Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1903-05-14
! IE Old and 1E MEN,
BY Helen Rowland. \

CHE was II and he was 81 when they
~ were married. 1t was purely a
love-match. She proved to be affec-
tionate and devoted. He was ambi-
tious and energetic, and his efforts,
supplemented by his wife's thrift and
self-sacrifice, brought honors and sue
cess. They reared a fine family of
six children, who married early and
settled in adjacent communities, be-
ginning life where their parents had
left off.
She had Jagged in intellectual
growth because society per Sc is not
stimulative of brain development, and
public life offered no career to her as
it had done to her husband. But with
her family off her hands she had leis-
ure to improve her mind. She joined
a ladies' literary society, where am
bilious papers were evolved from the
inner Inconsistencies of encyclope-
dias, and other learned tones, and
she had made an earnest endeavor to
overtake herr husbands superior at
tainments, though she had been born
neither brilliant nor ambitious.
Then, after a welded life of nearly
40 years, which she declared she
would be willing to live over again,
Mrs. Milligan died, and was buried in
the finest lot in the new cemetery,
which she had long regarded as an
object of pride, along with her best
china, her best clothes and her as
sured social position.
There was much sympathy for Mr..
Milligan on the loss of his excellent
wife, for, when it became vacant, it
was see how large was the space she
had filed in the community, and even
her husband had not known how she
had knit herself into every crevice of
his being.
When an elderly relative took up
the burden Of his housekeeping peo-
pie averred that the 6~0-year-old Will
liam Milligan would marry
again.
He thought so himself as he sat by
his lonely fire in the library, and sim
cerely mourned the taking off of his
lifelong companion. But Mr.. Mill
gan was an e%minently social mana
man whom women liked, and who
liked the society of women. He took
to dropping in on the neighbors for
an evenings game Of cards, and after
a time he joined a progressive eu-
chre club, where he met many friends
and acquaintance and soon regained
his native genial bearing. He talked
a great deal Of his dead wife's vir-
tues, which was regarded as an in
dication that he was looking out for
her successor, but as he still made
his Sunday pilgrimages to his wife's
grave, his women friends winked be.
hind his back and continued to con
dole him to his face.
He had made it his boast that he
had not seen his chin in 80 years, but
as his diminishing beard was growing
gray he shaved it off, disclosing a
firm, cleft chin that added to his
beauty and the youthfulness Of his
appearance. His hair was also shorr
to a fashionable length and delicately
stained on the temples where time
had left a frosty touch, and, with Q
cheerful smile, and a somewhat
famboyant necktie, he was fairly
launched as an eligible man.
His women friends now felt justi
fed in saying that Mr.. Milligan was
beginning to take notice, and ont
prophetic woman, holder than thu
rest, announced the belief that the
second Mrs. Milligan was in sight
But Mr.. Milligan had given no cause
for gossip by seeking a wife at home
He had known most of the women il
his community since they were II
long clothes, and he was too remote
from that period himself to look a
home for a wife under SO, and to thu
rejuvenated Mr.. Milligan, SO for a wo
man, now seemed very old. So, aftel