Free The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

"Newspaper! The Missouri Democrat! Tomorrow’s news tonight!"
    We were hardly out of our cabin and had only begun pushing our way through the mob trying to get onto the Mary Ida, when I saw that they had begun unloading the freight. Seeing this, too, Mr. Newton began urging me through the crowd with some insistence, his one hand grasping my elbow tightly and his other arm outstretched. A few men scowled at us as they gave way, and one muttered, "Boat must be about to explode! Save yourself, brother!" as I was hurried past, but then all we did on the levee was stand there as the boxes came off the boat. Almost the very last was the one Mr. Newton was waiting for, and when he saw it, he relaxed.
    This box, with our two small bags, he directed to accompany us to the Vandeventer House. The others were to be loaded onto the Independence for passage to Kansas. I must say that what had seemed a vast pile of baggage when we left Quincy now seemed but a paltry collection of trinkets easily dragged away by the (no doubt) sneering draymen. Kansas! Kansas! If busy Saint Louis was so vast and frightening, how much more so the solitudes of Kansas!
    I WILL PASS OVER our ride through the busy streets and my impression of the Vandeventer House. If I were to linger over everything new, I would prolong my story far past the reader’s patience. Suffice it to say that all things were fresh to me, and the moments, which passed slowly, were full of shock, interest, and some fear. I sensed that Mr. Newton, too, felt more strange than he expected to, and more tempted by dread and low spirits. From time to time, we exchanged a glance. I could hardly see his face in the darkness, yet I knew he was full of wonder at how little we had foreseen, he had foreseen, the consequences of our impulses. I said to him in a low voice, "We are true Americans now, husband. We don’t know where we are going or what for, nor do we know anyone we’re traveling with. But we’re perfectly certain it will all turn out best in the end."
    He took my fingers in his and spread them apart, staring at my hand as at a strange and wonderful object. At last, he said, "Better than Quincy?"
    "Already better than Quincy."
    The conviction of my reply perked him up, and I saw for the first time that I wasn’t merely to follow him to Kansas but was sometimes to lead him. My husband was less sure of himself than my suitor had been.
    In our room at the Vandeventer House, he set our little carpet bags by the door and the large, heavy box, which he’d carried up the stairs with the heaving and groaning help of the porter, between the bed and the window.
    There were two chairs beside the window, and after I took off my bonnet, Mr. Newton led me to one of them and sat himself in the other. We rocked back and forth without speaking. We had the bridal room, which meant that no one else was sleeping in our room with us, though should our departure be delayed, we would have to move the next day. The bridal rooms in Saint Louis were in such demand that you could have one to yourself only for one night, or so they told us at the Vandeventer House.
    After some minutes, Mr. Newton said, "Did your sisters speak to you about marriage?"
    "They told me what they knew."
    "What was that?"
    "Harriet said if at all possible not to allow you to fire guns in the house, but if I had to give way on this point, to draw the line at pistols, but absolutely not to allow horses into the better rooms, because sometimes they panic and damage your good furniture. She learned her lesson the hard way with a two-year-old colt Roland had—"
    Mr. Newton began laughing.
    "Well, he did kick to pieces a very nice lowboy she had, with a shell design on the drawer fronts ..." I cleared my throat. "And Alice told me that my husband would figure very significantly in the conception of children, but she couldn’t bring herself to describe exactly how. She just said that I would be better off if I kept a table between us at