Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1871-11-23
Miscellany.
THE GIBRALTARS.
LETTER I.
RALPH DE WENT TO JoHS BloDGgTr.
A story In Four Letters.

RALPH DE WIsT TO JoBs BLoDGRTr.
CULpgprER, September 3.
MosT PUIssAsT The undersigned
begs leave to hand in his resignation as
co-member and association ordinary of
the Honorable Club Of the Gibraltars.
Ca,ise--a misnomer. A Gibraltar IL
nothing if not impregnablc. am prov
ed eminently prcgnable," ergo can no
longer claim to be Gibraltar. You
shall hear.
To begin, let me state that I am no
whit ashamed of the confession | am
about TO make. Neither do dispair Of
one day beholding you on your marrow
bones with much worse tale i'm your
mouth You consider yourself the bull
wark Of bachelorhood, and Fred, who Ii
noodle, believes in you no end. My
opinion has always been that you are
most likely Of us three to make fool of
yourself matrimonially. Depend upon
IL. for all your snecrs and your stiff up
per lip, and the grim letters you will
presently indite me, and that habit you
have of thanking Heaven that you are
not as other falliblc men. Destiny i'm
shape Of woman awaits you somewhere
round the corner, and will one day
ayengc us upon you thoroughly. May
Having thus freed my mind, I'll pro-
coed to my tale, like true though rene
gadc son Of the club, and in accordance
with Bylaw Moo.
You've heard me speak Of Jack Allen,
my old chum of the Ninth Nebraska.
He turned up down here the other day,
General Allen now, with post under
the Freedmen's Bureau, and quarters mt
this place. Being brick, he's gone into
the thing thoroughly, and, besides his
regular duties, is over head and ears In
night-schools, model farming, and free
lectures to the darks. Well, he was
delighted to see me, and insisted should
come and stay with him, which | did
That was three weeks agO-and here
am still
The day after came he proposed rid
ing over TO see one of his out schools
or, rather, not exactly his he said, but Il
private enterprise got up by some Phila
dclphia ladies, which the Bureau sort OF
b8sscd and extended an Ggis over We
had glorious six-mle gallop. When
we reached the place il turned out the
fOrlOrnest kind of little slab village
deep in the woods, and cOuched within
the hollow of an old deserted rebel earth
work; the population all blacks, Allen
told me, except the teachers, who were
single women and semi Quakers--exccl
lent old females, but plain, unfortun-
atcly plain.
He made this statement just as we
were mounting the rude steps of the
"slab" school house, and having made
IL, he opened the door and walked in
School was in session, and whole rows OF
little Cuflies turned their shining faces
and showed their teeth at the sight of u.s.
But / stood stock-still on the threshold
unable to move or speak, for behind ap
peared-
No; can't give an idea of it Coup
dc sOleil is mild in comparison. was
looking for caps, sharp noses, spectacles
perhaps--all the component parts which
20 to make the excellent women, un-
fortunately plain and instead there
stood rcyealed-a pair Of angels
Two lovely, radiant girls, in plain gray
gowns and aprons of snowy wilderness,
looking with their dusky scholars about
them, like twin lilies in u field of-hard-
hacky Poetical, you see. don't care.
A stone would be poetic under like
circumstances. The dazzle, the shock OF
sharp contrast turned me into one.
positively could not move for moment ;
then l whirled furiously around on the
william Jack, but he avoided my eye, and
began presenting me to the visions in
gray with such an ecstatic twinkle and
chuckle that / could hardly forbear
knocking him down on the spot.
Philadelphians, the beauties turned out
to be, of Quaker extraction both, and dear
friends, Longing after work, as half the
good women in the country were when
the war closed, they came down and estab-
lished themselves in this desolate spot
within a few months of Lees surrender.
It was risky business at first, what with
scarce food and latent bush-whacking; but