Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-09-18
OLD SOUNDS.
@ Story Of a Boy Who "Is in q
Hundred Mills"

IRE few and we'll supplied, when New
GLAND rum "a pure and cheap, and
lille the older generation still wore the
ee. breeches and turkey-tailed coats of
blonial days, old Galley, who kept a
l.gate on the Hartford and Providence
rnpike, died. For forty years after the
evolution Bailey lived in the solitary
tile dollhouse, near the bridge over the
rtulent Quinnebaug, and in all that
me had never failed to answer the call
Gene and take toll; but n night he
ksponded not, and they found him sit
pg i'll his chair with an open Bible on his
ICES, and his spirit gone to the country
which he had been reading.
So it happened that a few days after,
e big coach left q tall young man at
. %Qunnebaug toll house, who brought
Flh Inn his possessions encased in a
ndkercnief. The driver of the stage
formed the young man that here was
rnpike company, and added, as he saw
e Young fellow staring at the board
Esile the door on which, at o long dis
(us time, the rates of toll had been
nted: ."Sse here, Old Squids, you'd
ftter chalk up some new tiggurs. The
d ones is about washed out"
The driver called him Old Squads, but
&ide from the fact that such a surname,
such it was, had never been heard be-
Pre- in that country, it was strange that
] should have been called old. He was,
fact, q young fellow, not more than
10 or three and twenty, seemingly.
booth, and though his beard was jan
Jed, each hair at cross purposes, it had
over known the razor, and was, there
Sre, silky. He was sinewy, though his
ints were p~rotuberant, and his broad
builders were not erect. Yet, perh APPS,
lev called him old because he was mod
ate in his way, not so much because of
ness as by Unborn disposition.
When the coach rolled away Squids was
IT standing there, gazing with a per-
eyel expression at the toll board and
bstractedly Juggling at his beard. No
Fnler he was perplexed. There ap-
dared only fragments of words on the
bard, for the rains had washed the paint
Eay with bew'ldering irregularity. He
Rull make nothing of it. The very first
iny that Squids did, therefore, was to
er down the board and take it into the
ftle cottage. Then, without any exam
ation of his new home, he threw his
indie upon the bed and began to repair
9 damage that time had done to the
Pard. But g had done its inevitable
ork with it, and as Squids held it on his
hees it crumbledin his strong grasp and
foke into fragments, as though the
de change, after forty years of unmed-
fed security on the door, had been too
ucE for it.
Squids sorrowfully looked at the frag-
ents at his feet, then gathered them up
(refully, and gave them a decent inter-
ent in IN old chest. For a week Squids
bored to make a @ toll board. Not
at the board itself needed so much time,
alas, the announcement on it did.
Pr,, skillful as Squids was with hammer
saw and nails, his fingers were clumsy
tn the pencil and paint brush. Hour
ter hour he worked, studying the printed
I'd Of rates which the company had
Ven him, sc that he might transfer those
cures and letters intelligibly upon the
ara. One night he even dreamed how
should be done, and dreaming, awoke
IN delight, lighted his candle, and down
his knees he went, to transfer the
cam to the board. But his fingers re-
seq to respond to the picture in his
Flha, and with q sigh, Squids returned tc
At last squids gave It up. He simply
E:nted upon the board something like