associated with sadness. But whatever the suffering on that ill-fated
train, memory carries me back to but one sorrowful scene,—the
bedside about which lingered the friends of the little stranger whom
we had learned to love so well. In the presence of his suffering our
own lesser injuries were forgotten, and all efforts were bent upon
securing for the little sufferer every comfort possible under the
adverse circumstances. With a view to lessening the painful effect of
the constant jarring and shaking motion, a swinging bed was speedily
improvised in the middle of the car, and here, surrounded by his
sorrowing companions, lay Grit, enduring in silence the pains that his
pale, sadly troubled face so keenly expressed.
Late in the evening the train reached its destination, without further
mishap.
It had not yet come to a standstill in the station when, accompanied by
the sleeping-car conductor, the father of Grit entered the car. Early
in the day it had been resolved by the passengers that three of their
number should meet the father upon his arrival, for the purpose of
exonerating the conductor from any carelessness, and also for offering
their assistance in caring for the child during the night. Now,
however, reminded of their former happy anticipation of the meeting
between parent and child, a shudder of sadness caused them irresistibly
to shrink from a scene of welcome more deeply sad, even, than that
sorrowful parting which they had witnessed on entering upon their
journey a few days before.
As the stranger, deeply agitated, anxiously made his way to the central
group, however, earnest sympathy found ready expression; and ere his
eye had met the object of its search a friendly voice checked and bade
him be calm and hopeful. "Your child, sir," continued the speaker
reassuringly, "has not entirely recovered from the rough shaking-up
we got a little while ago. He had a lucky escape, but now needs rest
and quiet, and—you and I had perhaps better go for a doctor, while
our friends here convey the boy to the hotel, where we shall join them
shortly." And as the uneasy parent bends over the little bed and with
inquiring look seeks from the calm blue eyes some token of recognition
or sign of hope, the voice, more urgent—as though suddenly stirred by
memories of an eventful past—again breaks in: "Let us lose no time in
making the child more comfortable."
A few moments later Grit's friends stood around his bed at the
neighboring hotel, listening to the verdict of the physician hastily
summoned by the big-hearted pioneer. Internal injury of an extent
unknown, but whose nature would probably develop before morning, was
the verdict given after a careful examination. Alleviating measures,
however, were suggested, which the distracted father hastened to put
into effect. It was during one of his absences from the room that the
big-hearted pioneer, drawing the doctor to one side, appealed to him in
faltering tones to save the child "at any sacrifice or any cost."
But the appeal, though touching, was unnecessary. Higher considerations
than those of personal gain prompted the kind doctor to exercise his
utmost skill. After his first visit not an hour passed but what his
footsteps brought to the watchers reassuring proof of his deep interest
in the case. And finally, yielding apparently to the soothing remedies,
Grit fell into slumber that brought encouragement to his friends, none
of whom could be induced, however, to forsake his bedside.
During the vigils of the night the father was repeatedly moved to speak
of the sorrows of his life; of the sudden, fatal illness of his loving
young wife; and of her ardent assurance that her last thoughts were
solely of himself "and baby," coupled with the fervent wish that the
two might "some day find a home in California, where in their final
rest all three might once again be side by side."
Towards morning the boy grew suddenly restive, and violent coughing
spells brought back the condition of semi-unconsciousness of the
previous day. The doctor, evidently expecting a crisis, now remained
constantly at his side.
The change came at last.
Just after dawn a beam of light broke softly over the little face,
and new hope came to the anxious watchers. But, mistaking the silent
messenger's approach for the herald of returning health, they had hoped
in vain. The peaceful smile lingered but a moment, then returned once
again, as though the beckoning spirit
"Was loth to quit its hold,"
and Grit had fallen asleep.
As a token of affection for her child, and in compliance with the
dying mother's wish, the friends of Grit secured for the husband and
father—chiefly through the generosity of one whose deeds shall outlive
the recollection of his name—a permanent home in California; while
the boy sleeps by her side, where the peaceful silence be so sweetly
symbolized is never broken save by the weird lullaby of the waves that
gently rise and fall over the distant shadows of Lone Mountain.
