The Hickman courier., 1871-04-15
AFTER MANY DAYS.


of Half a Century.
A correspondent of the New York
Leader OF the 22d inst, tells the follow
ing story:
"In the town Of New Amsterdam, in
the county of Harrison. and State of In
diana. lives an old widow lady, who has
history. In fact, she presents the
ideal of one of those cases Of romance in
real life which, constantly occurring a.
they do in the midet of our drifting for
eign population, afford the ground work
of many romance to the novel writers
throughout the world Many years ago.
in the days of her girlhood, she was
wooed aud won in her home on the Ohio,
by handsome. dashing Englishmau.
with scented blonde locks and nicely
curled moustache. His father was an
editor on the London Times, and his
uncle member of the House of Com
Z mons, while he1spointed with pride to
more remote relatives, who graced ia
their persons the benches of the House
of Lords. She was then a fair, girish
woman, light. hearted and full of life
Life 1t was more like dream-a
dream of JOY and sunshine. There we're
lovers on every hand. Honest, sun
burnt farmers, with black curling locks,
who had won the prize at ploughing !;
daring, restless youths who had wander
ed through the wilds of the then North
west territory. and bad seen the sun set
on the banks of the Mississippi and the
shores of Lake Winnipeg One of them.
q middle sized, swsrthy man, not yet
twenty eight, with long, tangled black
hair, had been with McKindley, in As
tors Fur Company, across the Rocky
Mountains, through the canons Of the
Columbia, aud to the shores of the Pa
cific at Astoria. He told stories of In
dian life aud adventure in the unknown
West; and these and the fire they would
throw in his dark, roaming eye, which
| she always saw so soft and moist in her
presence, had almost won her girlish
| love.
But the war had just terminated, and
infamed with the glories of the scarlet
and gold trappings of their foreign foe.
So the young Englishman, fresh from
his own home, aud gifted with all the
polished arts with which polite London
could endow an adventurer in that day,
prospered in his wooing and bore of the
prize. There was feverish, half gay,
half sad honey moon after the wedding,
and then a melancholy married life.
After while baby was born, so like
its mother And when few years had
passed by and it was crowned, like her.
with a glory of light brown hair, it
opened its little chubby arms to welcome
sweet baby sister. Then the sorrow
that entered the mothers heart grew full.
Night after night she sat in her little cot
tage 10 the wilderness. with the embers
burning low and the candle unsnuffed
at the window for her truant lord to come
III was away at the tavern on the cross.
roads, singing aud drinking with the
surveyors, and choppers, the shiDgle
max and men from the logging. WheI
the dawn began to tinge the east with
rec, he would sometimes return. Some
times he came only with the shadows Of
night fall.
One night the long enduring suffer
iugs of the yet girl woman came to a
crisis She had endured all-suffered
all-and she grew for the moment mad
Not wildly msd-Dor loud or boisterous
but laboring under spell, as it were
with a quiet resolution brooding over
her. She placed her babe in the cradle
aud left her oldest born-the one with
her own curly brown locks, to watch and
rock it. She kissed them both with a
wild mothers love. She folded them in
her arms and bathed tbeni with a moth
er's tears, aud then she left them Nc
Z / - ~
journey through the wilderness, where
she sleptl or where she wandered She
came at last to distant town-a ham
let in the then dense forest She lived
there, and struggled there, and after q
while she married well to do farmer
She kept the secret of her early life-hel
early sufferings. Finally this second
husband died, and on the eve OF his
funeral came the news to the village that
the dark haired lover of years gone by
had been slain in desperate fight with
a war party of the Blackfeet 1t was an
old trapper who had returned to the vii
lage where she then lived that told the
story. He did not know her, but he said
in his tale that dan had kissed a lock
of sunshiny hair that none knew he ever
had about him when the redskinned
cusses sent him hum"
The yet pretty woman, now so old aud
gray. grew pale when this story reached
her, aud she left the settlement.
With the flow Of population she came
West again, some years ago--it seems
she had been living East-and settled
down in Harrison county, in the village
where we introduce her-Ncw Amster-
dam. She had some store Of wealth her
third husband had left her, and her kind
deeds, with fragments of her history.
were scattered over the land Last week
the first in Lent, a man came from Lou
isvilIe, KY, to inquire at the New Am
sterdam depot, for Mrs. -. No one
knew her. but finally he found ou' our
lady. 1t was the curly headed boy she
left to rock the cradle, and there were
high old times at the house on the hill a
week ago.