Year: 1874

That fair young creature who went with us It doesn't make any differ ence that she went back on her word, grew up to be hatched-faced old maid, her voice like file and her temper like catsup-she was lovely then. "Would the fair and lovely Augusta accept of our company to spelling school out at Duck Lane Thursday night ?" The fair Augusta would, she said, and she did. Such a moon Such an easy mo- tion of the sleigh /! Such singing in chorus /! Every girl had front door key in her pocket, and every young man felt as if he could climb a shed forty thousand feet high to get into his 6wn chamber window. That fair young creature-how she pretended to shiver with cold until an arm was gently and Then the weather suddenly grew warmer, and she didn't shiver any more. It was a beautiful night, we ob- same thing, and she seemed to lean over little more, like some of the tel graph poles on Michigan avenue. Elm 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 a 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 creature's 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 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 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 a 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 sympathized with by ''our girl" She positively shed tears of anger and sym pathy. and she said of course there was two s's 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 $50 per week, and have dollar left just how the woodbine would trail over the door how we'd make her stepmother die of @ broken heart; and-but you all remem- Der. It was a boys dream. She dis couraged me when she thought she could catch a 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 I think over the past I feel to exclaim with Walt Whitman :: "Oh, gimme back them other days p