Year: 1874

| That fair young creature who wen


with us It doesn't make any differ


ence that she went back on her. word


grew up to be q Matched. faced old maid


her voice like fle and her temper lik,


catsup-she was lovely then. "Would


the fair and lovely Augusta accept o.


our company to a spelling school out


at Duck Lane Thursday nightP" The


fair Augusta would, she said, and she


did. Such moon Such an easy mo.
ton OF the sleigh Such singing in
chorus Every girl had a front door


key In her pocket, and every young man


felt as If he could climb q shed forty


thousand feet high to get into his own


chamber window. That fair young


creature-how she pretended to shiver
with cold until an arm was gently and


affectionately placed around her waist |!


Then the weather suddenly grew


warmer, and she didn't shiver any
more. It was beautiful night, we OBJ
served. She said she'd noticed the
same thing, and she seemed to lean
over little more, like some of the tel
graph poles on Michigan avenue. EN-
boldened, we observed that Bill Jones
and Sarah Jones seemed very affection
ate. She said it seemed SO to her, but
having stuck the end of horse
blanket in her eye, she wasn't prepared
to make an affidavit. Somehow, after
that the conversation began to grow
more and more interesting, and with
that fair young creatures head on our
shoulder, we'd have set out to ride to
Vermont and back without stop. She
was so artless and innocent; so child
like and confding. She told us all
about how her step-mother pounded
her with the rolling pin, and when we
thought of a rollfng.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 ever
more, when the sleigh stopped at the
school house. It was Brighton against
Bungtown, with the schoolmaster in
favor of Bungtown. Such words as
" "catarrh," turkey" parallel" &c.,
soon reduced the "sides" to half q
dozen, and at length we were left alone
to defend the honor of Brighton. The
schoolmaster was determined that
Bungtown should win, and it did when
we spelled omnibus with double "s."
He said it 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
symgathizea yith by .'onr girl" sho
pathy, and she said of course there was
two SIS on omnibus, one on each side,
and she wasn't positive but that there
was one on the door behind. By and
by the conversation weut back to step
mothers, rolling pins, alabaster shoul-
ders, and getting married, and she said
she'd be ours. We figured up how we
could keep house on $3.50 per week,
and have a dollar left just how the
woodbine would trail over the door
how we'd make her stepmother die of a
broken heart; and-but you all remem-
ber. It was boys dream. She dis
couraged 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 I
said before, it doesn't make any differ
ence now. When l think over the past
I feel to exclaim with Walt Whitman !:
!" Oh, gimme back them other days !"