The Calhoun chronicle. [volume] (Grantsville, W. Va.) 1883-1984, 1911-06-20

took place. Uncle Hiram had been
gone five days when friend from
the village placed n thousand dollars
in her hands and told her that she
would never see her husband again.
Uncle Hiram went west. He halted
In city for week to get slicked
up. When the barber and the clothier
had got through with him, not
even HIS wife of thirty years would
have recognized him. Farm life and
toll had been left behind. He wasn't
married man now, but q widower
So he told himself and tried hard to
believe II. There was no accusing
voice. He had left a thousand dollars
behind for the "old woman" Some
men wouldn't have left a dollar
Uncle Hiram took another name,
and In due time he arrived some
where. He found people who did not
hesitate to ask him why he made a
fool of himself by dyeing his hair
and whiskers. Indeed, he was an OBJ
ject of suspicion and was arrested
When he arrived somewhere else he
was taken for a man of sixty instead
of fifty-three. The tailor hadn't
taken away that stoop, and he walked
with loose knees, as all farmers do.
Boys called after him on the street.
In a place of amusement he saw a
woman whom he thought he would
like to make his wife. He was the
dashing widower now. In the midst
of his gazing and thinking the woman
turned on him with:
See here, you old hundred-year-old
manikin, you quit your staring or
III have you thrown out of here!"
Uncle Hiram was dyed and padded,
but he was deceiving nobody. Peo-
pie offered to assist him up and down
steps and over rough places. and now
and then men appealed to him in re-
gard to dates of sixty or seventy
years ago. 1t was very often that
children called grandpa, and he was
cautioned that such and such weather
was dangerous for an old man like
him.
Uncle Hiram saw the elephant He
saw him literally and theoretically.
He couldn't figure where he was bet
ter off for so doing. When he saw
the animal literally, the mahout eau
toned him against coming too near,
as Behemoth seemed to have spite
against old men.
In one locality Uncle Hiram re-
newed his hair-dye and started in to
court widow. She shifted the dye
and called him an old fool and held
the door open for him to walk out.
In no one case was any one deceived.
In most cases he was asked why his
wife wasn't with him, or how it
came that a man of his age was out
in the easy west seeking a divorce.
If he would go into business many
inquiries would be made. If he tried
to buy farm he was asked when his
wife was coming on. When he got
rid of his dye and whiskers he was
no better of. His speech was the
speech of farmer who had got his
education in the little country school
house.
Uncle Hiram had wandered about
and spent fifteen hundred of his hard
earned dollars before awakening to
the fact that he had made a fool of
himself. What to do? AS he asked
himself the question great longing
came to him. He tried to down II,
but he couldn't. Then a feeling of re-
morse came. He had been a dog to
abandon his wife. He sat down and
thought it all over, from the day they
were wed. She wasn't so gray haired.
but If she was. what OF it? She
wasn't so stopped, but If she was,
what of it? II her face were wrinkled.
what of his?
Uncle Hiram did not spare himself
He administered kicks. He reviled
the man. He shed tears. And how to
mend matters? He had had a wife
and home for thirty years. He was
now an outlaw.
Back in the east was a sad-faced
woman waiting. Aunt Jane had
rented little farm and was living
all alone. The neighbors had COM
miserated with her. but to one and
all she had said:
Hiram will come back am wait
ing here for him. He will remember
all that l did for him as a wife"
And one rainy night, as she sat
alone, with her knitting and her
thoughts, she heard a step at the
door. The one who knocked seemed
! timid.
Come in. Hiram"
The door slowly opened and there
stood Uncle Hiram. wet. bedraggled
and forlorn.
81 was waiting for you" said the
wife.
DO you mean-mean-?"
She rose and gave him kiss and
then set a chair for him, and said
she would have supper on the table
in just a minute.
"But-but-"
81 told them you would come back.
You saw the light in the Window
ellis TO discover the modern Pom.