Kootchie.
BY HAROLD KINSABBY.
THE east wind had failed to put in an appearance that evening, and the
thermometer registered ninety-five under the stately elms of the Boston
Common.
The family had gone away for the summer, and Buttons and the butler
were out for an airing. Both were so well fed and so little exercised
that they needed something to stir their blood.
Buttons was a sleek, fat pug, with a knowing eye and oily manner. They
called him Buttons because the harness he wore about his forequarters
was studded with shining ornaments.
His companion was likewise sleek and fat, and the amount of lofty
dignity he stored under his bobtailed jacket and broadcloth trousers
told everybody that he was the butler. He carried a wicked little cane
with a loaded head, and seemed to own the greater part of the earth.
As the two strolled proudly through the Beacon Street Mall, fate
favored Buttons and the butler. There was a cat on the Common,—a pet
cat without an escort. This cat belonged to one of the wealthy families
who at the tail end of winter board up their city residences and go to
the country to spend the summer and save their taxes. The owners of
this particular cat had speeded missionaries to the four corners of the
globe to evangelize the heathen, but their pet puss they had turned
into the streets of the modern Athens to seek its own salvation. With
no home or visible means of support, but with true Christian fortitude,
the dumb creature now haunted the doorstep of the deserted mansion and
grew thin. Hunger had at last driven her to the Common in the hope
that she might surprise an erring sparrow, or, perchance, purloin a
forgetful frog from the pond.
The instant Buttons spied her he gave chase and drove her for refuge
into a small tree. Then he stood below and barked furiously, until
the sympathizing butler shook the tree and gave him another chance.
This time the cat barely succeeded in reaching a low perch on the iron
fence, from which with terrified gaze she watched her tormentor.
"Why do you torture that cat?" angrily asked a quiet gentleman who sat
on one of the shady benches holding a yellow-haired little girl on his
knee.
"Oh, me and Buttons is having a little fun," answered the butler.
"Buttons is death on cats."
The quiet man said nothing, but got up, helped the frightened cat to
escape to a safe hiding-place, and then resumed his seat.
That night puss went to bed without a supper, while her owner presided
at the one hundred and eleventh seaside anniversary of the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and punctuated the courses of a
fish dinner with rare vintages of missionary port.
The next evening the same heat hung heavily over the Beacon Street
Mall, and Buttons and the butler were again taking an airing and
looking for fun.
As Buttons neared the scene of his former encounter, he pricked up his
ears, and sniffed the air for the scent of game. Presently his anxious
eye was attracted by something his pug nose had failed to detect. On a
bench near by sat the quiet gentleman whose acquaintance Buttons and
the butler had made on the previous evening. The same yellow-haired
little girl was seated near him, intently watching the rings of cigar
smoke he puffed high into the evening air. Between the two a huge
inflated paper bag was surging to and fro. It was this paper bag that
had caught the eye of Buttons. It interested him. Drawing himself all
up in a heap, he proceeded with cautious, measured step to satisfy his
curiosity. As he slowly approached the curious object, his low, fretful
growls seemed to rouse it to renewed gymnastics. This frightened
Buttons and caused him to turn tail and flee. His curiosity had,
however, got the better of him, and, returning to what he deemed a safe
distance, he began barking furiously.
"Cat, Buttons, where's the cat?" came from the butler, who was
leisurely bringing up in the rear, unconscious of Buttons's find.
With renewed courage, the pug rushed towards the paper bag. He had
almost reached it when the quiet gentleman gave the bag an opening
twist, and, as a furry head with a pair of fiery eyes shot out, he
exclaimed:
"Hi, hi, Kootchie!"
