The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-06
ONLY A PRIVATE SOLDIER.
BY MONTE KEENE.

BY MONTE kEENE.
 Copyright. 1905. by Daily Story Pub
 Company.)
 The old woman laid down the paper carefully, upon the table and pushed back the cheap spectacles upon her forehead. She looked dazed and shot a glance of pitiful appeal at Mrs. Hen derson, who had run in from the room across the hall. to show her the sad news. First Mrs. Henderson had read it to her and she had reached for the paper in a dazed sort of way, as though unable to comprehend the due purport of the others words. She had put on her cracked old glasses and painfully spelled out the brief line pointed out to her. It was labori- ous undertaking for there had been but little time for learning even to read and write in Jane Bradleys hard and pinched life. Finally. however. she had conquered the line. It was a ltt- tie line in agate type in list of dead cabled from Santiago.
 JOHN BRADLEY, 37th Infantryi yell low fever.
 That. was all-only that one little line-but the spelling out of it swept every gleam of hope from the joyless life of the reader. She made no sound and Mrs. Henderson, who had been ex- pecting half with hope and half with fear an outbreak of sorrow felt both disappointed and relieved.
 No outbreak! No there was no out break But that moment if dull Mrs. had but known 1t she saw the breaking of a human heart. The old woman, bent and shriveled and worn and faded out was as still as a summer day. Only the fading of the last suggestion of light in her dull gray eyes told of the terrible weight Of ice and lead that settled upon the poor old crushed heart. Presently the thin, wrinlxled face dropped into the tired, worth fingers and the tears trickled7 down onto the faded calico gown. Mrs. Henderson gulped spas- medically feeling in some inadequate manner the pathetic tragedy of the mo- iment and quietly slipped back to her own troubles in Number 59.
 Her going or staying were small mo- ment to the old woman in her great sorrow. The overburdened old mind held for a lifetime to sodden things had been. released for a brief moment by the awful catastrophe which had overtaken her and this newly clarified mind was filled with a great panorama. She could not realize at first the dreadful import of the brief line. Johnnie dead-her Johnnie. her only boy, and the image of her husband. dead these many years. It could not be true. Johnnie, ah, how graphically the picture arose before her of the happiest days of her life-really her only happy days, when little Johnnie was playing at her knee and filling her starved heart with his childish prattIe. even while she stil toiled-but with new energy and new hope and new courage. And she remembered how the childish prattle had nerved her for the fearful struggle which had followed and never since had ceased.
 The awful nightmare of her hus- bands death and the narrow margin by which she saved his body from a grave in the potter's field rose before her and her heart warmed as she re- membered the comfort and courage 1t had been to her in those dark hours of unyielding grind ana sickening worry and merciless self-sacrifice, to hold the little man-child to her bosom and feel his warm arms about her neck.
 To be sure he had not always treated her right-at least so said all her little world, and perforce she had been com pelled to admit to herself sometimes that it did seem so. He had been wild and fallen into bad company and instead of being the help she had so fondly counted on his escapades had cost her all her little savings. To be sure neighbors had told her that he