Idaho news. (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1887-1891, 1889-08-17

STOUT peaSantry OF the U130e H0ottt
had fighting mettle in them, surely.
But the shop-keepers of the National
Guard, with their vaforous speeches at
Clubs, the ''pacts iDith death they daily
swore, the lies of the newspapers, the
want of a dictator who should convert
this seething caldron of brag and BRAY
cry into solid mass of resistance and
weight, how sorely it chafed the rest
less American as he recalled one by
one the incidents of his own eventful
campaigning.
Rut it had grown dark, and his moth
er had not spoken lcr hours; he must
see her face, must rouse her and try 10
| give her a little cheer before she set
tied to sleep for the night.
| So he lighted the dim brass lamp
and placed it on the mantle-shelf,
whence it shone down in grotesque
light and shadow on the little space
within the screen.
| His motherw was awake and was look
ing at him with her large mournful
eyes. Something more of meaning in
their look than usual prompted him to
I ,ean over her and say:
christmas Eve! Do you know it.
mother? Let us thank God that we
are together"
1t was rarely now that Mrs. Warren
spoke, but she looked assent with her
eyes. and then said, with great effort:
sis there-any one-to miss you
to-night-where yOu-came from?"
DIR. Warren started. 1t was the
first CLEAN of interest she had ever
shown in his past, and he had avoided
speaking of his life in America as in
volving so much as might pain her
without end.
YES, mother" he said, bending his
head over her poor, passive hand and
kissing it, II think there is one little
girl in a Pennsylvania village who is
thinking of me tonight, and hope
| know-that she misses me-"
Then. gathering courage from his
| mothers interested look. he went on
and told her the history of his parting
with Margaret. 1t was relief, a sat
isfactiou, to speak it all out and to
give his own conduct the words that
befitted it in his own mind. He
poured forth his story, and his mother
seemed TO listen intelligently; and
when he told her how he had abruptly
| flung himself out of the village and
from the sweet little romance of his
life, she raised her poor hand and
placed it lovingly on his head.
| "You can go back TO her. The end
is SOON"
As a son he tried to speak hopefully,
cheerily of the future, when all this
sound and fury of the bombardmeut
should be past and gone, and Paris
once more open to the outer world.
But very slowly she shook her head.
Il shall not see it,-nor her. |
should have loved her-I think
And looking once more into her
face, at the shadow gathering there,
seeing what he had never seen before
in all the dull hOpelessness of her dis
ease, the stamp of the awful change,
he bowed his head beside her couch
and was still;-fast holding his moth
er's hand.
The shadow fell that night When
Christmas morning dawned, the light
looked in on the calm face of the dead.
She had passed away 50 silently in the
watches of the night that even her
son, anxiously noting pulse and
breathing, was scarce conscious at the
time that all was over, until the gray
dawn showed, stealing in at the win
dow, that peace and rest had come at
last.
But not to him. There was no
peace, no rest for him at first. Like
one bewildered, he walked round and
round the Park Monceaux, the little
Park with all its bright foliage black
ened with the frost and trampled under
soldiers feet 1t had seemed to him,
when he first saw it, like picture
from Holme fields. But the desolate
bleakness, reigning there now, was in
deed picture of himself, OF his past
life, and, perhaps. the future. 1t
was as he had made it,-come what
would!
The long, careful tending OF his
mother, the patient, tender watchful-
ness that had brought out all the
woman in the hard and resolute man,
seemed as straws, nothings, in the
fierce struggle that ragged within him
now.
Last Chris mas he was with her.
To-day not even the poor invalid to
call his own; alone in the fated city.
They made grave for the poor
lady OF Montmartre. ''Heaven knows
how long it will be safe from desecra-
tion," thought her son; but the enc
mics guns, laundering to the south
and east, had spared that quarter as
yet.
And when she was laid there, with
the simplicity and haste which the
time demanded, DIR. Warren turned his
steps towards the American ambu-
lance tents, where he was sure to find
compatriots. and work-perhaps.
He had his desire. The cold, bitter
weather had so aggravated the wounds
of the poor victims-for such they
seemed to be to eyes that had noted
the unwieldiness and blunders of the
separate sorties-that their sufferings
were intensified ten-fold; and it needed
oil tho avnartaxoa nell 4ba