Omaha daily bee., 1920-06-21
What Madge Did When Her Father
Read the Last Letter.

| drew an easy chair close to my
sewing table as unobtrusively as
could manage the action, slipped my
arm through my fathers and pushed
him gently into Il. I don't think he
even noticed whatNI | was doing, SO
absorbed was he in the packet OF
my mothers old letters which he
held in hand.
Almost spent with WEAKNESS. sat
down in the chair opposite him, and
with my hand Shading my face,
ostensibly from the fire III the CRATE,
watched him fascinated. Even if the
moment had not CONCERNED me
vitality, personally, I could not have
kept my eyes from his face.
For he was. man, transformed,
rejavenated. 1t was as if I watched
the years slipping from him till the
face he bent. toward the yellowed
packet of letters in his hand was no
longer that. of an old, sorrow
stricken man, but that of a youth
fastening to meet his beloved.
He had looked at the dates on the
letters closely and selected one--1
intuitively realized that he. must
mean to read, them through in
chronological order--and was perus-
ing it as if it had just come to him
fresh from the post.
He read eagerly; feverishly and
as soon as he had. finished he put
one letter tenderly 10 one side and
took up another avidly. Carefully,
noiselessly brought my chair near
the table and pushed another packet
close to his fingers that he might
find it there when he should have
finished the first. 1t seemed to me
suddenly of the utmost importance
that nothing should break the
gossamer veil of the past which
seemed to envelop him.
Through Hours.
How long I sat there watching him
4 do not know. I remember the fire
getting low and the infinite pains I
took to replenish it for fear that my
movements would distract my faith
er'ssattention. But after had COM
pleted my task | saw that he would
have noticed no ordinary noise, so
completely absorbed was he.
| suppose it was my overweight
nerves. but as | sat there, eyes fixed
upon my fathers face, I could not
rid myself of the feeling that even
as his eyes followed the lines of my
mothers old-fashioned writing down
the yellowed pages other visions fol-
lowed his, that another presence -
filled with love and forgiveness
hovered near him. =
Out of the Past.
It must have been midnight when
he began the last letter of the last
packet. l wondered fearfully what
he would do when he came to him
self and saw that there were no
more missives underneath his, hand.
And when he put out his hand at
last to take another / was close to-
his side and slipped by own hand
into his. '...
"There are no more, dear" I said
softly. "
I have wondered ever Since that
night why I used the word dear"
alone at that moment instead of pre-
fixing the word father" as T usual
ly do. At the words my father looked
up wildly, and the next moment he
had crushed my hands in his. and
with a look of awe upon his face
wa r1,,rrnurino over and over again !:
Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!
I realized in a second the halluci-
nation that had come to him. | am
said to be marvelously like my dead
mother in her youth. Ny voice even
resembles hers. And l knew--how
l do not know-tlat the favorite pet
name which my father had given her
in the long buried time, and by
which he invariably addressed her.
was the diminutive Sweet" /
guessed that it had fitted her per-