Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1904-04-07

III statehood, pfoDapiy as late as
rs 1925, there stood, in what is
now the beautiful little city
81 Vincennes on the Wabash, the de-
caying remnant of an old and curiously
gnarled cherry tree known as the
Roussillon tree. le cerisier de Monsieur
Roussillon, as the French inhabitants
called it. which as long as it lived bore
fruit remarkable for richness of flavor
and peculiar dark ruby depth of color.
The exact spot where this noble old
Seeding from la belle France 1ourished,
declined and died cannot be certainly
pointed out. for in the rapid and happy
growth of Vincennes many landmarks
once notable, among them lie cerisier
de Monsieur Roussillon, have been de-
stroyed and the spots where they stood,
once familiar to every eye in old Vim
cennes. are now lost in the pleasant
confusion of the new town.
The old, twisted, gum embossed
cherry tree survived every other dis
tinguishing feature of what was once
the most picturesque and romantic
place in Vincennes. Just north of 1t
stood, in the early French days, low,
rambling cabin surrounded by rude
verandas overgrown with grapevines.
This was the Roussillon place, the most
pretentious home in all the Wabash
country. It's owner was Gaspard Rous-
sillon, successful trader with the In
dians. He was rich, for the time and
the place, influential to a degree,
man of some education, who had
brought with him to the wilderness
bundle of books and a taste for read
ing.
1t is not known just when Vincennes
was first founded, but most historians
make the probable date very early in
the eighteenth century, somewhere be-
tween 1710 and 1870. In 1910 the
Roussillon cherry tree was thought by
a distinguished botanical letter writer
to be at least fifty years old, which
would make the date of its planting
about 17G0. Certainly, as shown by the
time stained family records upon which
this story of ours is based, it was
fiourishing and wide topped tree in
the early summer of ITS, its branches
loaded to dropping with luscious fruit.
So low did the dark red clusters hang
at one point that a tall young girl
standing ON the ground easily reached
the best ones and made her lips purple
with their juice while she ate them.
That was long ago, measured by
what has come to pass on the gentle
swell of rich country from which Yin
cennes overlooks the Wabash. The
new town fourishes notably and its
appearance marks the latest limit OF
progress. Electric cars in its streets,
electric lights in its beautiful homes.
the roar of railway trains coming ana
going in all directions, bicycles whirl-
ing hither and thither, the most fash
ionable styles of equipages from
brougham to pony phaeton, make the
days of hintlock guns and buckskin
trousers seem ages down the past, and
yet we are looking back over but
| little more than 120 years to see Alice
| Roussillon standing under q CHEEKY
tree and holding high a tempting clus
ter of fruit, while a short humpbacked
youth looks up with longing eyes and
vainly reaches for it. The tableau is
not merely rustic; it is primitive.
Jump the girl is saying in French.
| Jump, Jean; jump high!'
Eyes, that was very long ago, ia the
days when women lightly braved what
the strongest men would shrink from
| now.
Alice Roussillon was tall, 1.-the,
| strongly knit. with an almost perfect
| figure, judging by what the master
| sculptors carved for the form of Venus,
and her face was comely and winning,
if not absolutely beautiful; but the
time and place were vigorously indi-
Gated by her dress, which was of
coarse stuff and simply designed.
| Plainly she was child of the Amer
lean wilderness, daughter of old Vim
| cennes on the Wabash in the time that
| tried mems souls.
| "Jump, Jeanr' she cried, her face
| laughing with q show of cheek dim
| pies, an arching of finely sketched
brows and the twinkling of large blue
gray eyes,
Jump high and get themp'
While she waved her sun Drowned
hand holding the cherries aloft, the
breeze blowing fresh from the south
west tossed her hair so that some loose
ytrands shone like rimpled flames.
The sturdy little hunchback did leap
with surprising activity, but the
treacherous brown hand went higher,
so high that the combined altitude of
his jump and the reach of his unnat-
nrally long arms was overcome. Again
and again he sprang vainly into the
air comically, like long legged, squat
bodied frog.
"And you brag of your agility and
strength, Jean.'' she laughingly re-
marked, "but you can't take cherries
when they are offered to you. What a
clumsy bungler you arer'
81 can climb and get some." he said,
with a hideously happy grin, and i'm
mediately embraced the bole of the
tree, up which he began scrambling al
most as fast as squirrel
| When he had mounted high enough
TO be extending a hand for a hold on a
crotch Alice grasped his leg near the
foot and pulled him down, despite his
clinging and struggling. until his hands
clawed in the soft earth ut the trees
root, while she held his captive leg al
most vertically erect
| 1t was a show of great strength, but
Alice looked quite unconscious Of 1t,
laughing merrily. the dimples deepen
ing in her plump cheeks, her forearm,
now barred to the elbow, cleaning white
and shapely, while its muscles rippled
on account OF the jerking and kicking
| of Jean.
All the time she was holding the cher
ries high in her other hand, shaking
them by the twig TO which their slender
stens attached to them and saying in a
sweetly tantaliZing tone:
what makes you climb downward
after cherries, Jean? What a foolish
fellow you are, indeed trying to grab
BILE cherries out of the ground, as you
do potatoes! I'm sure | didn't suppose
that you knew so little as that"
Jean, the hunehback, was a muscular
little deformity and a wonder of good
nature How long he might have kept
up the hopeless struggle with the girls
invincible grip would be hard to guess
His release was caused by the approach
Of third person, who wore the robe
Of Catholic priest and the countenanct
of a man who had lived and suffered q
long time without much loss of phys
ical strength and endurance.