Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-03-10

MDNA their clear tunable
LMMW voices, always with
A$& a tone Of love or
mirth in them, are
r0eet upon the air. My years turn to gold
in the counting, and like the little colored
bov who shall be immortal, Judging BY the
good times I've had, must be hundred"
They never suffered me to know dull times,
these loves and lovers of mine.
Comrades, with you and me together
Was never any but good weather.
When YOU came the sunshine was lighted,
whatever the time or sort of day, and
whether, between laughs we looked in each
otber's ewes till the souls in us melted with
tenderness, or it was high jinks and we'll
timed daffin, be sure there was no deception,
selfshness nor distrust. The ancients be-
lieved one might reach long life by being
continually breathed upon by young people.
1t is certain that the breath of children pre-
serves the freshness of the heart.
AN IDLE BOY.
One of the first conquests L have to think
If, was scholar named George-unless it
was Frank quite forget his other name.
BE was the big boy OF the school, and
very idle one, teasing the girls or the flies
alternately. Things came to such a pass he
had either to be improved or turned out of
school, so kept him after hours one bright
summer day to make up his geography les
son. Doors and windows were open, the
oakwoods flashing their leaves invitingly,
and the sunshiny-felds saying mutely what
audacious BOYS shouted at the door, Come
out and have good time with us. You
- l,or- 1aarpa1 f6o4 1aecop
ruled the 17-vear-old teacher to the 16-year-
old boy-not at all sure she could carry out
her discipline, but ready to be spent in the
effort.
"What am 1 staying here for" SAYS the
big bow. mutinously. "You can't keep me
five a mind to go. The boys say I'm
fool for staying, and want me to cut and
rum"
81 know can't keep you" says the girl
teacher. "'There is the door. You can go
if you please. But if you do, it will be
your loss, not mine, - and then she gave him
such a talking-to about spelling his own
chances, and wasting his time, and the need
of everyone to observe good discipline, man
or boy, as only young women can do, when
they have their first faith in human nature
1 couldn't do it now, for I've lost that naive
faith in my fellow beings, and consequently
the key to their minds. Before the young
school-ma'am got through, the big black
eyed boy was crying. Those two innocents
made up the peace, he set to studying and
was the best scholar any one could have,
from that day. Next year he went to the
war, and that was all ever heard of him.
snKEN CHAINS.
But what are boys made of, that silk
ribbon will lead them, when all that honor
and duty and selfinterest plead, fails to
Il. II. 7 L. L.
a mans virtue of any sort. when the only
motive to it is a young woman's influence
But it is often the thread which brings the
cord which brings the ropes that draws
man to safety and to good.
On dull spring afternoon, bent, as now,
over nv work, chuckle at the window
lifted nv head to meet the triumphant re-
CARDS of two Romeos who had scaled the
rainpipe to corner roof, where they could
look inside my room, and where they paid
me a call of high compliment, if not of cere-
mony. Many more delightful things were
said to me in that hour than shall ever
hear again. Gentlemen of II and 13 not be-
ing deferred by modesty from any audacious
fattery which comes into their heads. 1t
seems to me chocolate and licoriee drops
were passed through the window to them,
and one ardent invader swung himself on
the windowsill to invite me to climb the
Palisades, fading opposite in the A priI
mist. 1t was dual affection, shared ami
cably among three, to speak Irish. We
risked being swamped in the swell of steam
boats and the rough waves of spring storms;
together we scaled the cliffs for pink and
white azalias, whose spicy, blushing drifts
filled our boat from stem to stern; we hunted
snakes together, and the boys loafed under
the pines while 1 wrote my newspaper let
ters out of doors. They were the loyalest
souls 1 ever knew, the stanchest friends
would to heaven 1 had never known any
others!
WITTY ELF.
Then came the brightest, blithest elf and
winsomest, humorsome child that ever set
foot on the planet in my time. A poets
son, with a genius for his mother, inheriting
the rare, freakish fascination OF both, he was
a sort of household Ariel, dancing and
singing as he tiptoed round. more sprite
than human, save for his close attachments
In the corner by the sofa 1 spied him, the
day of his coming, slim bright-eyed thing
in blue thibet frock, shy, yet fearless and
spirited as some creature of the wild.
"Whose mouse are you?" asked, and
Whose cat are you?" was the rejoinder,
within his arch and penetrating look, which
made us sworn gossips before the hour was
over. He rehearsed his adventures coming
from his summer home, and how he had
little basket with little cake, and he ate
that, and little roll and he ate that, and a
little bottle of wine, and he drank that, and
little bottle of hair oil"
'Did you drink that?" asked person of
rather rigid aspect, who did not approve
exaggeration.
Yes. was the answer, quick as flash,
"and swallowed the brush and combI' He
was never behind in neatness of repartee or
commonplace in expressing himself, and his
odd phrases linger in my memory. He got
of the compliment to young lady about
the golden hair and the silver voice, which
was rather charming from a 4-year-old
princeling, and he wanted the "MistIetoe
Bough" sung from first to last five times
over one evening in the twilight, pressing
spellbound at the singers knee, enchanted
with the pensIve melody.
A CHILD's FANCIEs.
One day the boy and L went to Central
Park together, when the lawns were at their
loveliest, and spent enchanted hours. 1t
seems like a page of Hawthorne that we
came upon q fairylike fountain jet, play
ing in lonely nook of exquisite green
sward, and the child was SO taken by the
beauty of the spot, which would attract
nothing short of poet by nature, that we
fingered longest there, and he begged to re-
turn to it, and sitting by me on the grass,
poured out such a strain of pure souled
fancies, about his little brother who was
dead, and how he should like to Gie and be
buried in just such a spot, throwing himself
down TO put his face in the grass, and