Helena, Arkansas

“ It is served by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley (Illinois Central) , the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern (Missouri Pacific) , the Arkansas Midland, and the Missouri & North Arkansas railways. Built in part upon “made land,” well protected by levees, and lying within the richest cotton-producing region of the south, the rich timber country of the St Francis river, and the Mississippi “bottom lands,” Helena concentrates its economic interests in cotton-compressing and shipping, the manufacture of cotton-seed products, lumbering and wood-working. ”

“ This circumstance, and the fact that it is the nearest point in the mining region to the head of navigation on the Missouri river at Fort Benton, gave Helena a great start in earlier days, and it is certainly likely to maintain its position as the chief commercial town of Montana territory. It is surrounded by mountains, rising one above the other, till the more distant are lost in the clouds, forming a view of striking beauty and grandeur.
The town itself, so far as we had time to observe, is not well built; the streets are narrow, crooked, and steep ”

“ St Aloysius College and St Vincent’s Academy (Roman Catholic) ; and has a public library with about 35,000 volumes, the Montana state library with about 40,000 volumes, and the state law library with about 24,000 volumes. The city is the commercial and financial centre of the state (Butte being the mining centre) , and is one of the richest cities in the United States in proportion to its population. It has large railway car-shops, extensive smelters and quartz crushers (at East Helena) , and various manufacturing establishments ”

“ We reached Helena before luncheon, and I soon found Miss Duncan, who was expecting me. We did not start back until the second day, so she and I visited all the shops and then drove out to Sulphur Spring. The way everybody and everything have grown and spread out since the Northern Pacific Railroad has been running cars through Helena is most amazing. It was so recently a mining town, just "Last Chance Gulch," where Chinamen were digging up the streets for gold, almost undermining the few little buildings, and Chinamen also were raising delicious celery, where now stand very handsome houses. ”

“ Mrs. Friend hurriedly caught hold of her.
"And you won't do anything hasty—about Lord Donald?"
"Oh, I can't promise anything. One must stand by one's friends. One simply must. But I'll take care Cousin Philip doesn't blame you."
"If I'm no use, you know—I can't stay."
"No use to Cousin Philip, you mean, in policing me?" said Helena, with a good-humoured laugh. "Well, we'll talk about it again to-morrow. Good-night—Lucy!"
The sly gaiety of the voice was most disarming.
"Good-night, Miss Pitstone."
"No, that won't do. It's absurd! I never ask people to call me Helena, unless I like them. ”

“ Helena Pitstone meanwhile walked away by herself to a distant part of the room and turned over photographs, with what seemed to Mrs. Friend a stormy hand. And as she did so, everyone in the room was aware of her, of the brilliance and power of the girl's beauty, and of the energy that like an aura seemed to envelop her personality. Lady Cynthia made several attempts to capture her, but in vain. Helena would only answer in monosyllables, and if approached, retreated further into the dim room, ostensibly in search of a book on a distant shelf, really in flight. ”

“ But about the middle of the lake Buntingford was seized with belated compunction that he had not done his host's duty to his queer, inarticulate cousin, Lady Georgina. "I suppose I ought to have gone to look after her?"
"Not at all," said Helena coolly. "I believe she does it often. She can't want more than Lady Cynthia—and Geoffrey—and Mawson. People shouldn't be pampered!" ”

“ I tested the piny woods of Georgia thoroughly years ago. I drifted there in my young days. I lived there, and taught school there. I grew strong there, and I have always wanted to go back there."
"And now," said Helen, with a charmingly demure glance at the enthusiastic physician, "you want to send Aunt Harriet and poor Me forward as a skirmish-line. There is no antidote in your books for the Ku-Klux."
"You will see new scenes and new people," said Dr. Buxton, laughing. "You will get new ideas; above all, you will breathe the fresh air of heaven spiced with the odor of pines. ”

