The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-18

Forty acres of timber all felled. Stumps as thick as drag teeth. Piles of wood fifty feet long and twenty feet high. At night display out rivaling the northern lights. Surely, if this Titan fiddled, a small boy might be familiar enough to adore him afar.
 And then happy morning, when, fin neighborly way, the farmer and the boy went to borrow plowpoint or a short whiffle- tree of Riley Rose. There was a log-house, but in what contrast to the one in which the small boy lived The timber all hewn; two pumps at the door, the front yard green with grass and yet shady with big oaks, gravel walks, picket-fence between house and barn-yard, and a great swing. But the very charm of the place lay in the barn. yard-a ten acre grove of healthy oak saplings some fifteen years old. Here was a paradise of domestic animals and birds. The hubbub of the early fore noon in this grove would surely have set the Greek poets singing. The boy would already have laid down his life for Riley Rose. There was no other like him in the prosaic world which the small boy knew. He did not ask why other men should not have homes that would make happy both man and beast. He simply thanked God in a quick heart that even one good soul should redeem earth from the monot- ony of pusley and smart-weed.
 With the building of the new frame house, and the planting of the corn and the spring wheat, the early sum- mer went away, and yet the gossip ran of the good times at Riley Roses. The "sociables'' mad met every week, the crowd had been too big for the house, and Riley had built a dancing floor under the trees. The people would go nowhere else. The good young farmer and his wife shook their heads. It would all come to the bad The farmer went contentedly to his work, singing "John Anderson My Jo" in the minor key which he loved so well.
 Now came watermelon time. There was not melon on the young farmers barren acres. But, ill Riley Roses new "forty," notice had been given that melons were free to all melons that were past the lugging of small boy. So the farmer and the boy made trip and brought home half a wagon boxful, that the great Riley demanded to pile in. There he was. This was the demi-god-a large, broad faced, Scotch h-looking farmer, every inch an optimist. How happy he must be! The small boy did not dare to address him, for fear of telling of the secret love that had grown up. And when the melon bearers returned home there was a feast, for they had lived on salt pork and bad spring water until they were all furnishing for some of the juice O the earth. But the farmer ate of the great musk melons, things the boy had no tooth for. The farmer did not care for wa termelons. He ate melons as he sang "John Anderson"-in the minor key.
 And now came the rout of autumn. The boy could almost hear the sounds of revelry at Riley Roses. How blessed it was, that though the days should be long and hateful on this worked-out farm, still, up there, not a mile away, was place where men and women laughed and made merry ! How ruefully the farmers all about declared that Riley Rose could get more done at one husking bee than any other man could in ten!
 It was destined, in the providence of God, that the boy should vanish from these scenes. He went with but a single regret-that fate had kept him away from the one spot on earth that had been worth living in.
 Nothing seemed stranger or more joyful than the news, few years afterward, that another and beloved family of this boys relatives had bought Riley Roses place, and would also try farming. Time had wrought some changes for the better in the tor tunes of the small boy. He had a guitar, and he was we'll liked. There fore, to visit his affectionate aunt and her daughter, the people who had never been unkind to him, and to visit them in Riley Roses paradise, became a privilege that could hardly have been dreamed of. And in the days ot a delightful midsummer, while the men were off on the creek having, the women would cook dinner of sprinp chicken fried in fresh butter, the ta- ble would be spresd under the trees, the boy, who gloried in homework would take delighted hand at the various industries of that little home and though the people roundabout might say that the light had departed from Riley Roses, yet what cared tho boy? The fact was he, the small boy
 had become sole heir of this principal.