The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-09
Written for THE ARKANsAw TRAvELER. AN EPITOME OF HARD FACTS
BY PHIL FARRADAY.


 To her deft touch the ivory keys re. sponded in tones as sweet as Louisiana
 molasses, new crop. From her taper
 fingers fell notes as soft as the under crust of a boarding-house pie. When she played "Shells of Ocean " the sounds chased each other in melodious confu- sion through the circumambient air. In her rendition of" Lone Rock by the Sea, with Variations" her manipulation was like unto that of barefoot boy with cheek of tan repelling the charge of two hundred and fifty yellow jackets, and the concordant sweetness rolled pell-mell into the patient ear as do parched pea. nuts into paper bag. When "The Racket" rushed out at the bidding of her musical soul, it's rollicking hilarity caused every nail in the ceiling to Wibrate with maddening joy. Miss Julia Cantwork was her name, and her maternal progen- itor was widow who supported her by taking in sewing and washing.
 Such lower could not long blush un- seen. Such an eidelweiss, blooming on the jutting crag of precipitous chance, must sooner or later be plucked by some daring and ambitious hand.
 And so 1t was.
 She banged her hair, as we'll as the piano, and these personal and spiritual attractions constituted the loadstone that drew to her shrine a dashing young driver of delivery wagon. His sur name was Wolf, but his father had called him Peleg, to distinguish him from the balance of the boys. He did not circu- late in the best society, although it is certainly true he made daily visits to many of the most aristocratic families of the West End. He fist feasted his green grocer eyes on her fair form and face one rare morning in June. She an- swered his knock at the kitchen door and took from his hands mess of vegetables that had been paid for by her mother out of an average earning of three dollars and half week. Her makeup caught his admiration, and when he heard her pounding the life out of the "Grand March in Norma" as he drove away he felt the javelin of love at first sight pierce his soaring soul.
 They met by chance and the light of Chinese lanterns at the park on Sunday night. The clarionet crooned, the violin whined, the flute shrieked, the bass-viol groaned through its nose, the E flat cor net split the unoffending atmosphere with its piercing blare. At table beneath an ancestral oak they sat. Upon the polished board he rapped and ordered beer for two. They quaffed the toaming beverage and anon he spoke for more. When the clock struck twelve they arose to go as full of love and lager as only those who've travelled over that road car realize. At the maternal gate they parted, she an sffianced bride and he bridegroom in the dim perspective of the adjacent future.
 They married, and the union bore its legitimate fruit; the mother has one more charge on her toil-tried hands-her husband. His precarious go to break down his rickety and to build up a liquor His wife has "spouted the piano, and has nothing left except an ex- pired pawn-broker's ticket to call to mournful memory the halcyon days of her maiden prosperity. Her mother still plays on the sewing machine and the young and disappointed wife manages to manipulate the washboard.
 They are not happy, and there is no honest reason why they should be.