St. Landry democrat., 1884-09-13
The once Stove and its Contents.

This is the office stove. All winter i
has glo'Red and roared and dispensed
genial heat except when the porter
happened to overlook it. which ht
mostly did, especially on cold days.
When the thermometer was doWr
about half-a-yard below zero, that stove
wasn't worth much as stove; but, re
garded in the light of refrigerator, il
had no equal
But there were days when it gIoweC
and roared according to programme
mild, spring-like days wien there was
soft fog on the window-panes, and in
the brains of the busy workers days
when you felt like leaning back and
dreaming of the innocent fiirtations OF
your boyhood, and the hours that you
used to loaf away in the spring woods,
just when the birch was young, and the
sweet sap began to move, and the
twigs were sharp and pleasant to the
taste, and the opal mist lay over the
far-of river, and when you grew up
you were going to sail all over the
world, and marry a more beautiful
woman than Scheherazade's husband
ever heard of.
Those were the days when the porter
heaped the stove full of wood and coal,
and raised q blaze that would even
make the youngest and freshest man in
the Office dry up, which nothing else
could do.
The stove is cold and silent now. It's
usefulness has departed and no one
but the man who sold it to us ever
claimed for it that it was beautiful.
Most of the isinglass is gone; the knob
is broken off the top, one of the doors
wont stay shut, and those foxy spots of
corrosion on its sides-those spots that
trail downward from one big spatter---
tell US that civilization has not absolute
ly and unequivocally succeeded in the
job of refining the human animal and
softening his manners.
Let US look at the contents of the
stove. You may push the loosely
hanging door wide open, now It will
not burn your fingers and seriously in
cline you to put your immortal soul in
jeopardy. No glowing sea of fame
and coal gas heayes and bubbles within.
But yet there are lots of things in there.
They appear to have accumulated
since the early spring. There is the
core of an. apple, for instance. The
office-boy could eat an apple down to
such core as that. There is absolutely
nothing edible left on that core. Still
there is the core. There is enough
core to make it useful as missile. In
fact it probably caromed on some other
office-boy's cheek before it went in
there. z
This is the blade of your pen-knife,
that you broke in trying to open the
drawer of your desk, that day you
came down late and found that you
had forgotten your keys. Yes,5 here is
the blade; but where is the profane
language you used? Down in the re-
cording angels entry-book, my boy,
and don't you forget it.
These little white-brown things are
not a colony of caterpillers. They are
only the butts of few of the cigarettes
YOU have smoked since last March.
Remember what the doctor said, Ell?
just rap. that left lung of yours a bit,
will you? Kind of muffied, ehP
And what's thatP Only little faded
Hover, tied up TO a wooden toothplck
with florists wire. All, yes, you pick
it up and caress it, and press it to your
lips. Well you may! She gave it to
you at the Arion ball, that girl in pink
that lovely little thing with the great,
pleasant eyes, and the simple air of
comradeship, and the high, sweet,
bell-like voice, and the small, small
bond that oou1S root 90 IirhtIu and unt
SO clingingly on your arm-the girl who
ran away at three o'clock, like be-
lated Cinderella, and leftgo to mem
DRY. h
And what is that limp dark thing,
like a section of snake that has been
through rolling-mill2 That, my boy,
is the lining band. of that hat you tried
to wear next day. 1t was q good band;
but there was no room for it and you in
that hat. ~ #@
Let US close the stove door and go,
away. Puck,