Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1901-06-27
30 oC%5o OCsS5o Oe5SO Oe5s5o OCx3o 90
A ROMANCE OF
THE FOREST.
The Story of a Long Wooing
With an Abrupt Ter
mination.
B Y G. H. A UG U R.
70 OOt4SSJO OSJs5O OS.5t45O Ot.SJO Ot.N5
Dark the halls and cold the feast,
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest


The o'clock train on the Duluth,
South Shore and Atlantic railroad
takes you away from the beautiful
town Of Marquette, on Lake Superior,
climbs slowly up to the iron hills,
passes through Negaunee, Ishpeming,
Michigamme, rival cities of the North
ern Peninsu.ar," and, bowling along at
20 miles an hour, brings you at noon to
Sidnaw, whence a short branch road
extends to Ontonagon, and, if you have
to change cars, may heaven help you
in your sorry plight, for you must wait
hours in dreary place.
Two hundred feet from the track at
Sidnaw station is a good sized frame
building, with a hotel sign over the
door and tin beer sign on either side
of it. You get your dinner here, and
after dinner you may sit on the hotel
veranda and view the entire town and
all of it's inhabitants.
The town site comprises about half a
40 GO acres it would be called in other
parts of the country tract of cleared
land. The hotel before alluded to is
set back against the woods on one side
of the tract, while the business portion
of the place-fve saloons, a store and
a board walk-skirts the other edge
The railroad track passes through the
center. There is no street. There are
everywhere blackened tree stumps and
scattered blades of brown dry grass
standing defiantly in pepper and salt
colored soil of muck and sand.
The main feature of Sidnaw is 81
lence-the awful silence of the great
surrounding forest-but it is broken at
| intervals by a dogfght or an explo-
sion of oaths from the saloon district,
where red shirted slouch hated woods
men from the lumber camps play cards,
| just visible within the darkened door
ways.
A line of freight cars stands on the
track by the station, and now and then
an engine that has been sizzling and
Kissing all by itself among the trees
comes out and bumps these cars about
in an aimless sort Of way for a few
moments and then goes into retirement
again.
You spend four hours in the contem-
plation of this scene; then that fool en-
gine backs a lot of the freight cars and
an old passenger coach down to the
station, and you get aboard and go to
Ontonagon, the terminus Of the road,
and it takes you two hours to go-just
half as long as it took to change cars"
l had changed cars at Sidnaw once,
and l was on my way thither again,
depressed and low spirited at the pros
pect before me, when, all suddenly,
was invited to attend a wedding while
waited, and once more the world look
ed rosy.
The prospective bride occupied the
seat behind me in the car. / had not
noticed her particularly until she bent
forward, and, touching me on the arm,
she asked if i could inform her at
what time our train was due in Sid
nav. Then 1 turned and beheld a lady
of some 40 summers, wearing flowery
gown of white and green, with black
lace mitts, and having beside her one
of those big black 80 cent travelling
bags that circulate SO freely in the
west.
The ready politeness with which
answered her question encouraged her
to ask more, and eventually found it
necessary to sit sidewise that l might
more conveniently keep up my end of
the conversation, which shifted from
~ do f,1I
rapidity and finally merged into ro-
nance of which she was the heroine
and to the completion of which | was
cordially asked to lend my presence.
TITS 1S years." she said. "since this
Mr.. Prince left Kaukauny and came up
here into the lumber camps Him and
me was young folks then and KEEP
company together a spell, but when he
asked me to marry him said, No. I
wouldn't marry nobody Then he
went away, and l never heard of him
till three years ago he wrote and said
somebody'd told him was single and
he was waitin for me; wouldn't never
marry another woman, he said. nohow,
and he hoped I'd take him into consid-
Grafton again.
''That letter made me feel kind Of
queer-to think he'd been SO faithful
all these years. l never believed he
set so much store by me as all that. l
was good mind to write him favor
able letter right then and there. but
when it come right to the point I
couldn't make up my mind to do it. so
/ just wrote him / wanted a year more
to think about it.
'.Well. l never heard word from
him no more than's if he was dead till
the year was up. Then he wrote again
and said he was still waitin.
'T put him off till Christmas, then till
spring, and so it's been a-goin up to
two weeks ago, when it come over me
all to once that 1 wasn't treatin the
man right. He'd been dreadful long
sufferin and patient and deserved his
reward, and l set down and wrote
him I'd have him.
''He wanted to come down to Kau-