Year: 1874

From the Detroit Free Press.


That fair young creature who went
with u.s. 1t doesn't make any difference
that she went back on her word and
grew up to be hatchet faced old maid,
her voice like file and her temper like
catsup-she was lovely then.


would the fair and gentle Augusta
accept of our company to a spelling
school at Duck Lake next Thursday
night?' The fair Augusta would, she
said; and she did. Such a moon! Such
a moon. Such an easy motion of the
sleigh! Every girl had front door key
in her pocket, and every young man felt
as if he could climb shed 10000 feet
high to get into his own chamber win
dow. That fair young creature-how
she pretended to shiver with cold until
an arm was gently placed around her
delicate waist! Then the weather grew
suddenly warmer and she didn't shiver
any more. 1t was a beautiful night, we
observed. She said she had noticed the
same thing, and she seemed to lean over
little more like some of the telegraph
poles on Michigan avenue. Embolden-
ed, we observed that Bill Jones and Sa-
rah Smitk seemed very afectionate.--
She said it seemed so to her, but having
stuck the end of horse blanket in her
eye, was not prepared to make an affida-
x-ff ffor flof ba
tion seemed to grow more and more in
teresting, with that fair young lady's
head on our shoulder we would set out
to ride to Vermont and back without
stopping.


She was so artless and innocent; so
childlike and confding. She told US all
about how her stepmother pounded her
with a rolling pin, and when we thought
of hard rolling pin, whacking against
her fragile form and bounding over her
alabaster shoulders, our hair stood on
end with mad frenzy. She said she
sometimes thought she'd get married to
escape further persecution, and we were
about TO lay our hand on our heart and
offer to be hers for evermore when the
sleigh stopped at the school house
Then came the spelling down. 1t was
Brighton against Bungtown with the
schoolmaster in favor of Bungtown.-
Such words as "catarrh, /" turkey" "par-
allel," &C., soon reduced the "sides" to
half dozen, and at length we were left
alone to sustain the honor of Brighton.
The schoolmaster was determined that
Bungton should win, and it did when we
spelled omnibus with double "s."


He said / wasn't right, and when
Brighton insisted, he offered to uphold
Bungtown with the iron poker. How
ever, it was an offset to be consoled and
sympathized with by "our girl" She
positively shed tears of anger and sym
pathy, and she said of course there were
two SIS on an omnibus, one on each side,
and she wasn't positive but there was one
on the door behind. By and by the
conversation went back to stepmothers,
rolling pins and alabaster shoulders and
getting married, and she said she'd be
ours. We figured up how we could keep
house on So so per week and have dol
lar left; just how the woodbine would
trail over the door; how we'd make her
stepmother die with broken heart; and
=, but you all remember. 1t was a
boys dream. She discouraged me when
she thought she could catch dashing
clerk, and her father set the dog on me,
and her brothers threatened to shoot; but
as 1 said before, it doesn't make any diff
ference now. When / think over the
past I feel to exclaim with Walt Whit
man; ooh, gimme back them other days~