The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-18
RILEY ROSE.
BY JOHN M'GovERN.

The small boy was to leave school aud go up on the farm east of town. This calamity came upon him because he was poorer than most boys he had neither father nor mother, and the self-abnegation of his remaining relatives had endured well, in that it had already lasted two years. Lima prairie had been the limits of his known world. Upon the summit of great wagon load of things needed to complete the furnishing of the farm- house the boy and the man pierced the neck O woods that trimmed Lima prairie, and emerged into Pretty prairie, with it's little church-spire far off at one side. Here was world as large as the boys own world, and he lived in it something like an hour -an hour that he never forgot, but why he knows not. Then, in the March equinox, as the man and the boy toiled up hill into another neck O woods, helping the tired horses, the party came upon the setting sun, standing in the straight western road. And as the darkness closed in rapidly, the man, pleasantly chatting with the boy, told him to look around him, for he was now coming out on English prairie. A third world in day. The man sang, for he was travelling toward his new made wife. The boy grew faint with unhappiness as the sun which had risen with him that baleful day sank and left him with only a part of his day completed. Then the weariness of the journey came to set the body on watch where the spirit had been the only sentry, and the small boy grew happier. Across English prairie rattled the lumber wagon, and, at last, so said the man, the road turned straight to- ward home AS the step- children take slowly to the name of another" for their fathers second wife, so this name of "home," for place the boy had never seen, and never wanted to see, came upon him unpleasantly. Perhaps all things which happen to all orphan betake him unpleasantly. But now, well along in the late even- ing, "pair of bars" is reached. The twain let the bars down, the farm it. self is entered, and half mile down 8 lane candle wrinkles, and the good wife peers out into the darkness from the log house. Here the man and the woman are to pluck riches and happi- ness from one hundred and sixty acres of land that has been "rented out" for ten years previously.
 But, in tar-away log houses, there is more room for orphans than where people are cheaper. The wife was glad the boy had come, and the man was not sorry. So the boy ate his his supper with glee resurrected out of his despair on English prairie, and was put to bed up the ladder on the rattling boards, under the shakes o1 the roof, where the last snows of the fitfnl spring sifted in on his coverlet and made him happy to think he was warm. Down stairs were two per- sons he knew, and up in the sky was a familiar group of stars. He was not without friends.
 There never was one day, hour, ol moment, that this boy liked the till. ing of the fields. He thought toe much. The patience of nature mad. dened him. But there was house te be built up at the place where tn, bars were, and there a dry-kiln haG been erected. In this sham house. tn, boy spent many happy days, keeping the fire hot to dry the green lumber and reading vast number of paper which the farmer, himself a origin man, had thoughtfully brought iron the town. Here the boy learned ther, was Chicago Tribune, thing whici worshiper of Horace Greeley mus needs regard as envious and heretical like 8 second New York City.
 And here, at the edge of the farm touching the living neighborhood, h, began to grasp the pulse of the region Had he been to Riley Rose's? Oh there was the man l-the greates frrmer, the smartest man at bee, tn handiest man with a fiddle! Really the small boy began to live. He mad inquiries at the log house. No, the, did not admire Riley Rose. Ther was too much Adding at Riley Roses 1t was all fiddle and no farming. Tn young farmer had brought up to tn new home staunch article of ortho dox principle. The boy, however