The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1878-01-31

weren't for that there lovely young CIR
to get off. No one there to meet her
not a soul in sight, and by Hockey's
SIR, if 1 ever fell loved to do something
that / had NO pueiIess to do, it wa.
them sixty sec Jnds we stopped TO leave
that angel all alone in them woods One
look from her would a took me Off
that train in jiffy, an the apples and
newspapers might gone to Jericho
but what I'd seen her safe to where
she was bound, though wherever a gen
I tie, timid young thing like her could
wish 10 go in them lonely woods, two
hundred miles from her home, was
more'n could make out. Hows ever,
railroad trains Amino ways sentimen-
tai, sir, and it don't make no kind
of difference to the Compa-
ny what becomes or what don't be
come of the passengers, he-uns or She
un's, after they're set down, longs
they've paid their fare. And so we
dashed on, leavin' her standin' there,
poor thing, an the dead leaves falling
all around her and she not minding
them, but looking straight up the track
and into the sun going down in the red
haze at the end Of it.
"That were the first time | see her,
and it were the last, an of'en an of'en
I've thought it over since then, and
though l never heard a word of inquiry
nor nothin', still it's my opinion as
something awful wrong happened near
along that time. An I've never took
the ring off'n my finger since"
FRAGMENT IT.-ToLD IN THE FARM
HOUSE
81 loved him sol Oh! 1 did love
him sou"
"Them was her very words, ir,which
she never changed 'em nor said nothin'
else the whole time but them there. Not
sign nor breath of name-iust
him And she continaly agoing over
it, and over it, and over it, till it made
one skeery like to hear it, poor thing.
"Such night, too, as it was when
my man-that's my husband, l mean,
sir, brought her in. In the fall-yes,
sir, and it a rainin' and blowin' and
dark as ink-bottle. He found her
to'rds night, he said, when he was on
the road home here, which he had been
over with load of oats, sir, to the bark
peelers' camp.1 10 miles if its a foot. She
was wandering along the road, he said,
and didn't know where she was goin',
it seemed, nor how she got there, though
she like as not got off one of the trains
at the shanty near there, though they
seldom stop, but that we'll never know,
L suppose, in this world and so he
brought her home with him on that per-
ishing night and handed her over to me.
She was quite gone then, out of her
head, it being my belief that she didn't
know me from herself then, nor never
after, poor, poor dear, an so young.
"a man never can see a thing till it's
poked right into his eyes and hollered
into both ears; excuse me, sir, but no
more he can't, and my man he 'heved
that poor creature was drunk or crazy.
Drunki All, sir, | think if the man
who was the wicked cause of that poor,
forsaken child being mindless wand
erer that night, could only ha' seen her
as seen her, when | took her into my
own room and put her into my own
bed, he would have took the shortest
way out of the world that he sent her
out of in misery and darkness, and far
from her own. She was lady born,
IS could be easy seen by her hands, the
DrettieSt | ever saw-So white and slen-
Ter, though with nothing on them but
his little hair ring, as you say you've
tho fn 81 and do af
of 'em her own, know be-
ng the color of gold amost, and the
Oh, can't bear to think of
what the creature that wore that lock of
hair will have to answer for some day. |
And of all her clothes, which in spite o.
he mud and dragglement, could see
vas of the finest and delicatest; there |
vas no name or mark of any sort on
my. Ii she had dropped out of the !
clouds she couldn't a been more unbe- |
Known, by any sign or token anywhere
bout her.
"Well, sir, l watched her through it |
III, and cared for her like one of my
,wn-which am a grandmother, sir,
md was then, though not looking it / |
lessay, being married very young.
She never knew it though. She never
rot her reason at all, and not even the |
title babe's cry-it was girl and looked |
10 more like her than l did-not even
is cry--as came from strong pair % |
ungs, insure you could seem to
BRING any thing back to her, but just
hat one moan, so mournful and weary |
ike, while she kept turning her great |
Jlae eyes this way and that, lookin' and |
ookin', though with no meaning i'll |
hem at all, just that awful wild stare
Is if she was seeing straight through !
ne wall and hundred miles away. |
And so tossing and turning and never
'esting, but all through the night till |
morning, and still through the day till |
light again, and never changing, only
getting weaker and weaker, she never
eft off twisting her hands and crying:
l iOUed him so oh, did love him SOL |
"The little babe was just week and |
,ne day old when she said it for the last |
line in the world, and she had never
seen it to know it.
Z" We buried her out under that old |
beech, and not knowing what else to |
1ut on it, we just wrote on the board,
Is you can see for yourself, the date of
when she came and them words of hers. |
"'And the little oneP' That's her in
he garden out there, seven years old
his month. She'll bear our name and |
never know as long as Pm alive-nor
lfter I'm gone, l hope-but what it's
ler own by right.
eyes; it's queer and very sad story,
,ir, that's so-an awful story, and it
makes me feel very sober when think
If it, as | often do when I'm alone, and