A Hoosier Chronicle | Page 9

Washington Street did not cease until 1888, when cobbles
yielded to asphalt. It was in that same year that Benjamin Harrison was

chosen to the seat of the Presidents. What hallowed niches now
enshrine the General's fence, utterly disintegrated and appropriated,
during that bannered and vociferous summer, by pious pilgrims!
Down the busy meridional avenue that opened before Sylvia as they
drove uptown loomed the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument, and they
were soon swinging round the encompassing plaza. Professor Kelton
explained that the monument filled a space once called Circle Park,
where the Governor's Mansion had stood in old times. In her hurried
glimpses Sylvia was unable to account for the lack of sociability among
the distinguished gentlemen posed in bronze around the circular
thoroughfare; and she thought it odd that William Henry Harrison wore
so much better clothes than George Rogers Clark, who was
immortalized for her especial pleasure in the very act of delivering the
Wabash from the British yoke.
"I wonder whether Mrs. Owen will like me?" said Sylvia a little
plaintively, the least bit homesick as they turned into Delaware Street.
"Of course she will like you!" laughed Professor Kelton, "though I will
say that she doesn't like everybody by any manner of means. You
mustn't be afraid of her; she gets on best with people who are not afraid
to talk to her. She isn't like anybody you ever saw, or, I think, anybody
you are ever likely to see again!" And the professor chuckled softly to
himself.
Mrs. Owen's big comfortable brick house stood in that broad part of
Delaware Street where the maple arch rises highest, and it was
surrounded by the smoothest of lawns, broken only by a stone basin in
whose centre posed the jolliest of Cupids holding a green glass
umbrella, over which a jet of water played in the most realistic
rainstorm imaginable.
Another negro, not quite as venerable as the coachman, opened the
door and took their bags. He explained that Mrs. Owen (he called her
"Mis' Sally") had been obliged to attend a meeting of some board or
other, but would return shortly. The guests' rooms were ready and he at
once led the way upstairs, where a white maid met them.

Professor Kelton explained that he must go down into the city on some
errands, but that he would be back shortly, and Sylvia was thus left to
her own devices.
It was like a story book to arrive at a strange house and be carried off to
a beautiful room, with a window-seat from which one could look down
into the most charming of gardens. She opened her bag and disposed
her few belongings and was exploring the bathroom wonderingly (for
the bath at home was an affair of a tin tub to which water was carried
by hand) when a maid appeared with a glass of lemonade and a plate of
cakes.
It was while she munched her cakes and sipped the cool lemonade in
the window-seat with an elm's branches so close that she could touch
them, and wondered how near to this room her grandfather had been
lodged, and what the mistress of the house was like, that Mrs. Owen
appeared, after the lightest tap on the high walnut door. Throughout her
life Sylvia will remember that moment when she first measured Mrs.
Owen's fine height and was aware of her quick, eager entrance; but
above all else the serious gray eyes that were so alive with kindness
were the chief item of Sylvia's inventory.
"I thought you were older,--or younger! I didn't know you would be
just like this! I didn't know just when you were coming or I should have
tried to be at home--but there was a meeting,--there are so many things,
child!"
Mrs. Owen did not sigh at the thought of her burdens, but smiled quite
cheerfully as though the fact of the world's being a busy place was
wholly agreeable. She sat down beside Sylvia in the window-seat and
took one of the cakes and nibbled it while they talked. Sylvia had never
been so wholly at ease in her life. It was as though she had been
launched into the midst of an old friendship, and she felt that she had
conferred the greatest possible favor in consenting to visit this house,
for was not this dear old lady saying,--
"You see, I'm lonesome sometimes and I almost kidnap people to get
them to visit me. I'm a terribly practical old woman. If you haven't

heard it I must tell you the truth--I'm a farmer! And I don't let anybody
run my business. Other widows have to take what the lawyers give
them; but while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I'm going