Our growth must answer to the swell and strain
Of thew and sinew toward the ultimate gain;
The warrior’s worth is measured by his pain.
Upward our hopes are flung, like tongues of fire.
The dreams denied unendingly aspire;
The soul must take the shape of its desire.
THE WOOING OF “HOLY CALM”
BY MARION HAMILTON CARTER
MISS ASHBELL’S first name was Matilda, but everybody at her boarding-house called her “Miss Mittie” by way of friendliness to a stranger; nor did they express much wonder as to what had brought her from Philadelphia to Laramie, because to a Wyomingite it is the most natural thing in the world that anybody should forsake every other place in the world for Wyoming, the only wonder being that millions more did not do it all the time. Possibly these dwellers on the altitudes would have thought her being in Laramie still more natural had they seen the house of her birth and rearing, one of those three-hundred-and-forty-seven-thousand-all-just-alike homes for which Philadelphia is famous, each with its bath-room, each bath-room with its cake of Cashmere bouquet soap, each parlor with its onyx-topped table between the two lace-curtained windows; and outside, white marble steps, and white, solid wood shutters to keep the Indians out at night. That is, they were to keep the Indians out, but as the Indians went faster than Philadelphia, the shutters are there yet. And Miss Mittie missed them dreadfully in Laramie; it didn’t seem like home if you couldn’t barricade at night, and scrub white marble steps in the morning.
But at Mrs. Ingersoll’s store, where Miss Mittie “had the ribbons,” they called her “Holy Calm,” pronouncing it “ca’m.” Coming from peaceful nights behind white, solid shutters, calm was to be expected, though perhaps not so much of it as Miss Mittie had. Her calm was of the peculiarly Quaker variety that exasperated you to the depths: instantly your desire was to ruffle it, to tear it open, and find out what was underneath, and if it were calm all through, and holy, or just put on for effect. And you felt somehow that the Lord made her on Sunday, after He had rested from His labors in the meetings attended by her father and mother; and by the same token, you felt that the Lord made Roddy McQueed on Monday, as a preliminary to getting the creative hand in on original chaos. It is beyond me to determine why these two should have been each other’s particular fate, yet such was the case.