thoughtfully.