The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-03-23

his forehead, as if he feared the sweet
memory would slip away from him in
his talk; and | sat waiting for him to
proceed, busying myself meanwhile
with thoughts of a certain June-cheeked
Juliet to whom | had myself played
Romeo, and whose half-forgotten image
his idyl had strangely restored to me
there in the pensive starlight.
Well" he continued directly, "we
were very happy--too happy, Cap
too happy. If there hadn't been quite
so much of it it would have lasted long
er, probably. The truth is, was so
happy that had to do something to
tone it down-to loosen the quoins, you
might say-and | took to drinking like
fish. 1 couldn't have helped it to
save my life. Perhaps if she had acted
a little warmer toward me, and | could
have caressed and kissed her-been a
little more ambrosial, you understand
it would have made difference with
me. But don't Know don't know"
He lapsed into silence again, and
there was only the dull fretting of the
waters about the pier beneath us to dis
turb the stiffness until, after several
minutes, he rapidly, now,
and with apparent anxiety to have done
with the subject:
"She bore with it month after month
as patiently as nun; but she couldn' t
stand it always, of course, and so she
told me at last, not in anger or bluntly,
but with firmness, and yet sadly,
thought, that the time had come for us
fn a,.t / nhnl 10
speak, even if speaking could have done
any good, which it couldn't; so | SIM
ply took her hand moment-it trem-
bled, calm as she was-and, bowling,
went away"
He paused once more, and | was upon
the point of rising, supposing he had
said all he desired to say, but he mo-
toned me to remain, and went on talk
ing: ''After that | lay sick q long time
eight weeks, they told me-with some
internal sort of fever, and the money |
had saved went to the doctors. |
pulled through, of course. Men have
died, from time to time, and worms
have eaten them, but not for love- |
don't know how it was, but when | got
up again my brains seemed to be kind
of incoherent-' pied you might say
and couldn't get steady work, and
finally they began to whisper around
about sending me to Jacksonville
that's where the crazy asylum is, you
know. Then | braced up, and the first
dark night jumped the town without
saying blessed word to anybody, and
since then-well, you know the rest, or
a good deal of it. But you didn't know
you would never have guessed if l
hadn't told you-that it was too much
happiness made me what | am
With this last paradox he turned
partially aside, and l noticed that he
was fumbling about his clothes as if
in search of something-tobacco |
presumed. Presently he drew out
from some inscrutable hiding place an
old creased and rumpled leather pocket
book, and took from it faded sprig of
cedar, and, handing it to me, said, with
that CLASSY, cynical smile | had seen so
often: There's rosemary, that's for
remembrance. Pray you, love, remem-
ber.' Then he told me Isabel had
given it to him once, standing by the
gate, and that he had carried it through
all the long years as a memento of her.
When | reached it back to him, he put
it away again in the wrinkled old peck
et-book as tenderly as if it had been a
tress of hair from the head of dead
baby, and then: Il wonder if she ever
thinks of me?" he said, quite seriously,
and we walked leisurely up the long
street together, neither of us speaking
a word more until we came to the cor
ner where we had to separate, and there
we merely said goodnight" and
parted.
/ did not see him again for some
time, and when, at length, he made me
another visit, in the afternoon of q mel
low October day, he informed me that
he was about to leave the town. "Our
planet is dropping into its annual shad-
ow," he said, with mock gravity, "and
| must HE me away to fresh fields and
pastures new. want to commune with
nature, you understand; to touch the
earth, like Ant9us; to eat haws and
smell the fall wheat; to mingle with
the quails, and blue-jays, and wood
peckers, and all that sort of thing. Be
good to yourself, Cap. Don't work too
hard, and beware of the enemy which
men put in their mouths to steal away
their brains. By-by.n And before |
had time to answer he was out of my
sight and shuffiing down the stairs,
leaving me in mood that was nearer
sadness than | would have cared to
confess, and which, | fear, gave down
cast tinge to the Commonwealth s edito-
rails for several mornings afterward.
He returned in about two weeks,
strange to say, and he solemnly as
serted that he had only been Choking
for homestead He was jaded, foot
sore, and, as usual, little shabbier
than usual as to clothing. He had read,
he said, in some real-estate paper, of a
locality out in primeval Kansas where
corn grew wild, and livestock waxed
fat on the mere superabundance of
ozone, and every quarter-section had
been neatly fenced with stone by the
geological commissions of past ages;
and he had been hunting for it, intend
ing to enter homestead in it and be-
come a gentle shepherd. He couldn't
find it, though; and now he wanted a
few days work "to replenish his de-
pleted eXchequer.h But most of all, he
wanted to see the man who wrote those
things he read in that paper.