Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1902-05-28

grade crossings-and somebody picked
up the old brown felt hat, and some
body else asked:
what shall we do with him?" For
Nobody's Tim, you remember, had
neither wife nor child, neither Gown
folks" nor home.
Then, out of the silent crowd which
had thickened in the square, sudden
voices rose:
I'll take him to my house"
"And L"
81 will" -
''No! We will"
''No, let us"
And the voices strove with one an
other, till it seemed as if all Sunshine
were competing to be Town folks" to
Tim.
For, in the flashing of noble deed,
Nobody's Tim had become Every body's
Tim, and the whole town pressed to do
him honor.
Now, at this moment, the silver trail
of distant steam carriage could be
seen melting along the smooth road.
Hold on!" said the cab driver.
That's the colonel. He's got some
thing to say about this"
A woman-a stranger-who had the
little girl clasped to her heart and had
refused Git seemed out of sheer
elemental motherliness) to let
her go to any one else-began
at this to sob. And when the
father and the mother of the child
rode up and stopped-and when they
caught sight of the little rose-and-
white figure in the woman's arms
many persons in the crowd wept, and
were not ashamed of it.
Memorial day dawned clear, hot and
shining, as it almost always is. No
one in Sunshine went to the baseball
games or cared for the bicycle races
on the sacred national festival of that
year; but all Sunshine followed the
pathetic remnant of the Grand Army
when the gray-haired group formed
to escort their homeless, dead comrade
from the colonel's home
No one remembered on that morning
that Tim used to drink; that he did
not work; that he had neither place
nor name, nor character among, his
neighbors. Everyone remembered
rather how kind he was, and how gen.
erous of impulse, what good company
he was, and what a pleasant smile he
had-this hero who had lived among
them in disguise, unregarded and neg
lected for so long.
AS they bore him down the coloneps
granite steps and out into the street,
the Grand Army veterans sang in their
broken voices:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord
A chorus of trained singers had start
ed the battle hymn, as the colonel
asked; but when the veterans took
nobody else could sing-and the vet
Grams finished the hymn alone.
Then the beating, breaking heart of
the military music throbbed in and
claimed its own.
Nobody's Tim was buried as if he
had been the general. Blotted out in
flowers, he seemed to have no grave.
The chaplain read the service as if the
Christian faith wished she could have
owned the hero. The flag folded him
as If it were proud of him. But the
colonel, with barred head, stood little
apart. Lifting his eyes, as
if he perceived what no 9TH
er did. the commanding Off
Ger of the old regiment saluted the
unseen spirit of the dead private, as
soldier salutes his superior. Then the
drum of the veterans sounded taps for
lin, and three .volleys rang across
his grave.
Now, after taps, an unexpected thing
occurred. Some one led up the little
girl, all in white, and her arms were
heaped with pink roses. These she put
delicately, one by one, upon the pyre
of blossoms under which Everybody's
Tim was laid away. Rosamond kissed
the roses before she put them down
it was her own idea. No one spoke or
stirred while she did this, and after
ward no one added a flower.
Then the child (this. too, was her
own idea) quite naturally knelt down
upon the flowers and shut her eyes and
said aloud and distinctly, so that all
the people heard her:
Now lay me down to sleep.
pway We Lord my soul to keep.
If should die before wakesup-Amen."
WELL" said one of the Grand Army |
men, with the back of his hand at his |
eyes, 81 guess she's with it,
P11f ho e.