The age-herald., 1901-11-10
IN HOTEL LOBBIES
 AND ELSEWHERE
A Letter Dim With Age.

A Letter Dim With Age. A woman-a gentlewoman of heart and 1efinement-sends hitber these lines called An Old Letter." and makes the singular request that they be printed 'fIn Hotel Lobbies and Elsewhere" The request is compiled with:
 Today found letter dim with age, Yet breathing hope and trust In every And bearing on it's blurred and yellow
 page
 A token of Thy faith, o friend of mine Strong in its deathless love each tender
 word
 Vague as the first sweet notes of spring
 time heard
 In somo secluded dell. And then I walked in dreams, friend
 of mine Across the grave of long forgotten once more my longing eyes looked into
 thine
 Dimnled with the mist of sad, regretfm
 tears;
 Then swift frcm happy summer fields The mystic aongs that love and sorrow
 knew, The while thy soft warm fingers clasped
 my own
 In welcome fond and true saw. the crimson light of morning shine Across the valley and the lonesome As thus at last we stood, o friend of
 mine.
 Then suddenly the world grew dark
 again; For old mad dreams by fevered longings
 wrought
 Swept their strange shadows OCT the
 dawning day,
 And the white meadowlands of peace I
 sought
 Faded In gloom away. A mournful thought, yet sweet O friend
 of mine,
 That In a land beyond the ocean wave he same blue skies that bend above me
 shine
 Upon thy lonely grave!'
 Sweetness of Southern vulgarity. "Ye atn't got any right to do it or say it." he said in his impulsive. ungram- matical southern way.
 From a woman ths speech would have Teen melodious," the man said-"there Is nothing as sweetly musical as the south ern achievements double negative, her abrolute disregard of grammar" he went on to say.
 Do you know have travelled all over Christendom, and far into heathen lands, and In all my travels I never heard any thing as dreamfully romantically. cXquis- itely sweet as the soutnern woman's good mawn'n,' and her softly lisped double superlatives generally.
 My fate, duty, destiny-call 1t what you may took me and kept me abroad for many years, and whilst women of the old world charmed me, I long longed for the speech of the Southern woman. Fi- tive heath, and my name wasn't Mac Gregor, l heard a soft voiced maiden of Birmingham-an educated high-bred creature-cry
 |" I ain't a-gointer do it-good mownin. That grammarless phrase appealed to me nightly. It was so homelike, don t you know! The average person doesn't know the difference be- tween Lindley Murray and Murray Hill. Your fat host might spend thousand dollars on a dinner that he called an el- lergunt lunch,' and his fat friend might say 1t was just illiginet'-as you know fat host and fat friend do say but when the women folk of these fat ones, ignorant though they be- calling a dinner or supper an 'ellergunt' lunch and prcking their teeth with hand spikes on their chin-tucked napkins-when these women folk, who have merely read about the Aldovia- -Wastorf, speak in &C., cents, uncultured, like good mownin', its mighty fetching.
 "Our 'sassidy' men whistle at table, prick their teeth and pare their nails in public-that Is the swellest of the swell but the dear little women are all right with their bad grammar-at least tell they git ma'iedln