University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

THE letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on
the evening of setting out to seek his fortune in the
west, found that young lady in her own father's house in
Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the many charming
suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is territorially
one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented
from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by
the intrusive strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts
it off from the Atlantic ocean. It is a city of steady thrift,
the arms of which might well be the deliberate but delicious
terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to its feasts.

It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence
of it that made Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with
the out-doors nor the in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the
city to show some country visitors Independence Hall, Girard
College and Fairmount Water Works and Park, four objects
which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without
having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of
them, and also of the Mint. She was tired of other things.
She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a
simple song in a sweet. but slightly metallic voice, and then

seating himself by the open window, read Philip's letter.

Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the
fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that
world which his entrance into her tradition-bound life
had been one of the means of opening to her? Whatever
she thought, she was not idly musing, as one might see by
the expression of her face. After a time she took up a book;
it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as interesting
to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her
face was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed
in it that she did not notice the entrance of her mother at
the open door.

“Ruth?”

“Well, mother,” said the young student, looking up, with
a shade of impatience.

“I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans.”

“Mother, thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield; the
school stifled me, it's a place to turn young people into dried
fruit.”

“I know,” said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile,
“thee chafes against all the ways of Friends, but what will
thee do? Why is thee so discontented?”

“If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out
of this dead level.”

With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother
answered, “I am sure thee is little interfered with; thee
dresses as thee will, and goes where thee pleases, to any
church thee likes, and thee has music. I had a visit yesterday
from the society's committee by way of discipline,
because we have a piano in the house, which is against the
rules.”

“I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible
for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee
is never in the room when it is played. Fortunately father
is already out of meeting, so they can't discipline him. I
heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often

[ILLUSTRATION]

RUTH'S MOTHER MAKES ENQUIRIES.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 134. In-line image of two women in a parlor talking with one another. One is sitting and the other is by the piano.] for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined to
have what compensation he could get now.”

“Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I
desire thy happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a
dangerous path. Is thy father willing thee should go away
to a school of the world's people?”

“I have not asked him,” Ruth replied with a look that
might imply that she was one of those determined little
bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled
others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.

“And when thee has got the education thee wants,
and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the ways
of thy ancestors, what then?”

Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive
face and not the slightest change of tone, said,

“Mother, I'm going to study medicine?”

Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual
placidity.

“Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study
medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months?

And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought
of the dissecting rooms?”

“Mother,” said Ruth calmly, “I have thought it all over.
I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room
and all. Does thee think I lack nerve? What is there to
fear in a person dead more than in a person living?”

“But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand
the severe application. And, besides, suppose thee does
learn medicine?”

“I will practice it.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“Where thee and thy family are known?”

“If I can get patients.”

“I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee
opens an office,” said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm
that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.

Ruth sat quite still for a time, with face intent and flushed.
It was out now. She had begun her open battle.

The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city.
Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard
College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised
for the shelter of poor orphans? Think of the stone shingles
of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if
they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with
its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place
in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans,
would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple?

And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest
and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no
end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe
that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point
upon which the weary eye could rest.

But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders
of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our
fathers sit always signing the Declaration, impressed the
visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street
windows, and the bargains on Eighth street. The truth is that

the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly
Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that
religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for
the opera in more worldly circles.

“Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?” asked one
of the girls.

“I have nothing to wear,” replied that demure person. “If
thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and
conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the
Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from either color or
shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied
mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade
for her new bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But
thee won't see there a sweeter woman than mother.”

“And thee won't go?”

“Why should I? I've been again and again. If I go to
Meeting at all I like best to sit in the quiet old house in
Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see
the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It's such a crush at
the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's the row
of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare
at us as we come out. No, I don't feel at home there.”

That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room
fire, as they were quite apt to do at night. It was
always a time of confidences.

“Thee has another letter from young Sterling,” said Eli
Bolton.

“Yes. Philip has gone to the far west.”

“How far?”

“He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map
everything beyond it is marked `Indians' and `desert,' and
looks as desolate as a Wednesday Meeting.”

“Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he
going to start a daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?' '

“Father, thee's unjust to Philip. He's going into business.”

“What sort of business can a young man go into without
capital?”

“He doesn't say exactly what it is,” said Ruth a little

dubiously, “but it's something about land and railroads, and
thee knows, father, that fortunes are made nobody knows
exactly how, in a new country.”

“I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one
too. But Philip is honest, and he has talent enough, if he
will stop scribbling, to make his way. But thee may as well
take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go dawdling along with
a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is a little
more settled what thee wants.”

This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly,
for she was looking away with that abstraction of vision
which often came into her grey eyes, and at length she
exclaimed, with a sort of impatience,

“I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What
a box women are put into, measured for it, and put in young;
if we go anywhere it's in a box, veiled and pinioned and shut
in by disabilities. Father, I should like to break things and
get loose.”

What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.

“Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time
comes, child; women always have; but what does thee want
now that thee hasn't?”

“I want to be something, to make myself something, to do
something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction
because I am a girl? What would happen to me if
thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful
thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and
the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me
to lead a useless life?”

“Has thy mother led a useless life?”

“Somewhat that depends upon whether her children
amount to anything,” retorted the sharp little disputant.
“What's the good, father, of a series of human beings who
don't advance any?”

Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress,
and was out of Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of
doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked
with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his,

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE LETTER.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 138. In-line image of a man reading a letter with a hate and a cane.] hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. But he only said,

“Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose
it is a career thee wants?”

Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her
mother didn't understand her. But that wise and placid
woman understood the sweet rebel a great deal better than
Ruth understood herself. She also had a history, possibly,
and had sometime beaten her young wings against the cage
of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and
had passed through that fiery period when it seems possible
for one mind, which has not yet tried its limits, to break up
and re-arrange the world.

Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time and in the most
cordial and unsentimental
manner. Philip liked the
letter, as he did everything
she did; but he had a dim
notion that there was more
about herself in the letter
than about him. He took
it with him from the Southern
Hotel, when he went to
walk, and read it over and
again in an unfrequented
street as he stumbled along.
The rather common-place
and unformed hand-writing
seemed to him peculiar
and characteristic, different
from that of any other woman.

Ruth was glad to hear
that Philip had made a push into the world, and she was
sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him.
She should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that
the Indians, in St. Louis, would not take his scalp.

Philip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished
that he had written nothing about Indians.