Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1914-06-18

slanted swiftly down, to climb once
more in huge spiral to its high tower
Of sky.
Perhaps it wondered. as its tele.
SCOPE eye looked down. That had
been its choicest covert, that dishev-
eled tangle where the birds held per
petual carnival, the weasel lurked in
the underbrush and the rabbit lined
his windfau. Now the wildness was
gone. A pergola. glistening white, now
upheld the runaway vines, making a
sickle-like path from the upper ter
race to the lake. In the barn loft the
pigeons still quarrelled over their new
cotes Of fresh pine, and under clump
of locust trees at little distance from
the house, half-dozen dolls cabins
on stills stood waiting the honey-stor-
age Of the black and gold bees.
There were new denizens, also.
These had arrived in a dozen zinc
tanks and willow hampers, to the
amaze of a sleepy express clerk at the
railroad station: two swans now sailed
majestically over the EIy-ponds of the
lake, along its gravel rim and a pair
of bronze-colored ducks waddled and
preened, and its placid surface rippled
and broke to the sluggish backs of
goldfish and the flirting fms of red
japanese carp.
The house itself wore another air.
It's look of unkemptness had largely
vanished. The soft gray. tone of age
remained, but the bIeakness and for
lornness were gone; there was about
all now a warmth and genial bearing
that limited at mellowed beauty, fire
light and cheerful voices within.
Valiant heaved a long sigh of salts
faction as he stood in the sunlight gaz-
ing at the results of his labors. He
was not now the fippant boulevardier
to whom money was the sine qua non
Of existence He had learned sover-
eign lesson-one gained not through
the push and fight Of crowds, but in
the simple peace of a countryside, IN
vexed by the clamor of gold and the
complex problems of a competitive ex-
istence-that he had inherited a need
of activity, of achievement that he had
been born to do.
''Chum,' he said, to the dog rolling
on his back in the grass, what do
you think of it ALL anyway" He
reached down, seized a hind leg and
whirIing him around like a teetotum,
sent him flying into the bushes,
whence Chum launched again upon
him. like a catapult He caught the
white shoulders and held him vise-like.
Just about right, Ell? But wait till
we get those ramblers!"
And to think he continued, whim-
sically releasing him, that | might
have gone on, one of the Iittle-neck-
clam crowd I've always trained with,
at the same old pace, till the Yer
mouth cocktail-Palm-Be career got
double Nelson on me and the umpire
counted me out. At this moment |
wouldn't swap this old house and land
and the sunshine and that gyarden
and Unc Jefferson and Aunt Daph
and the chickens and the birds aud
all the rest of it, for a mile of Mil
lionaires' Row."
He went into the house and to the
library. The breeze through the wide
flung bow-window was f1uttering the
papers on the desk and the map on
the wall was tapping sidewise. He
went to straighten it, and then saw
what he had not noticed before-that
it covered something that had been let
into the plaster. He swung it aside
and made an exclamation.