Metropolis weekly gazette., 1915-05-21

We'll. I'm Ieavin' it to him to bring
IL around "a he thinks best. / wish
she had taken to sewn, patchin'.
maxim bread and euttin' carpet rags,
but as she didn't. mebbe she was
sorter told to go the other way. How's
her eddecation comm on?"
'T amt asked her many questions
| and she amt told me much, but Par
son Davis told me the other day that
he heard she was one of the smartest
girls in school She'll be finished up
this fall. you know"
| "And then come back to us?"
Eyes"
"And then-then-" he queried after
a time.
| Il dunno, JOSIAH dunnoi"
| They had a world circumscribed by
the farm limits. They knew what
went on in their world, but not in the
other 1t was work, work in their
world. There were four seasons in
year, and particular work for each
season. They awoke at just such an
hour; they went to bed at just such
|
They plowed and dragged and sowed
and planted They gathered the crops.
| The farmer gave exhibitions of his
strength and boasted of his health,
and the wife boasted of the soft soap
she had made. and her jars of picked
peaches she had put by.
Work. work, work, and never rec
reation! They judged no one by their
talk or intelligence, but it was always:
why. that fellow wouldn't be worth
his salt in harvest feld!"
One day the farmer came home
from town with a stranger in the
wagon with him.
His name is Durand," he explained
to his wife, "and he says he paints
pictures. He wants board and lodg-
ings for the winter. that he may paint
some winter scenes. He says he will
pay our price and give little trouble.
Hell turn up his nose at corned
beef and salt pork, won't he?"
IF he does he'll have to go. He
| looks kinder pale and sickly, and
| don't believe he can throw a cat over
the fence, but wen let him come If
| you say So"
And thus it happened that when
Miss Ruth returned home she found
Mr.. Charles Durand. artist, from the
city, duly installed and at work on
sketch of late autumn.
II wouldn't give him his board for
what corn he could husk," whispered
the father that evening.
"why. he don't know enough to put
a collar on horse" added the mother.
1t was a week or more after her
return home that Miss Ruth told her
parents that she had heard of Mr..
Durand, and that some of his paint
lngs had sold for twice the value of
their farm, and that she had made fair
headway as an amateur artist and
wished to take lessons of him.
The father groaned and the mother
sighed.
Father" said the girl. you have
owned this farm for twenty years.
You have worked like two oxen-you
and mother. How much better of are
you than when when you began?"
Two thousand dollars" he proudly
| replied.
You have worked with your muscle,
father. and you have made hundred
dollars a year A young man will go
through college in three years, and
| then by use of his brains make from
three to five thousand a year. You
have a contempt for the man who
can't life barrel of cider, and yet he
may make more money in a week than
you have in a year. Doctor Grey can
not lift hundred pounds, but when
your hired man broke his leg the doc
tors bill was $40"
Neither father nor mother had
word to say and the girl continued:
you have been disappointed in me
because am not big, strong. husky
girl and don't take to housework 1t
took me less than fortnight to make
some sketches over at Brownsville
that sold for one hundred dollars"
"Gosh!" exclaimed the father.
There isn't lawyer in the state
that can hold a plow for hundred
feet, and yet the poorest one of them
makes ten times the money you do.
You have thought me helpless and
useless. You have thought all people
so not made of IRON"
Yes" admitted the father. "sorter
useless, and now | can realize that
me and your ma have been sorter
| fools all the time"
When a fine landscape is signed
''Durand" it isn't always the work of
Mr.. Charles Durand. 1t may be the
creation Of his wife, Mrs. Durand, for
merly Ruth Streeter.
And father and mother don't have to
work any more.