▌

putterings       451a   <   vandeveer_19100528           index

Esther Vandeveer. “A Dream that Faded”
 

Esther Vandeveer, “A Dream that Faded”
Bluefield Evening Leader (Bluefield, West Virginia; May 28, 1910) : 4
via Virginia Chronicle / Library of Virginia : link

entirety below —
 

1. “Isn’t there a romance in your life, grandma?,” said a little girl to whom her grandmother had been telling stories.
2. “Oh, yes. There are romances in the lives of all of us.”
3. “Well, grandma, tell me yours.”
4. “Let me see. I was but eighteen when my father — your great-grandfather, you know — hired a farm hand who came along just at the beginning of the harvest season. I will call him Elisha. We girls used to help get in the grain in those days, and sometimes I used to go out and help on purpose to be with Elisha. He was two years older than I, and I considered him very handsome. I was at that age when a girl’s heart goes out naturally, and mine went out to Elisha.
5. “One evening about sunset when we were alone together among the wheat we sat down on a pile of sheafs to talk. Elisha put his arm around me and kissed me. Then he told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him.
6. “I was too young — at any rate, too unsophisticated — to know the next thing to be done, which was for Elisha to go to my father and ask for me. He didn’t do this, hut when the first natural outpouring of love was over I asked him if I should say anything about our affair to father or mother. He told me to say nothing at present.
7. “I waited, no one but Elisha and I knowing what was between us, till the harvest was all in and my lover was paid off. That day he took me off where we would be alone and said to me:
8. “‘Your father wouldn’t think of giving you to me. I haven’t a cent in the world. We must wait. I’ll try during the next few years to get a start, then I will come back and ask for you.’
9. “My heart stood still. How could I wait several years for him to come back to me? Each year would seem a century. In three years I would be twenty-one. and that seemed to me then to mark a girl as an old maid. But there was nothing to be done, so I said goodby to Elisha, and he went away.
10. “There was a farmer near us who stood very high in the community. He was but twenty-eight years old, and yet he had been in the legislature of the state. He seemed to me to be a hundred years old. He used to come to our place and talk with father about things that I didn’t understand — tariff and free trade, raising money to build railroads to take our grain to market, and all that. When we were all in the living room in the evening, and father and Mr. Baxter, I’ll call hint, were talking about these things and the slavery question in the south and the troubles in Kansas I used to sit at my needlework and wonder what they meant, for I didn’t understand a word of it all.
11. “Then one day father surprised me by telling me that Mr. Baxter had proposed for me, and father hoped I would accept him since the match would be such a good one for me.
12. “‘Isn’t that a funny way to propose for a girl?’ I asked. ‘I supposed the lover proposed to the girl instead of her father.’
13. “‘The most honorable way is to usk permission of her father to speak to her.’
14. “All this was too formal, too unnatural for me. I told father that I would not have Mr. Baxter; he was altogether too old for me. And when father said he was just the right age I replied that be seemed too old anyway.
15. “Father was obliged to fell Mr. Baxter that I wouldn’t have him, and Mr. Baxter only said that he was very sorry, but he wouldn’t think of permitting the least influence to be brought to bear on me to induce me to accept him, I didn’t tell any one that my heart had been given to a farm hand. Indeed, I didn’t dare tell. I couldn’t have braved father’s anger and contempt. I ground my teeth together and resolved to wait for Elisha. I waited two years, and he didn’t come. I waited two years more. Meanwhile Mr. Baxter had been away much of the time. He had been elected to congress. Then I heard father say that he was sure of the nomination for governor.
16. “This didn’t Interest me. I didn’t care if he was president. What I wanted was that which would satisfy the cravings of my heart — I wanted Elisha.
17. “It was five years after Elisha had gone away and three after Mr. Baxter had proposed for me tbat I saw one morning when I was standing on the porch a man coming down the road. His clothes were city cut, though not fashionable. He stopped at the gate and asked me how far it was to Boonton. I told him, and be said, ‘You don’t seem to remember me.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. ‘Sorry; I thought you would.’ A suspicion came to me when he said this that that he was Elisha. I dreaded lest he was, for somehow I didn’t like his looks. I can’t tell you what there was about him I didn’t fancy, it was everything. The fact is that I had been changing during these years he had been away from me and now saw him for what he was — a very commonplace man.
18. “Well, do you know, I turned and went into the house. The man went on. My dream was ended. In a few weeks I was engaged to Mr. Baxter.
19. “But, grandma, you haven’t had two husbands, have you?”
20. “No, I only called him Mr. Baxter. He is your grandfather.”
     

Quotation marks corrected, where needed.
 

30 July 2024