“ Why did you cut me, not once—but twice—three times—for that beast Donald?"
Helena laughed.
"Now you're beginning!" she said, as she lazily trailed her hand in the water. "It's really comic!"
"What do you mean?"
"Only that I've already quarrelled with Cousin Philip—and Geoffrey—about Lord Donald—so if you insist on quarrelling too, I shall have no friends left."
"Damn Donald! It's like his impudence to ask you to dance at all. It made me sick to see you with him. He's the limit. Well, but—I'm not going to quarrel about Donald, Helena—I'm not going to quarrel about anything. ”

“ Now the men would have begged for invitations. They even began to attend church; and Helena's "evening" was so crowded that she was obliged to ask five or six of her girl friends to help her. Alan Rush, Eugene Fort, Carter Howard, a Southerner of charming manners, infinite tact, and little conversation, and "Dolly" Webster, a fledgeling of enormous length and well-proportioned brain, were her shadows, her serfs, her determined, trembling adorers. They barely hated one another, so devoured were they by the sovereign passion ”

“ Afterwards, the rain seemed to have cleared off a little, and through the yellow twilight a thin stream of people, driving or on foot, began to pour past the inn, towards the hills. Helena ran upstairs to put on an oilskin hat and cape over her white dress.
"You're coming to help light the bonfire?" said Geoffrey, addressing Philip.
Buntingford shook his head. He turned to Lucy.
"You and I will let the young ones go—won't we? I don't see you climbing Moel Dun in the rain, and I'm getting too old! We'll walk up the road a bit, and look at the people as they go by. ”

“ It is said to be the richest city of its size in the United States, an assertion which we have good reasons for believing to be correct. The vast mineral region surrounding Helena is unsurpassed anywhere for the number and richness of its gold and silver-bearing lodes, having within an area of twenty-five miles over three thousand such natural deposits, the ownership of which is duly recorded, and many of which are being profitably worked. ”

“ The surrounding country is both mineral and agricultural, and the city is principally made up of homes of cattlemen and miners. It is well-built, having good hotels and public buildings, chief among these being the government building, the state capitol and the county courthouse. Helena has excellent parish and public school systems, a high school costing $150,000, the Montana Wesleyan University, Saint Vincent's Academy and state and city libraries. ”

“ My trustees pay Lord Buntingford whatever I cost him, and I shall have a good deal to spend. I shall have a horse—and perhaps a little motor. The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip's balmy, and cut up quite rough when I spoke to him about it."
"Done it what?" said Mrs. Friend faintly.
"Balmy. Don't you know that expression?" Helena, on the floor with her hands under her knees, watched her companion's looks with a grin. "It's our language now, you know—English—the language of us young people. The old ones have got to learn it, as we speak it! ”

“ He stood before her, in an ecstasy of pleasure.
"Helena!—you are a vision—a dream: Don't fade away! I wish we could stay here for ever."
"Am I a vision?" She put out a mischievous hand, and pinched him. "But come here, Geoffrey—come up beside me—look! Anybody sitting here could see a good deal of the lake!"
He squeezed in beside her, and true enough, through a natural parting in the branches, which no one could have noticed from outside, the little creek, with their boat in it, was plainly visible, and beyond it the lights on the lawn. ”

“ Helena, the second point of importance in the Territory, is one hundred and twenty-five miles north from Virginia. We travel to it over a fine, hard road, through the low valleys of the Missouri. The beauty and richness of these valleys increase as we leave Virginia, and everywhere the green spots are becoming the homes of thrifty farmers. On the divide near Boulder Creek are wonderful proofs of the gradual levelling of the mountains, in the huge blocks of rock piled up in the most grotesque shapes. Many of these are colossal pillars, surmounted by boulders weighing many tons. ”

“ After having been immured for some three years in close attendance on an invalided woman shut up in two rooms, she was like a person walking along a dark road and suddenly caught in the glare of motor lamps. Brought into contact with such a personality as Helena Pitstone promised to be, she felt helpless and half blind. A survival, too; for this world into which she had now stepped was one quite new to her. Yet when she had first shut herself up in Lancaster Gate she had never been conscious of any great difference between herself and other women or girls. ”

