Semi=weekly graphic., 1897-09-15
4 WILTED SWAIN. HE ESSAYS TO STEAL A MARCH ON THE OLD MAN. The Grand Finale Turns Ont a Farce, and Another Heart
 Huugereth For What
 1t Hath Not

In the litle village ot Knqsland, on the Cotton Belt thirty two miles south of this city, resides d swain whose nature has sneaks of seotimentalism in il, and these streaks are sorrIy disturbed when ever fair daughter of Eve SO dis poses.
 This swain k just now emerging from the middle of what proved to be one of the most disturbing dis. turbances it has fallen his .ot to encounter. In this same village in which this modern Romeo resides there also resides modern Juliet Some time since each of these be- came enamoured with the other, willing away their leisure hours billing and cooing over the back yard fence like two turtle doves over a "shock" of freshly-cut wheat.
 These billing and cooing meetings, as they usually took place during the front end of night time, 1t seems, in some unaeeountable way interfered with athe old man s slumbers, likewise his rest, and l likewise his plaeidity of mind. and he at length became very much an gered and forbade the young man the premises, and also the hand of the young lady. But sly Cupid thought to steal march on the old gentleman by putting into the heads of these young people the idea that it was possible for them, when the curtain Of night had beeh drawn about old earth's reposing form, to hie themselves away in a manner unreyealed to any other soul, and seek the abode of good old father some miles out in the sticks, who has been young himself and knows the fond yearning of youth, and who has had conferred upon him in bis declining days the high office Of magistrate of his beat, and be bound together by those silken ties that closer and closer bind as Time un- ravels it's intending thread
 This agreed to and all arrange. ments perfected, the hero of the coming escapade went about his daily labors with the joy Of song in his heart, and his dreams at night were filled with advance realizations of that feIicitous state which was so soon to dawn upon him,
 The appointed time and place found him in readiness, awaiting the presence of the only object needed to complete his life ard smoother the rugged places along the pathway of his mundane jour ney Only few minutes was he kept in suspense, when the swish of sweeping garments and the soft fall of slippered Trilbys told to him that the time for action had come.
 Going through performance which you, kind reader, can better imagine than your humble servant of the Faber can depict, they then cautiously and speedily placed dis tance behind them until they stood in the presence of him who was to join them together until death did them part
 The ceremonies and congratuIa- tions over, To and beholdl what was the surprise ol the groom, when his bride relieved herself of a very in- geniously constructed disguise and revealed to hls astonished gaze, not the being for which his panting heart thirsted and his eager arms yearned, but a neighbor boy, in- stead,
 'The old mar" had caught on, and taking young friend into his confidence, played a very successful little game on his much-desiring- to- be son-in-law.
 And what is worse for the disar- pointed swain, the young lady now says in speaking of the little affair at the trysting place, that a fellow that can't tell the difference in the kissing of boy and a girl, is not the one for her.
 -~s>----