The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-08-22

was her soft lips
Then the other players came walking
across the lawn in the twilight, and the
next day Miss Eastwater went away.
Clymer wrote to her, of course. He stole
| the time in which to do this from the
] county. But the answers were not just
what he had expected they would be-.
| They were full of pleasant gossiping and
even Of the expression of those girlish
| opinions which most young maidens hold,
and which so strongly resemble copybook
notices. But she said very little of just
| the sort of thing that CIymer desired her
to say. He consoled himself by looking at
every applicant for license who thrust
his face in at the little window and reflect
ing:
"Ahl my man, you look happy now.
But know what you have been through
You may not believe it, but l myself have
experienced the rapture of fitting close
to the first act, and am now in the midst of
the perplexfties which are so necessary to
the progress of the play. Ny dear fellow,
take this filed out blank with my blessing
1t looks very commonplace, perhaps, to the
uninitiated. But you and l are perfectly
aware that it is the passport to heaven"
None of these remarks were audible, Of
course, They were the combined solilo-
quies Of Clymer the lover and Clymer the
clerk. The man who supplied the Office
with legal blanks stood aghast at this time
at the number consumed in what was tech
nically known as Cupid's department.
They seemed so remarkably in excess of
the number Of applications recorded that
the clerk might, with some show of JUS
tice, have been accused of throwing them
into the waste basket
And it is true IL 1t they did go there, but
not until deal of labor had been expend-
ed upon them, not until the blank spaces
revealed the fact that Clymer Ames, who
lived In certain city, township, county
and state, and who was of such and such
an age, and without legal hindrance or in
cumbrance of a marital Sort received here
with permission from the clerk to marry
Miss Lydia Eastwater, whose qualifications
were then set down
Under this practice Clymer's handwrit-
ing, which had previously brought him in
some contempt, became beautiful Who
could write the name of Lydia Eastwater"
and remain Indifferent to his LIS and Els?
The clerk even wrote some lines in his face
till it ceased to resemble the blank leaf Of
one of his ledgers-but of this he was quite
unconscious These lines signifed good
things, but not in the least such good
things as one reads in the copybooks
They did not say that honesty was the best
policy. But they said that the heart of
man is a flower, full of perfume and beauty,
which opens in the sunlight of woman's
love-
Lydia Eastwater, aged nineteen, Of the
county off, when will the clerk ever get
through with his weeks work when he has
SO much extraneous labor?
One day stranger entered the office-a
fine fellow, with an elision of the ''r" and
a swing in the gait.
Man of Importance, of property, of
temper and enthusiasm" said the clerk to
himself after his usual manner of sum
ming up his customers.
81 want a marriage license" said the
young man gayly and peremptorily.
Name" said the clerk, trying to be per-
functory, but actually throbbinR with
sympathy with this happy young animal.
Alfred Sidney johnson Clayton"
''Name of lady?"
Lydia Earnestine Eastwater"
The clerk went on filling out the rest of
the blank and did not move a muscle. The
lover-but there was no lover except the
young man who went out swinging his
shoulders as he went.
And so the pace of Cupid's servitor be-
came, as was mentioned at first, like
batch of bread made from stale yeast. And
though he works for love, he and his clerk
do not speak when they meet, and the
capricious Boy has even been seen to fold
his wings closer about him with an air of
contempt when he looked at Clymer Ames,
clerk of the court and issuer of marriage
Hcenses.-Elia W. Peattie in Omaha World
Herald