The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1892-12-24

always business trip. but at the same
time my chief pleasure Of q twelve
month. George and were seatmates
In the log schoolhouse. Now he raises
blooded horses for the city. market. and
! buy them. He is strictly honest and
not bit sporty, and his standing re-
fusal Of his stock in my favor has
thrown many hundreds of dollars my
way. But George can afford it. He is
worth half q million. My trip this year
landed me at his bospitable door on the
evening Of Tuesday, the 7th. That
evening We yat on the broad south
porch Of his handsome house, looking
across q forty-acre meadow that sloped
gently to the adjoining grove. Across
this meadow, hlong q private roadway
connecting the river road on the sswest
with q pasture on the east. several
farm hands were leading the $50, 600
worth of stock had come toclaim.
They looked nice, OF course, but George
and had fully discussed them by mail.
and he never was fond Of stable or pad
dock talk in a leisure hour.
You asked me at supper how came
10 give up graduating, and why Ididn't
study law" he observed. .'You see
that furry white object moving along
the river road? Well, that covers the
man who wrought the change. That's
old Parson Baker, Sophia Barnett's
pastor, emeritus, Of Three Locust
Methodist Episcopal church. He's
mother's beneficiary and pensioner,
and he'll be mine if mother goes before
he does he came into this country
sixty years ago, as an exhorSor, and he
has ridden these roads more or less
steadily ever since. He whaled father
at the raising of his firstlog church for
trying to make him take drink Of
whisky, and they were the thickest
kind of chums until father died. Fa-
ther didn't marry until he was forty,
and ! am the only child. BY the time
Iarrived father had accumulated what
IN those days was fabulous fortune,
three hundred thousand dollars, and he
made it four hundred thousand dollars
before I was of age He wanted to
make me q horse breeder, but wanted
law, and there we hitched. About a
year before should have finished at
college, he wrote me brief letter
the only one 1 ever. had from him-con-
veying the information that if knew
what was good for me l would be mar
ried before 4 was twenty one. That
letter bothered me a great deal, be-
cause father was no bully, it he did
try to have little fun with the
preacher, and couldn't quite see the
point between matrimony and stock
raising. The letter contained not a
word about education or the law. Any-
how my birthday and commencement
day occurred the same week, and I.
thought ! would risk the undesirable
consequences of waiting, whatever.
they were.
" Two days before commencement
father was stricken with apoplexy. He
was unconscious when I got to the
farm, and'lived only few hours. His
lastfew months had been marked by
total incapacity for business and moth
er was nearly worn out with looking
after things. We buried him on the
day ] was to have graduated, and two
days before my twenty-frst birthday.
Old Pap Baker was away down on the
other end Of the circuit, and mother or
fieredt that simple burial service
should be said by a local exhorter of
our neighborhood, leaving the funeral
sermon tobe preached by Pappy Baker
on his next appointment, as was often
done IL those days, for there was not
an other Methodist circuit rider within
forty miles that we knew OF.