Stephens City star. (Stephens City, Va.) 1881-1883, 1882-06-10
TO THE END.

Twenty years in mans life, especially
in a young mans life, is long enough
for many things to happen long enough
for desires to have been satisfied, and
for hopes to have become certainties, so
long ago that desires and hopes are
hardly remembered as such-or long
enough to have made life an entire fail
ure. Twenty years is long enough for
friendships to have faded out, turned to
bitter hatreds, been forgotten, even or
long enough for them to have grown
(fed by memory and imagination) until
you will look with greater love OF the
stranger who, stranger he be, wears the
smile of an old-time friend on faco
which is half remembered, than upon
the friend you have known for half
lifetime.
Boys together, and friends; hard
workers at Harvard together, and warmer
friends still; men, with lives apart.
They had not met for twenty years.
But on that clear, cold, gusty morning
in March, eighteen hundred and eighty.
one, they were to meet. Is there such
thing as Fate?
One was tall, slender, nervous full
of life and activity; with shrewd gray
eyes, and with deep lines worn by worry
and cut by care in his thin, pale face
a man always in hurry, yet always be
hind good fortune, always little too
late for the chances that other men took,
and by which they gained wealth /; forty;
a good man of business could not
have been replaced by his employers
but working on salary still, land
small one,) and likely to do so to the
end of his life. The other, forty also
short, stout, slow; with fortune written
all over him, from his easy, good
natured face down to his large, loud
stepping feet.
Both had travelled widely-the one as
the shrewd, paid business agent of a
wealthy firm who had had his services
for years-the other as business ad-
venturer for himself for one decade, and
as gentleman of leisure and fortune
for another.
Both had arrived in the city that
morning, one from the North and the
other from the South. Both intended
to leave the next morning, the one going
East and the other West. One had in
quired in the early dawn for the cheap
est hotel in the place, and he had walked
to it the other had gone in hack to
tie best one. One was walking, this
morning with long and hasty strides,
toward the west to visit factory in the
suburbs on business; the other was
sauntering south along the most fash
ionable avenue in the city, intent on
nothing more important than smoking
his morning cigar.
Each was. strangely enough, thinking
OF the other. Active Charley Bladeley
had letter, written more than eighteen
years ago, closely buttoned in his breast
pocket, and stout Andrew Stones name
was at the bottom of it. Bladeley had
no time for idleness, romance or revery
but he had read that letter that morning
for all that-and for the first time in ten
years. And he was thinking of dear
old Andrew" that morning all across
town. Stone was thinking of Bladeley.
Little seeds stir with life when spring
smiles across the fields which cover
them molecular life mysteri lsly moves
in the soft iron when the 4Iear magnet
whispers it's nearness. Why should the
human heart be less natural than the
seedf Why less responsive than the
iron?
A block too soon for the swift-a
block too late for the slow-and this
history had never been written. But
their lives crossed where their paths
did. Too swift or too slow seemed prob.
able enouoh for the lives of anv two