A WHITE RIBBON STORY


She was born on Christmas Day, and so came, with her little white
face and solemn eyes, into her pale mother's life. She was worse than
fatherless. The beast of a man she might have come to call by that
sacred name, would now be beside the snowy cot, weeping in maudlin
rejoicing over his new treasure, if the mother had not resolutely put
him away some six months before.

The world knew him as Judge Barrett, a man of fine family, superb
talents, and a magnetic orator. He might be, perhaps, too convivial on
occasions, but was not this a common frailty among Kentucky's great
men? The wife knew him as besotted and disgusting. What mattered his
learning, his eloquence, his aristocratic blood, or ample income? To her
alone he brought his degraded mass of humanity day after day; and though
never personally unkind to her, or to the little boy that died, she was
enabled by the might of her tearless agony beside that tiny bier, to cut
the last tie that bound her to the blear-eyed creature sobbing on the
other side. The last tie? Ah, woe was she! The coming time brought into
her desolate life the frail link she must now take up; and in the first
bitter realization of her wronged womanhood, the mother-love lay
dormant.

As the months went by the little Ruth twined herself in every fiber
about that lonely mother's heart, till she was loved with a love that
was pain. So jealously guarded, too, that never once had the father's
eyes fallen upon her, not even by chance. In vain he sent appeals just
to look on his little daughter; he would ask no more. He was refused,
and the baby's nurse did not dare transgress.