Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1907-12-12

land at one price and selling it at a
better one. He had neat Office at
the top of a tall building; and kept at
work there a neat office assistant who
had been trained by long service to
attend strictly ana alertly TO business.
So well had Miss Olive Merry been
trained that it was no longer neces-
sary for Calhoun to say Il wish to
dictate He would merely clear his
throat and lean back in his Office chair
and Miss Merry would seize upon pen
Gil and pad.
No wonder, then, that on that pleas
ant fall afternoon when he leaned
back in his chair and began to speak,
Miss Merry took him down in rapid
dots and dashes before she realized
that he had not cleared his throat
When she began to extend her notes,
she realized it though, and by the
time the notes were typewriter she
was in a state of wonder. What she
had taken down was:
Graded in blisses,
ca, born of your kisses,
Oh, We lovers that met by the moon.
She would not have cried
In the darkness and died
If We had not forgotten so soon"
Well might Miss Merry stare in
wide-open wonder at the lines. She
was not familiar with Alfred Noyes-
had never read his THE Flower of Old
Japan" knew nothing about the fairy's
funeral. The lines seemed to her mys-
t1pinuC I(nt what ri
GUS to her than the lines themselves
was that they should have come to her
from the lips of Clovis Calhoun. That
he ever should have read six lines of
poetry seemed unbelievable Miss
Merry looked at him in covert per-
plexity.
Calhoun had sat forward again at
his desk. There was the familiar
notch over his nose where his brows
nipped together in concentration;
there was the stubborn set of the
shaved chin; there was the steady
drive of the pen. And there on her
desk We're the six lines of sentiment
and perfect beauty-detached mys-
terious. Who was it that had cried in
the darkness and died?
Miss Merry could make lothing of
it. Could only go on with the routine
order of the day. But she could not
get over it. Where had he read those
lines and why had he remembered
them?
"She would not have cried
In the darkness and died"
Ia AhaA
he was speaking aloud. Did he &C
around thinking that sort of stuff be-
hind his dry speech and his land sales?
Miss Merry could not believe it,
When, later in the day, Calhoun
turned to give his assistant some in
structions, she looked at his eyes
grave and gray they seemed to be for
ever considering assessed values; and
at his hand-big, clean, bony Imagine
that hand caressing a woman's hair!
And yet, there We're the lines. And
before another week had passed over
Miss Merrys perpleXed head other
lines We're added unto them.
Calhoun came in from lunch, sat
down at his desk, drew an abstract
toward him and said:
Cruel mortals they say,
Live forever and aye,
And they pray in the dark on their knees;
But the flowers that are fled
And the loves that dead,
What heaven takes pity on these?"
Miss Merrys pencil slipped on the
last words and went rafting to the
floor Calhoun turned In sharp arouse:
Il fo 10 t,1y {lo4
down." he said. 1t was his usual tone,
his usual manner. But the voice he
had used unconsciously for the lines
had vibrated to their pathos. Miss
Merry stammered.
"They are very beautiful she said.
Calhoun made no reply. His bony
face bent over the abstract and his
bony fingers steadily made notes in
the large, accurate hand he always
wrote. Miss Merry watching him, re-
called what Victor Hugo had said
that devil fish fell in love. She could
not recall that anybody had ever said
that stone statues fell in love.
And the loves that are dead"
Conceive of any woman being able
to call that big, cold fellow Clovis"
This was proposition for which
Olive Merry's legal education had not
prepared her. Let some other woman
see to that Her business was to
draw his deeds and take down his die
tation-and she was glad to be we'll
out of it.
Calhoun reached from his desk and
laid on her table the notes he had
been writing:
Bear her along-singing your song-ten-
der and sweet and low
Fairies must die! Ask ye not why-ye