The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1880-07-16

$3.50, were farming in Texas on poor
lands on what our landlord called
" sheers;" that's, hefurnished the tools,
mules and land and we the brains and
human muscle, keeping our own house
and dividing the spoils- that is, the
crops equally.
So, knowing how little he looked to
any other home than the one. around
him, I could but question his motion, !"
and add: 80
"Who to, Jim?" rather thought
less question.
His voice went down almost the whole
length of that wonderful neck, / thought,
as he threw his face forward into his
hands, and, staring into dark corner
of the fire, said
GA woman"
GA woman, jim ? why, wha-! Oh,
sister, perhaps?" I said, seeking the
only refuge that seemed at hand.
"No. no sister," A long
pause. 'sIt's like this" and he said
nothing morefor some minutes, but alb
sently reached over for his violin and
picked the strings for an almost-forgot-
ten chord. It seemed to me that his
brain and fingers were working together,
although he did not know it. At last
he evidently reached what he was after,
for he twanged the strings more conf
IDENTIFY and said, laying aside the violin !:
cts like this We never said moth
ing to nobody, nor to ourselves neither,
for that matter. But she knowed /
thought whole farm Of her and always
shall-oh, how good she's been to me :"
and he fercely clutched his knees, his
features distorted and his eyes in tears.
Good to him Well, thought I, if ever
any woman loved Jim she Wos good to
him she couldn't have wanted him for
anything else. How homely and an
gular he looked, his long neck shot out
toward the fire, which in February is
needed, even in Texas, to take off the
chill.
Presently he Strengthened up.
"No, there wasn't nothing said, but
she knowed me, and when [ left she
asked me to write her, and I'm going to
do it. She's bin waitin' now too long, :"
Then he stopped abruptly and began to
look back over the months, while I held
my breath. L 80 ~
"My God, man, it's nj on two year,
he said, and, it seemed to me, he saw i'll
a moment what his long neglect might
mean that it had been the very refine
ment of cruelty. He at once began
with an almost feverish haste to make
ready his writing tools-only to hesitate,
pen in hand, over the white paper /
handed him, writing little at a time, and
not concluding till his lamp had out
burned the backlog, and its GOALS
smoldered sullenly on the hearth. Then,
muttering something about a screech-
owl near her house, he crept into bed. i
II.
What excuses he put forth in his let
ter I never knew. They would not, I
am quite certain, have answered for any
love letter I might have sent about that
time after two years silence though, to
be sure, eve" taking the reader into
confidence for moment) were both
younger at that time, while jackson was
80, if day. He may have urged that
he was poor letter-writer. That was
true. I have yet to see his equal in
power to wreak a really appalling ven
geance on words which, many are now
agreed, have greatness for letters
only equaled by their inexcusably be-
arrangement of the same. And
his way of making up sentences was
something wonderful. He may have
urged, too, that he had worked early
and late with scarce moment of relaxa-
ton. That was true of both of us, and
I had written many times.
Whatever he may have said In that
letter, to which he brought so many
pains, I fear he did not hit on the true
reason for his long silence indeed, it is
possible, even probable, that he did not
know of it himself. For my part, it
seemed then, as it seems now, that he
had not written, simply because he had
not lat any time, or for any pur-
pose, found in letters so ready
means of communication that he
turned to them without effort. And,
more than all, he had lived by her side
in daily thought since the hour in which
they parted. His memory of her many
graces was as fresh on the hundredth
day as on the second and, had it been
four years Of silence instead Of two, her
face and form would have been as dis
tinct in his mind at the end of that long
time as though daily letters had passed
between them. A contemplation almost
constant had brought her to him to COM
fort and console him at any moment.
Then, too, he had sshitched on and,
though a man grown, had conceded to.
me every right that was his in the man
agement of our small business. Honest
himself almost pitiably honest, for it
came from an innocence that had been
kept fresh by ignorance of more than
quarter OF a century he placed the
fullest faith in the man he had chosen
to work with So he felt much at ease.
with little thought of the future, except
when long droughts, under sky like
brass, made us despair of profit from
farming in Texas. He rested in the love
he was sure of, and did not once think
that the fame he had somehow famed
into miracle though it must have
seemed to him, for he knew that he was