Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1873-03-14

Maybe the farm'll last us through;
we're Almost worn out, and it won't be
long that we'll be waiting. With the
farm and each other"
80, Dolly, Dolly, you don't know the
worst, and can't tell you. l never can
tell you, Dolly, never"
Uncle 'Liph staggered part way across
the room, then turned suddenly.
They're going to take it all, Dolly
everything-stripu US clean, clean as we
were when we began fifty years ago
house and farm and cows-everything.
There's been great carelessness as well as
| great wrong; wrong and carelessness and
wrong from the very beginning, and now
| they're coming. The law II let 'em, and
it's got to go-the back pastur', and the
wood lot, and the young orchard, and
everything-even Rube's grave, Dolly.
O, Godl haven't served Thee these fifty
years; why shouldst Thou cast me off
now?
The gray, scraggy face, with the gray,
straggly hair around it, was turned to-
ward the ceiling, Aunt Dolly went out
into the night.
It was stormy, and cold, and bitter
The sleet cut against her cheek, the wind
raved in her hair, and the snow drifted at
her feet, but Aunt Dolly did't mind it.
| She only wanted air and to think. She
| leaned up against the weather Drowned
clapboards. Was it really going, going,
going, all going? She couldn't think, one
word alone whistled over and over in her
brain-going, going She looked off
through the storm to the dimly-outlined
maple beneath which lay Rube's grave.
That, too, was going.
Heart and brain together grew numb;
muscles, involuntarily acting, carried
Aunt Dolly into the house. The voice of
an automatOn said:
cts time we had prayers, father"
The hands of second automaton
opened the book. A strained voice be-
gan:
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall
not"
The two automatons fell on their knees
with tears, broken sobs, and half articu
lations, and were automatons no longer.
Uncle 'Liphalet went to no more meet
ings.
''pll fix the back door, Dolly, but I
don't know anything whose hand'll swing
it," said he.
AS for the "Native Village Manufac-
turing Company" it was a boat loaded
with stone to the waters edge. Poor,
deceived and disheartened though they
were, never did men strain muscle harder
than those who sought to Tighten her; but
over the side the water came in, and she
went down.
Then up from the east and the west
and the north and the south, came credi-
tors, seeking their just dues, none doubt
ed, but seeming often times to the gnarl-
ed and hard-working debtors like the fat
E-.y fn a
Aunt Dolly and Uncle 'Liphalet waited
patiently for the one to whom they were
apportioned. He was not greedy; he al
lowed his prey to lie fattening until the
leaf buds swelled on the lilacs. Mean
while, what agonies Aunt Dolly under
went can not be described. What must
the crab feel in seeing the stork~ straddle
along the shore and gobble up his fellows,
and knowing not whether his turn shall
come now or then?
Aunt Doliy's real creditor was an iron
man, steel-tipped and brass bound; when,
therefore, the real creditor one early
April morning swung back the little
picket gate, and stopped to sniff at the
lilac buds, she closed her eyes as she
would have done in the hands of the exc
cutioner She went, though and let him
in as if he had come unto his own and
his own received him.
Then she sat down with her sock knit
ting beside Uncle 'Liphalet. Uncle 'Liph
shook worse, and his hair and face were
whittier than when Swinton called three
years before.
The creditor talked pleasantly; SO had
his predecessor. All business men"
were to Aunt Dolly of the Artful Swindle-
ton type.
yr~,.1a - l;tou oro,od tho r,,bioot ron+1u
"I know the law gives it to you, sir;
but it's hard, hard bringing my mind to
it," said the boarse voice of Uncle 'Liph,
coming over infirm lips. "Here's where
Dolly and me came when we was first
married. There was heavy mortgage
on the farm; but we said we'd work our
selves clear, and we did, sir. Wed saved
up something for Rube's eddycation; but
Rube died, and the moneys gone; the
farms going, and we're going. l don't
know ao1Iere we're going"
The creditor looked troubled.
"Why, sir, there ant rod o. stone
wall on the farm but I've laid the stone;
not a foot o. drained medder land but I've
put down the tiles; not bearin' tree in
the orchid but grated; there amt Obi
it'll be drefful to take away the farm,
drefful."
Uncle 'Liph laid his great rough hands
over his face, and the tears trickled
through his fingers.
''He don't oughter shed tears" said
Aunt Dolly, apologetically, "but he's
been so harassed and worried, he's kind
O. weakened and broke down, sir: But
it's hard on us both to leave the old farm.
There's difference. sir, betwixt farm
that's bought for lump O. money, and
farm that seems to stand for the spotted
calf, and the cosset sheep, and the yellow
hens eggs"
Uncle 'Liphalet broke in: ''It's rocky,
and don't look like much, I know, but
pears to me men are some like trees; it's
them as has their roots twisted around
and under the rocks that it's hardest to
tear up. never expected to die in the
poor-house, sir. None O my kin ever
went there. What would Rube say?
Why, what aoo,Lld Rube say, Dolly?"
''Tve tried hard to realize it, said Aunt
Dolly; "--in the night time, too, sir
what it'll be to be sitting by somebody's
else fire a knitting, him a-bringing in
their wood, and out here another than
me, canning the plums, and drying the
sage, and spattin' up the butter on the
back porch"
"And drivin' up the cows to pastur-O
Lordy!' broke in the old man.
''But the hardest thing to leave-Reu-
ben, our son-he was turned eighteen,
sir-is buried on the farm. If you'll step
to this winder, sir, I'll show you his
grave. There, down under that maple
There's where he fit for college, and when
he came to die, it seemed, sir, as if in that
place where he'd dreamed over his Latin
and his Greek, of a great futur', there he
wanted to be left He asked it that morn
ing in a whisper-I hope-whoever gets