The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1885-11-07
MY WINNY.
How I Won a Wife Amid the
Oceans Surges.

How Won a Wife Amid the
Oceans Surges.
Stranger to Canada, l think you said?
First visit to Ontario? Well, you're
heartily welcome to Indian Creek. Take
a chair on the piazza till dinners ready
we dine early in these new-world
parts.
Fine farm? Well. yes; Indian Creek
is a nice place, if l do own it. All, as
far as you can see-grass land. corn
fields, woods and creeks-all belong to
it. Stock, too-they call it the best
stocked farm in Ontario, believe. and
dare say they're right. All mine; and
yet l came to Canada twelve years ago.
without even the traditional half.crown
in my trousers pocket. You look sur
prised. Would you like to hear the
story? There's good half-hour to
dinner-time yet, and it's story Inever
tire of telling, somehow.
began life as the son of a village
carpenter in the South of England. You
know that class pretty well. l dare say
and what gulf was fixed between me
and the vicar of the parish. And yet
and yet-from the time she was seven
years old and eleven. and she fell
down in the dusty road outside the
carpenters shop, and cried, and /
picked her up, and smoothed the little
crumpled pinafore, and Kissed the dust
out of her golden curls. loved but one
girl in the world, and that was the
wears daughter, Winny Branscome.
Madness, you'll say. Well, perhaps
so. and yet a man is but a man, and a
woman a woman; and love comes,
whatever one may do. There's no class
distinction recognized by childhood, and
we were playmates and friends till she
went to boarding-school. If Miss Win
ny had had mother, no doubt things
would have been very different; but we
were alike in never having known a
woman's care, and the old vicar was
blind to everything but his theological
treatises.
But when she came back from her
London boarding-school, beautiful
young lady. all smiles and laces and lit
tie lovely ways-then l knew. l had
tried my best to study and work. and
make myself more like the men she
would meet; but what can a lad in an
English village do? just had enough
education to make every other lad in
the place hate me; and beside the men
OF her world | suppose cut rather an
astonishing figure. Yet the love of her
was so beyond all else in me. that mad,
hopeless as / felt it, had no power
over myself; and the first time l caught
her alone in the woods-she avoided
me. l saw, and / had to watch for a
chance--I told her the whole story, and
waited for her answer. She grew scar
let-a rush OF color that dyed her fair,
sweet face-then deathly white.
"Dick. she sad. and she was trem-
bling from head to foot s.you know it
can never. never be; you know You are
wrong even to dream of such a thing.
Some girls would think it an INSULT
know you better; but if my father heard
OF this. he would say you had abused
his kindness to you; he would never for
give you. Forget your madness" And
she ran from me.
let her go. had seen the blush
and the tremor, and guessed that if l
had been Mr.. Lotus, the young Squire.
instead of Dick Hawtry, the carpenters
son, her answer might have been diff
ferent. A great resolve spraug up in
my soul. and took solemn VOW in
those June woods. That very night
sold the old shop (my father was dead,
and had taken to the business), and
with the money bought an outfit, and
started straight for Canada. 1t was
pretty tough work at first, but worked
like galley-slave-starved, and pinched
and saved. and never spent penny on
myself except for the books sat nm
half the night to read and study. Well.
in this country the man who works and
doesn't drink is sure to get on; and l
had a mighty purpose in my head. Bv
and by l bought some land dirt-cheap.
and sold it for three times what l gave
for it-then l began to make money
fast. | should call my luck wonderful
If believed in luck. and didn't prefer
to think l was helped by Power far
ADLER than my own. At last. ten years
to the very day after set foot on Cana
dian soil, l bought Indian Greek Farm,
and began to build this house. All the
neighbors thought my good fortune had
turned my brain. for 1 fitted it up and
furnished it for lady, down to a little
rocking-chair by my stndy-table, and
work-basket with a tiny gold thimble
in it. And when all that was finished,
l took the first ship for Liverpool.
len years builds city over here. It
doesn't make much change in Devon
shire village. The very gates were still
half of their hinges, as l left them, only
the people were alittle older and trife
more stupid. and there was new vicar.
Old Mr.. Branscome had been dead six
months; died very poor they told me-