The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1902-11-04
THE BEACHES VISION


his father for great things. To which en-,
he educated him literally. So Hud, emery
ing from academic halls looked about NJ
me with a patronlzing air and waited TO
opportunity to come along and make hin
pretty bow. He waited a good man,
years, but she never stepped before hin
or seemed to notice him in the least, Hi
people all died and left him nothing bu
the memory of honorable lives, and poo
HUI, horribly lonely, married a girl b,
knew-atter ascertaining that she had n,
objection to making her own gowns anC
was willing to temper the grocery bills K
suit a bookkeeper's salary.
But In spite of all the dullness with which
he was surrounded, and the fact that h,
toiled all day and walked home through
hlthy streets to third fiat and plair
wife, Hud could not come down to the ac
Qualities. Or, to put it more fairly. he re
fused to notice the uninteresting actuali
ties and confined himself to the endowment
OF such things in life as suited him. AS
for example, the east.
Hud kept books for a River street i'm
porting house, and it was his privilege to
handle invoices of tea from China and cot
fee and spices from Java and Mandalay
1t was, without doubt, the purest imagina
ton, but it seemed to Hud that the very
invoices of these things had an aromatic
scent about them, and it was his chief in
diligence to leave his work minute be
fore the noon hour and 20 to the shipping
room, where the curious cases of redolent
wares were opened
AT first when he tried to tell his wife
she laughed But she loved Hud-poor
Hud who had never had anything that he
wanted-and when she looked in his
dreamy, ox-like eyes, she made up her
mind to try to understand what he was
talking about Very plain. women are
sometimes unselish like that.
1t was she who bought him an old copy
OF the astonishing travels of Marco Polo,
and she got the chronicles of Sir John
Maundeville out of the public library and
read aloud to Hud evenings. She got some
JOSS sticks, too, and burned them in tiny
jade bowl. And after that both of the
Beaches got in the way of buying oriental
trinkets and Mrs. Beach begged the
greenish plated straw wrappings that
came about the tea boxes, and made a
dado of them around her dining-room,
neatly paneling the whole After that the
pungent perfume of the dried tea leaves
were forever in that room, and made it
peculiar. Moreover, she struck tiny gong
when meals were ready, and the gong had
haunting oriental sound.
So into the lives of Hudson Irvington
Beach and his plain little wife began to
come the color of the mysterious east !"
and they dreamed of Far Cathay" and
talked about "the Ind, !" and were absurdly
nackneyed they didn't know it
and they envied the people who could
cross the western seas, and sail into the
toy country of Japan, or see the vast,
thronging rivers of China, and hear the
tinkling of the temple bells.
Il used to think it was very silly to talk
about the incarnation of the soul" Mrs.
Beech said to Hudson, "but now | feel
quite sure that | used to walk through a
bazaar and talk with ivory-faced old men
in turbans, and that | used to buy curious
delightful things 1t cannot be that all
l know about marketing is going down on
Clark street to the butchers. | hate the
butchers, anyway. Why can't we eat rice
and sugared cherries and beautiful deli
cate things like that?"
Hud managed to get some delicious rel.
ishes such as Christians encounter when
they go to Bombay, and he and Mrs. Beach
used them with scrupulous frugality On
Christmas he made her present of SUI
CARED cherries and ginger and small, pre-
cious packages of tea.
They knew but few persons on this
teeming globe and wrote to fewer still,
though they were people who would dear
ly have loved an interesting correspond
ence, and chief of all their epistolatory de-
lights was the letter that came now and
then from Hong Kong from a correspondent
OF the River street house. Hud to tell
the truth, had rather thrust his personal
lty upon this man, and by careful coaxing.
the business correspondence had grown
into a friendly interchange of personal let
tiers.
1t seems curious to me at times" said
Hud one day, rubbing the bald spot on his
head, that in all my life / am never to
get smell of the bazar-the garlic and
the incense and the perfumes and the dirt!
How mserably dull our streets are, Mary!
What would you think if you saw people
in white linen and red and blue and yellow
and gold and fawn colors? Mary, how
would you like Cashmere shawl? Or
camel hair robes Eh?" Then they both
laughed like children who have secret
and Mary, getting up, lit one of the little
joss sticks in the jade bowl.
1t was only last winter that the Beaches
began to get tired of visions. Perhaps they
realized that youth was really gone. ANY
way they knew beyond all peradventure
that they were poor; that work was con-
slant and poorly remunerated, and that for
all of the cry of their souls for the land be.
1ond Suez, they were likely to live and die
in that neighborhood of 'latn buildings.
looking out on endless wire clothes line.
and fire escapes. They grew depressed.
They were almost ill-natured with each
'ther. They ceased to take pleasure in the
'edolent dado.
But just as the dirty Chicago winter was
settling down upon them in most dis.
neartening way, and the furniture of the
hat was looking its meanest, and Mary
vas most conscious of the out-of-date
character of her three-year-old jacket, Hud
came home one night with a white face.
"Hud,' cried Mary, when she saw him.
you're discharged"
Mary" shouted Hud, throwing his arms
about her, 'you lie" and he kissed her
square on the mouth.
TITS the Ind" half sobbed Hud. 81
ell you, Mary, it's the Ind that has upset
ne! I'm to go as agent for our house to
iong-kong! II has come true"
"Hong-Kong isn't the Ind, said Mary. al
most GROSSLY. She was surprised that she