Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1891-07-04

inal class ma5es you doubtful OF every
other class. call that n perversiol Of
mind. The next thing yoa will be hav.
ing grave suspicious of me-"
The Judge made a smiling rejoinder
such as husband may venture with his
wife, and turned again to his writing.
The blazing logs cracked. the wife
gazed into the flare, her face lighted
with an inward as well as an outward
radiance Had she not for several
months been desirous Of just such re-
suit as she hoped would soon come
about? She would yet, she was con-
vinced. see her only child the wife of the
heir to millions, u woman at the height
Of social matters, an authority and the
envy of other women. She could appre-
ciate it to the fullest, for she had long,
long ago, against the sage advice and
the warning Of friends. married strug-
Cling lawyer in whom she saw what he
had since with her assistance developed.
She gave herself some of the credit of
her husbands success in life. She had
made him study from the beginning,
gauging his weak points as she gauged
his strong, tutoring those and guarding
these, till he understood himself and saw
what she had ever tactfully, kindly and
appreciatively impressed upon him-his
duty to himself, her and their child.
This duty was to make of himself all
that it was possible to make, to scale
dizzy heights; and one of these heights
was about to be at tIined when his name
was associated in all honorable merit
and deserving with the highest Office Of
the state.
Surely he owed his wife much, and
she knew that he SO reasoned. But she
had never liked to hear him speak of his
earlier days. when he had wandered, a
poor country lad, away from "the soft
eye music of slow waving boughs" into
the cataclysm of warning men, each de-
termined to supplant his brother, not.
like young Wilmington having the ac-
claim of bells, but earnestly hopeful of
making his way, and SO the lady looked
into the fare and thought.
The fire cracked and flashed up to the
pictured eyes that looked down upon the
Judge; from outside came the subdued
rattle of a city night; boy passed by
the house shrilly whistling. The judge
wrote.
In the strokes of his pen, word by
word, letter by letter, he reasoned
against life gone wrong, mind that
had digged beneath the ordinary in
guilt, while an equal effort in an oppo-
site direction might have won the ad-
miration of healthfnl reasoning. But
had it been premeditation? Had it not
been moment of temptation? And who
is beyond temptation, though of divinity
q man be not tempted beyond what he is
able to resist?
The case was one of peculiar interest
to the judge: his decision would be crit
caliy examined. Just now, with the
govecnorship in the perspective, even
more than his enemies would grasp at
any flaw, the merest technicality. to
prove the feasibility of higher honors for
him. If he were lenient he might be ac-
cused of weakness: if he were as severe
as the fragrant crime might make the
ordinary man who espoused the cause Of
an outraged business community, II
might be argued that a judge should be
a principle, never an individual.
So he must be carefUl, exact, having
before him nothing but the cold facts OF
the case: be an impartial. soulless arbiter
of the evidence deduced in the trial.
From the room beyond came the acute
tones of n piano. A little prelude was
played, and then u clear. girlish voice
broke into song. 1t was tender little
ballad which the daughter of the house
sang to the man who sought to win her.
In the study the mother of the daugh-
ter of the house. her gaze upon the flare
of the fire. thought of the success to be
achieved by the daughter, as she had
ever thoughtof the success to be achieved
by the father of that daughter.
In the study the judge penned his de
cision condemuatory of man not SC
many years older than the lover of the
daughter. with mean advantages, great
temptations and an activity to be depre-
Gated. as was the passivity of the othe:
man.
The song foated into the study, plant.
i've and aching. unsatisied as all music
is.
Did the judge hear it as he wrote his
decision? Did his wife hear it as she
dreamed her ambitious dreams?