The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1883-10-12
C%AIRADINE's LOVE.

CAlUIlAUlNES LIVE.
Carradine sat alone at his easel, painting:
and as he painted he thought Eight years be-
fore, when he was a poor struggling boy, just
entering on that race which must be run by
every aspirant to art and its honors, there hap
pened 10 him something which neither time
nor toll had ever been able to efface from his
memory. As he was passing along the streets
r wreath of fragrant roses suddenly fell on his
lead, and looking UP in wonder, he belleld,
reaching ont from tho embroidered draperies
of an ovcrhanging window, n child, with fairy
Ike proportions, with great dark eyes and long,
curling black locks, who stood smiling aud
throwing him kisses from her curved lips,
co'orad like a pomegrauate. While sle
still gazcd, II nurse had come forward and
drawn tho child away: the curtains were
closed, and he saw the little creature no more.
Such was the vision that the artist hal carried
g. long IN his memory; in his memory Only,
for he had no second glimpse of the child.
That very day an accident occurred which kept
him a prisoner in his room for several weeks,
and when next he went out the house was
empty, and a placard with great iiaring letters
announcing it for sale stared him in the face,
white-robed elf had st cd waving her hand
and smiling TO him. In courss of time other
faces appeared there, hut they were strange
fees, and among them was never the one for
WIitNh LIZ H
Now, as Carradine sat painting alone, he
thought of all this; of the struggle that had
ended at length in success; of his hard, un-
friended b%oyhood, and of the beautiful child
with her fragrant rose crown, which had
seemed almost like a prophecy. Tha. rose
wreath, dry ind withered now, was all that was
left to him of the fair vision; but when that
morning, in turning over an old portfolio, he
had come upon it by CHARGE, it smoke TO him of
that by-gone day just as eloouently as when its
hlN1anmQ nIn fpn n ND F,,1 HL
Slight years ago." lie said. thoushtfully, let
tirs the shriveled circlet clip through his
! gers slowly; sshe must be sixteen now-if
presence-somewhere, wonder where she is
now, and what she is like at sixteen?"
With that he placed the wreath beside his
easel. and began to paint The face, as it grew
or his canvas, presented a young girl in the
dewy morning blush of first youth, with shad-
ows in the great dark eyes and a half smile
summer sun shower. 1t was thus that the ar
list pictured his ideal of the child woman,
whose infantile look and smile for eight long
years had been his own dream of love,
Carradine had not had an easy life. An or
phan from bis earliest years, poor and I'M
friended, he had studied hard for the means to
crafty that inherent idolatry for art which was
always clamoring to find expression in form and
coloring; He had fought and he had won; but
now, at twenty-six, he Stood in the Place which
he had gained for himself almost as much
alone at the very heart as he had been eight
years before. when the child's gift came to him
as q prophecy.
1t was not that he was frlendless. There
were mon who liked and sought him, women
who would gladly have taught him to forget
his loneliness in their affection. But though his
nature responded rapidly to any kindness, there
was one chord, deeper than all. that remained
untouched, and from the sweetest Chances his
thoughts went back to the unknown child that
had smiled down on him so 1Onp apo
The ideal head became his great source of
enjoyment, and q dreamy ~softness shaded his
dark-grey eyes, as line by line and tint by tint
took him back into that past, which, all life
less as it was, seemed to him, in those mo-
ments, more real than the busy present. Yet
now, in reviewing that one bright vision of his
memory, 1t was not so much the lovely child
that he cav in fancy, as the beautiful girl
whose face, with fuller depth and sweetness,
looked out at him from his own canvas.
Instinctively, he hardly knew why, he dis
liked to work on this picture in any other pres
ence. and he devoted to it only his hours OF
solitude. So it happened that it was nearly
finished when by some chance, a friend dis
covered him bending over it, too absorbed to
hear any approach. As the door opened, Car
radine rose hastily, turning his easel to the
wall, 80 as to conceal the face upon il. This
little stratagem, however, was destined to be Of
no avail. Having been marked by the in
truder, one Of those cordial. well meaning peo-
pie, good natured 10 a degree, but with little
delicacy of perception-the action at once
aroused his curiosity.
saba. master painter" he said, with a laugh.
slet us sec what it is that you work at by your-
self till it steals away your eyes and ears. Only
one peep!"
With that. he laid his hand on tho frame. and
receiving no forbidding word from Carradine,
turned it around. The next moment he was
loud in praise.
"But who is il, Carradine9 If it is a portrait,
tell me where to find the original, and I will, if
1t is a seven days Journey" ~
.Carradine smiled. .
original / should not be here to tall you, my
good friend. " he answered evasively.
ooh, a, fancy SKETCH . said the other, mis-
led, as the artist had desired. Il might have
saved myself the trouble of asking. No real
flesh and blood face ever looked like that
moro shame tonature, I ray. OF course you
will exhibit it, Carradine?"
"No!" answered the painter, quietly.
"No!'repeated tho other i'll eurprise. "But
my dear fellow. you must, or l shall betray
your secret, and yon will have q swarm Of Wis.,
itors,, worse than a plague of Egypt, let in upon
your
uarradine hesitated. A chance word in his
friends speech had suggested a possibility
that made his hear. leap in spite of sober rea-
son. s.un Il
"You are right he eaid. 'I shall send the
picture for exhibition. 1t will be better so"
After his visitor Lad left him alone again,
Carradine bent low over his easel, gazing into
the lovely, upturned face, until it began to fade
into the gathering twilight.
"1t-it!' he murnuredt 10 himself, half I'M
consciously. "}ut it cannot be. Yet I will
send it-and perhaps
And so the picture was sent, in due time:
and 1t seemed almost as if Car.axne's soul
had gone with it and drawn HIM to follow.
Hour after hour, and day after day, he Sat in
the gallery, scrntiniziiig eagerly every face
mid the visitors, whom taste or fashion had
brought to LOOK at the now celebrated artists
latest success. Every night he went away UNI
satisfied, aud every morning he returned with
hope sprinGing afresh i'll his heart. II
Still, the object of hia search, whateverit may
have been, does not appear; and one 'day, dis
courhsed at last, he resolved to go no more on
go f%rui:less an errapd. Shutting himself in his
studio, he began to paint, but, strive as he
would, he could command neither hand nor
fancy. Finally, tired of repeated failure, he
abandoned work, and yielded to an impulse
which drew his stops in the customary airec-
ton.
When he entered the small side room in which
his picture hung, he found but two persons
within, a ynnng man and a girl.
CarradIue could not zee the faces of these
two, but, with an earnestness for which he was
al a loss to account. he followed their reIseatlng
figures ns they moved slowly toward his pic
1ure. But the next moment an exclamation of
establishment burst from the lips of the young
man.
"Why, here is your portrait, Leilial What
does it meang Who can the painter bew
it'll that he hurried out to purchase a cata-
.ogue. Carrad,ne advanced quickly to the girl.
II am the painter he said.
She turned and looked at him with one steady
saze from those glorious eyes that had haunted
ais visions for so many years. Then she
poke:
You painted that pictnress and howp"
From remembrance" he answered tIt
VS. my 0 My tribute to the little unknown prin.