Arizona republican., 1909-02-08


 sunny har all marked him in such sharp contrast to the heavyjowled and dulcyed parents that they themselves stood bit in of him, and his mothers pride in his beauty marred by certain uneasness that never entirely left her
 "Yes," she. admitted with regretful sigh, he is purity but Tn afraid he's most too purity for boy"
 Kind O weakly, too.' Jim Glow would add with growing dissatisfaction.
 With him, boy was to be regarded as a distinct asset valued exactly in proportion to his evidences of brawn and be longcd for sturdy for exactly the same reason that he cherished the ithe-limbed colts that scampercd about in the brook meadow In this he was to be disappointed for, to the Glow farmhouse perched down from the rocky roadside there came more sons daughters, and the one boy, Henry. grew up in loneliness to develop within him that strange and dreaming fancy which made him of no apparent worth
 He's lazy, that young 'un,' Jim decided in pro- found disgust, while yet the child pinafores and from that time the father took UP the burden of his cross with such patic-cc he might
 There TO denying that the boy was not at all Ekc other children of the. countryside
 He jcs' sets :c=c, mopia and lookin' in a hole and never says wo!d." his mother complained "It jes pears like he aint got any gt-up-an'gt to him at all"
 And she was right. Mary, many times the little sat be:nd the kitchen looking looking and form ing words to mold his thought What it was that hc saw across the tiny valley not he himself could have told, but he noted with rap cagernes the passing of every cccy cloud across the sky he traced fancifu creatures in all its formations and his eye dwet in keen pleasure upon the deep gradations of shade and color in them He found calm delight, in crcasing with his years in the changing hue of the sky itself For him the great dome of heaven was not only bEc, but it a hundred blues-the blue of Winter and the blue of Simmer the blue of morning and the blue of evening, the blue o midday and the blue of night, with all the varying shades between He found at the edge of the brook one day flower exactly matching that days sky that until its season passed and had ceased to bloom, he came to it every day to compare it. building with infinite pains little enclosure about it that the cattle might not trample it. and an odd fancy came to him that some little fek of that great wonderful arch above had dropped straight down to grow and bloom for him
 To Jim Glow the farm was a barren and unIovey place, if in his mental grasp there were such things loteliness and unloveiness The road was high here and the house was built upon the rocky hillside that sloped down from the highway, that should take up of the more fertile in the hollow below; whe beyond the barren hills rose up again. Of the whole farm, scarcely more than one-third was pro ductive and because it was not all rich, ioamy bot to-land such he could never hope to possess the dcspised it as his wife despised her house At first the dwelling long before Jim succeeded to it. had been but cabin. down to which led flight of roughly placed stone steps As the earlier generations of Clows had needed more rooms they had added them at a time and upon that shelving ground each addition had been built at slightly different level so that in passing from any part of the house to another part there were steps go up or steps to go down. making this woniah's day of intending toll; and while her child was still young, she became old from hard and unceasirg labor
 To the boy, however, the farm was paradise and the brook, that of value to the father only it irrigated his fields and watered his cattle was to the boy perpetual delight. He knew and loved every of its quiet little pools, its steep, noisy halow its swift constriced channels, its sandy bottoms where the water widened out in thin, sparkling sheets its every crook and bend, clear down to the creek into which, at the boundary of the farm, it emptied At this point there formed deep, slow basin where leaves long and pointed dripped touching their very tips in the water; and sometimes while he watch ing stcalhy snake would slip its thin black length down from the overhanging branches and glide away under the dark surface lay here and gazed long into the depth, there strange colors, shifting and varying with the changing light deep. deep blues and browns and even reds down where the dim fishes moved.
 He had strange fancy about the brook, too It was an old old friend, but as it was always racing away to the rivers and the ocean, he felt that was always stranger well as friend. Every time that he 1t he felt that he make its acquain- all over again, for this was water that he had never seen before; so, while he yet quite little. he used to Say "Goo6 morning" to it every day, and lying down upon the bank with his face above it in his favorte spot he would tell it all about himself and about the clouds and the blue sky which it must have seen.
 So the boy grew until he thirteen and his list less dreaming increased Of course he worked, as every creature upon that farm, whether twofooted fourfooted must work, but he labored with curious inefhciency that made Jim Glow heart-sick He was 6 good father in way, and patient one, but some times in striving to bring the boy into proper rela- ton with his duty toward life, he became brutal It