The 50-Year Marriage That Defied Poverty: A Spokane Woman’s Quest for Work

A LITTLE OLD WOMAN AND HER HUSBAND.

Here is a paragraph from "the short and simple annals of the poor" whose telling needs no bush, nor grandeur here with a disdainful smile.

She was a little old woman good to see and came from an interior [Washington town] on a trip to Spokane. She and her husband owned a one-acre place in the village on which was built their cottage. The season had been an unprofitable one. The fires had ruined their crops. The husband was hurt by a fall and his shoulder permanently disabled. Debts accumulated. Besides the $50 mortgage on their home they owed another $50.

One hundred dollars is not much to you, possibly, but to these simple souls it was a mountain of debt. They had pennies rather than dollars in their arithmetic.

Finally the wiry little woman looked the situation fully in the face and made up her mind. There must be "a hazard of new fortunes." She packed her satchel, put on her best, bade her husband with whom she had lived 50 years good bye, and got on the train for Spokane.

Concerning the trip the unsophisticated soul told a reporter: "It was pleasant all along. Everybody was ready to help me. A man helped me in the station and the conductor seemed really sorry when I got off the train."

Surely "sweet mercy is nobility's true badge." The nobleness that slept in other hearts rose to meet the nobleness in the heart of the little old woman.

She had been told by her pastor to go to the Salvation Army headquarters in the city. Naively she described her reception: "They gave me my dinner just as if I was a visitor. All along it has seemed as if everybody just dropped their work to take care of me."

Guileless gentle old soul.

But she did not forget her mission. She had not come to the city to be a burden or to lean on some charity society. There wasn't a drop of pauper's blood in her old veins. Her blue, honest old eyes looked straight at people as she said:

"I want to work and I want to work hard."

There was a look in her eyes like that of Napoleon's as, sturdy legs wide apart and hands behind his back, he watched the wage of battle. Fifty years of drudgery had failed to quench the spirit which like a conqueror's flashed from those faded blue eyes.

Of course she got work. An institution was found that wanted just that sort of woman. And the wages were beyond her dreams of recompense.

That's all. Save only that a lonesome, broken-down, lame old fellow in the old cottage potters about, doing the chores and cooking his own meals, keeping the home as best he can until "Mother" comes back from Spokane.

And the heartstrings that reach from the city to the little cottage, how cruelly they are stretched! And the letters? Ah, you haven't loved one woman 60 years and their scribbling would not interest you.

But your throat aches between pity for the brave old wife in Spokane and the brave old fellow at home.