Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-07-29
ILLUSION DISPELLED

This approaching summer" unused a
few months ago a Washington man who is
just about arriving at age that informs
him OF a gradually increasing waistband.
This coming summer I shall abjure vaca-
tionizing In throDged resorts of tumult and
unrest.
Instead, shall take up the trail OF the
retreating sun. and visit for the first time
In 10! these many years-yea. since l was
a boy-the little town in the west in which
l spent that same boyhood There shall
dream away a full month. reveling in
reveries of those halcyon years"
He went
Now that he has returned he is sorry that
he went.
He did not pass month in the town OF
his boyhood.
He spent three days there
Then he returned to the east, where the
dawn begins. and passed the remainder of
his vacation listening to the murmur OF
the great waters and eating food
| 1t is a sad thing, disllusionment Life
Is not sufficiently filed with compensations
to make disillusionment of any sort bear
The man found the little town Of his
boyhood-he had left it when he was eleven
years old-squalid. dingy, commonplace,
prosaic TO the last degree. He had remem-
bered the frame house wherein he had
dwelt with more less unity with his
father and mother and sisters and brothers,
as palace made up of huge rooms and
halls and filled with long vistas.
He found it hut.
He called upon the Polish family now
occupying 1t. They regarded him with sus-
picion. and he remained only very short
time.
The apple trees In the yard-he had
dreamt of their fragrant white blossoms
| looked SCARED, understood. poor.
The well in the old yard-he had long
remembered It's muSiCally Creakinp chains
he had found out of business and boarded
over, with big rock on top of the boards.
1t had become contaminated
He looked into the old barn-still sus-
| piciously regarded by the entire Polish
| family-foolishly hoping. and even half
expecting. after the lapse of a quarter of
century to see his little one-eyed mongrel
straining at his rope In the corner.
Nope, the dog wasn't there, curiously
| enough-and the dogs absence brought
renewed sadness upon the man.
He looked for the hollyhocks beside the
] turnbling barn. They had all been cut down.
| Jimson weeds grew in their place.
He looked across the street for the house
where had lived the boy with whom he had
been at eternal warfare.
! AS he looked a huge man in the dress
and the CRIME of a worker in a coal mine.
and with a coal mine workers lamp in his
| hat entered the lapidated house.
| The huge coal miner was the boy OF
| that militant time. The visitor at the home
| of his boyhood knocked at the door, hoping
that the boy WITH WHOM ne Hdo 81 DliSH
| fought would recognize him.
No recognition. ''Wot dye want. them?
| That was all Remember him? Nav. Had
! to work too hard for living TO be re-
memberin' people wot had bin KIDS VIII
| him.
The visitor at the home of his boyhood
found the church in which he had been an
altar boy He had remembered 1t as
| gigantic edifice. a veritabe St. Peters. He
| found it of about the proportions or
| chapel But, surely. anyhow the organ
| music there would be sonorous, noble. IN
He found 1t to be squeaky, droning,
| He gazed at the yellow. swift-fowing riv-
| er. filled with repitile-resembling snags ana
| quicksand bars. and wondered how ne couiu
| ever have found such deliriouS JOY in SWIM
| ming therein when lad
| He found the cave in the river bank
wherein he had learned. with the other boys
| of his age. to smoke driftwood and corn
| shuck cigarettes. Bats by the score flew
| at him when he entered the cave, ana ne
| heard the Kissing of rattlesnakes. de re-
| treated.
| He remembered the names of a few OF
| his boy friends He inquired about them
! downtown. Few of them were remempefeci
! at all. Those that were remembered-well'
] II was tust as well not to mention those
| feIIers-this one had been lynched for boss
! stealing that one--oh, they'd all gone pretty
| bad Jimmy Jinklets?-oh, he was working
In a brickyard outside of town-a sot joey
|
| whisky and politics, and had croaked years
| ago Johnny WITNESSES ?-oh, Johnny had
| married Fannie Spearface- member Fan
nie?-they now had fourteen young ones
| and Johnny was plugging along best he
knew how on small farm just outside
| town.
| The visitor at the home of his boyhood
went to visit Johnny WITNESSES - for he,
| himself at the potential age of ten, had
| been desperately In love with little Fannie
| Spearface and had bestowed upon her
| thousands of candy hearts with notices
upon them, and had intended to become q
| great mana pirate or something ike that
| and then marry Fannie.
| He found Fannie and Fannie's husband.
| Fannie weighed about 235, and she had a
| huge fat red face, and huge, fat, red arms.
| But she recalled the visitor at the home of
| his boyhood. (Women do not forget) She
even grew sentimental in her elephantine
| way Her husband didn't remember the
| visitor at all Moreover, he regarded the
| veyor Of green goods or gold bricks and
| was not civil.
The visitor hired a horse and rode outside
| the town in the evening, hoping to get a
cool Whit OF the fragrance-always remem-
| bered-of the cornfeds at dewfall. The
| road was lined with square frame grogger-
| les for a good part of the way, and the
| cornfields seemed to have all fallen back
into fallow land. He pushed and rode
| to the crest OF the bluff. where still doomed
| the lookout tree that he had thought to
| be the greatest tree in the world. He found
| 1t to be fair-sized sycamore, somewhat
| shriveled and withered. He confidently ex-
| pected to find his initials cut into the bark.
But they were not there, somehow
The visitor to the home of his boyhood
rode slowly back to the home of his boy
! hood realizing the spirit-desolation of
! Ulysses upon his return.
| And So now he wishes that he had not
| returned to the home OF his boyhood.