The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-03-27

VOOSM 6a0 BraC01u4 Wd1AAVA'
0 though I was 80 and over I was
always painting in my heart a picture
Oh Monochrome, where my sample case
should be concealed and where my
weary soul should invite itself.
4 cannot tell how the music Of her
wen modulated voice made me men
CaIIy buy a lot and build on it and fit
up the house and furnish it on $185
her presence to me was like a happy
twilight In the forest, with a little sug-
gestlon OF violets and ferns that had
oeen stirred up by a passing hreeze.
NY heart swelled like a pan vi wet
drled apples In the June sunshine, and
l was afraid for a time that 1 could
not hold it.
Il talked as we'll as I could, though
L was really so under the influence of
Gnls tonic that I don't know what l
said, only that before we separated I
had her neat little card, and she had
mine. She did not do it without much
argument, but 1 did not forget my
good manners, and she seemed to see
by my sincere look that I was in ter
rlOle earnest, for only a reasonable de-
gree OF respect for the etiquette of a
cruel world and the fear that I might
lose her kept me from falling at her
feet In the aisle and proposing to her
While the conductor tore out the whole
inside of my mileage book.
81 offered to help her off at her sta
ton, but she said that her friends
would all be there. and 60 I took off
my hat and held her hand a moment
before h went away, while my astral
body seemed two sizes larger than the
car, and my sub-conscious self all
seemed to be in the palm of that little
hand nesting there in mine like a
warm quail on toast.
MANY people were at the depot to
meet her, but she took the arm of a
middle aged man, who put her in a
carriage, and they drove away as 1
waved my handkerchief toward her.
81 never saw her again!
LAS we moved out of the station my
eye caught a feeting glimpse of one of
those long white pine boxes that the
express man had taken off our train
and was wheeling away. saw a part
of the name, and it was so near like
that on card / still held that l asked
the conductor if he knew who it was.
Eyes, he knew the party we'll. It
vas the body of the husband of the
lady you sat with" he said. She was
bringing him here to be buried. She
claims that he was murdered by a bur
glar night before last, but it is gen
orally thought that she killed him with
a Ratchet. That was the sheriff you
saw meet her and she is probably in
jail by this time. 81 rose and went
forward to the smoking a for a few
hours, and when my mind cleared 1
found that I had smoked nine cigars
and one whole side Of my mustache,
Sometimes I wake up in the night
all cold and bathed in an icy sweat and
find the bedclothes over in the middle
of the floor as the old night mare has
left them, in a kind of nightmare'snest
perhaps, and 1 shudder over the ter
rible dream that has come so often of
this beautiful creature resting her
soothing little hand over my glad eyes,
when all at once I see the heavens
through my closed lids and feel the
cold blade of the broadax in my mass
i've skull, while the great untrodden
field of astronomy seems to open up to
my burning eyes.
""Then I awake.
II will not tell you the name, be-
cause a tender hearted governor has
been to see her, and that settled it. She
will be pardoned soon, for she has
promised never to do it again-With a
hatchet-and by spring the express
companies will be hauling her hus
bands around over the country once
more.
st am still a bachelor, but I have a
nice suit of rooms, with hot and cold
water, and a nightmare of my own"
Hethen gathered up his sample cases
and got off the train. The conductor
said he was a good salesman and one
of the most chaste and unselfsh liars
he ever met. BILL NYE.