Gulf Coast breeze. [volume] (Crawfordville, Fla.) 1897-19??, 1898-06-10
Sim Cages Tai Mahal.
ny 4. HOUGH.


40 miles across from rim to rim, runs
ilimitably north and south, drained
by a crooked, deep.cut thread of water.
Here and there clump of trees,
yellow.green against the yellow gray,
may rise deprecatingly, but they are
the trees of men, merely tolerated by
the elements. Deep, rich grass and
flowers and snow and savage cold
were long the main products OF this
great wild garden of the north. Once
the grass and flowers for hundreds of
miles lay spread like royal carpet !;
but now the carpet is made of hun
dreds Of miles OF wheat, fine and hard,
such as no other land produces. Men
OF the old world and the new, from the
north, the west and the east, swept
out into this garden land that lay
ready for the pillow as soon rs tho In
dams were driven away from it. The
creak of the wooden. whecled carts of
, the half-breed butialo-hurters was re-
placed 10y the clank of the seeder and
the rattle of the reaper.
Sim Cages house, low and clinging
hard to the earth with which it COM
bated, stood far out i'll the middle Of
this broad prairie-gr3und, across
which one might look for more than
ten miles and see the big elevators Of
the nearest town.
There were no towns at all there
Is years before, when Sim Gage first
turned up the bright black loom on
his claim. Since then he had met the
Billiards and beaten them and had en-
dured the blazing heats of the swift
summer seasons. The snow had not
separated his grip from the land on
which he had laid hold, and drought
had not burned out his resolution.
His hair had thinned and grown
gray, his face became drowned and
scanned with the weather, and perhaps
his heart had hardened somewhat
under the steady and relentless pres
sure of his life; but never had he
slackened his hold or dreamed of Civ
ing up the fight with this iron-bound
garden OF the wheat. He had hardly
lifted up his eyes.
At first it WAS bacon and bread that
Sarah Gage, his wife, had cooked;
then it was beef aud bread. 1t began
to be beef and bread and other things
of late years, when N,mber One wheat
had brought growing cities to the edge
OF the forgotten sea. But then Sarah
Gage died. Poor woman! she should
have been unhappy, no doubt, during
her life, but she was not wise enough.
The years broke her down, and the
winds blew away her color and comell-
ness, but neither sun nor snow could
dim her love, her cheerfulness or her
faith. She loved her home, every
inch of it, as it grew. She loved her
husband loved her daughter. All her
dreams came true.
Six days she labored, and the seventh
was the Lords day. Twelve miles or
more across the prairie each Sunday,
although the icy poudre cut or the
sun scorched or the level ground
swan with water. Sarah Gage rode or
drove to church. Farther than that
she would go to nurse the sick settler in
his "shack" or care for the over
worked woman who had dropped in
the harness of the daily life.
How beautiful and noble is such n
life as that Of Sarah Gage! You may
have eaten bread made of the Number
One wheat she helped to raise, and
the money you paid for it may have
helped buy the hymn book that she
loved and from which they chose the
favorite hymn to sing above her grave;
her grave in the bottom of the forgot
ten sea.
That was in the fall, when the air
was growing sharp, although still the
midday heat famed up apace. The
clear blue of the sky was hecked and
lined with troops of white fowl The
stubble-felds were white with the
great fiocks of the snow-geese coming
down from the north. In the morning
long squads and armies of the big
brown grouse, on rocking, rapid, later
mittent wing, were passing down from
the barren wastes of snow to regions
where timber and corn-lands gave
them a longer lease of life.
Only man remained behind in this
iorsaken land, TO prove to tho Gle
ments that he was master there. The
grass passed into the seer and yellow
leaf and was tut down by the frost,
,and snow blew above it to render it
forgotten.
Sim Gage went back to the house
and sat down in the black clothing
worn alike for festival or mourning.
His face was hard and emotionless, but
his blue eyes looked out with pitt
ful and beseeching gaze. Emmy com
fortel him, as is the mission Of woman
lind, though Emmy should still have
been a girl.