“ The Northern Pacific Railroad runs through this wonderful State, with so great a future before it. Helena, the capital city of Montana, was originally a mining camp, and early prophecies were that it would not outlive the mining enthusiasm. These prophecies, however, have proved entirely mistaken. It is no longer a mere mining town, with rough, busy, uncultured men rushing hither and thither in the eager pursuit of their daily avocation. It is now not only the judicial capital of Montana, but it is also the great center of educational advance. ”

“ Please—how many men were you making fools of—including your humble servant—before you went down to Beechmark? You have no conscience, Helena! You are the 'Belle Dame sans merci.'"
"All that is most unjust—and ridiculous!" said Helena mildly.
Peter went off into a peal of laughter. Helena persisted.
"What do you call flirting, Peter?"
"Turning a man's head—making him believe that you're gone on him—when, in fact, you don't care a rap!"
"Peter!—then of course you know I never flirted with you!" said Helena, with vigour. Peter hesitated, and Helena at once pursued her advantage. ”

“ The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena is (182) full of sulphur and of boiling springs. The Geysers are famous; they were the great health resort of the Indians before the coming of the whites. Lake County is dotted with spas; Hot Springs and White Sulphur Springs are the names of two stations on the Napa Valley Railroad; and Calistoga itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling, subterranean lake. At one end of the hotel enclosure are the springs from which it takes its name, hot enough to scald a child seriously while I was there. ”

“ They were to be married soon, and then, realising one of the dreams of his life, they were to visit America, for his mother's blood called to him to go there, to see the great new world—yes, but above all to stand, with Helena's quivering hand in his, on that rock at Plymouth, where a handful of fearless men and women had landed on a bleak and hungry coast, afraid of no fate, for God was with them, and in two short centuries had peopled a vast continent and created one of the mightiest empires of the earth. ”

“ Claim all the freedom you like—but as you're not twenty-five, but nineteen—let a good fellow like Buntingford give you advice—and be thankful!"
"Prig!" said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he caught and put in his button-hole. "If that isn't preaching, I should like to know what is!"
"Not at all. Unbiased opinion—civilly expressed. If you really were an emancipated young woman, Helena, you'd take it so! But now—" his tone changed—"let's come to business. What have you and Philip been quarrelling about?" ”

“ Here was the "new woman" indeed, in her best aspect. He could not but compare the Helena of this adventure—this competent and admirable Helena—with the girl of the night before. Had the war produced the same dual personality in thousands of English men and English women?—in the English nation itself?
They drew up at the steps of the market-hall, where a group of persons were standing, including a nurse in uniform. Buntingford came forward, and bending over the side of the car, said to Helena:
"Do you want to be relieved? There are several people here who could drive the car." ”

“ Fair Helena!' Pluck me, wench, but the lord Antonio knows sound nuts! And sly! Why hear you now! he gets the duke to seize on the maid! The fox! The rat! Have I not heard him in his chamber these [ 30 ] thirty nights puff her name out his window with as many honeyed drawls of passion as—as—as—June has buds? 'Sweet Helena!'—la! 'Fair Helena!'—O! 'Dear Helena! my rose! my queen! my sun and moon and stars! Thy kiss is still at my lips, thy breast beats still on mine! my Helena!'—Um! Oh, 'tmust be a rare damsel. I'll make a sluice between her purse and mine, wench; do you hear?"
Hæmon: Well—well? ”

“ The way thence from Missoula is over a comparatively level stretch of country, until just west of Helena the road strikes the Main Divide of the Rocky Mountains, and to cross this broken region it is compelled to pursue a winding way.
Helena is reputed to be the richest city of its size in all the world, a claim well supported by appearances, for while having probably 15,000 inhabitants, it has all the conveniences of our largest cities, and in no other place of equal population are the public buildings and residences so magnificent and palatial. ”