The earnestness with which Kootchie hi, hied became instantly apparent
by the piteous howls that rose from out of the murderous clawing,
snarling mass of flying fur and silver ornaments. And the speed with
which Buttons's companion hastened to the rescue with his loaded cane
proved that even a Boston butler can get a move on. Before he could
interfere, however, the quiet gentleman took a hand in the game.
"Stand back," he demanded, in tones that showed he would brook no
interference. "Buttons is death on cats. Kootchie is death on pugs. You
like fun. I like fair play."
In less than twenty seconds a crowd of loungers, newsboys, nurse-girls,
and pedestrians hurried to the scene. In the confusion somebody
thoughtfully told a policeman to ring for the "hurry-up" wagon. But
before it arrived the butler was permitted to carry home in his arms
what there was left of Buttons.
"Cheese it, der cop!" shouted a newsboy, as the butler picked up his
limp and disfigured companion. And, as the crowd scattered, every one
was amused to see a fine, gray, stumpy-tailed cat make its way to the
yellow-haired little maid on the bench.
As the latter lovingly stroked her shining coat she remarked proudly,
"Kootchie is my little pussy tat. Papa say,'Kootchie, put Buttons to
sleep.'"
And the policeman winked with ghoulish satisfaction when the father
spoke up, "Kootchie is a regular California cyclone. She is a young
wild cat a friend in Tiger Valley sent me. I'm fond of pets, you know,
and as she felt a bit homesick this evening I brought her out here to
give her a picnic."
[Illustration]
Frazer's Find
BY ROBERTA LITTLEHALE.
THE midnight stars glowed through the broken blackness of a winter's
sky down upon the roof of a house where a man sat alone with his arms
stretched over an empty bed. Such of his thoughts as were within
his control were focused on the life and the death of his past. The
bare branches of the willows scraped to and fro on the shingles, and
the water in the reservoir lapped softly against the piles of the
foundation. There was no light in the room to show the already hopeless
untidiness of inanimate things, and the quiet figure of the aging man
seemed carved out of rock.
To the youth of him, physical and mental, he returned, and remembered
that he had been modeled on lines which made people expect the things
for which they willingly yielded him affection and consideration in
advance. It was in the tempered pain of the hope of fulfilment that his
family and friends had speeded him from New England to the practise
of his profession of law in a Southern city. It was in their early
triumph at having counted on him truly that the fever of the California
gold days got into his veins. It had been no struggle to him to throw
everything over and make for the life that beat fastest and fullest
in incident. The struggle had lain in separation from a woman whose
saneness and spirit he felt he could not live without. But in the
end he had disregarded her opposition for the sake of the beckoning
fortunes and joined an ox-train caravan over the plains. The dragging
slowness with which the days went by had been broken only by the
alertness of his own fancy, until the discovery, one blistering Arizona
night, of the loss of his money-belt. He had bathed only five miles
farther back, and he had no memory of having restrapped the hot and
heavy buckskin about his waist. Ignoring the danger of Indian attack,
he rode over again in the starlight the miles to the little creek in
the wilderness. It had been so much of a relief to find it safe. He
stood strapping it about him, and he could hear as distinctly now as
then the sound that fell on his ears. It was the hot and hopeless
sobbing of a human voice. He had stood immovable, conscious that a
group of cacti on his right sheltered a prostrate body. Then he had
hurried over and found a slender boy, a slight, nervous, black-eyed
Mexican, with a sunburned fairness of skin revealing his mixture of
Castilian blood.
He had raised the boy quietly, and the child had hung about his neck,
frenzied and fainting. The weakness of his condition made anything
impossible beyond literally riding with him in his arms back again to
camp. The boy's clothes were torn and dirty and his flesh was bleeding,
but his delicate Southern beauty was none the less strongly in evidence.
Frazer remembered the interest and assistance of his comrades. They
had hovered in the silence of men's earnestness until the boy was able
to make himself coherent. His father, and mother, and brothers had
been seized by the Indians, and only the accident of his having been
sent after a straying mare had saved his life, by enabling him to hide
himself successfully from the raiders.
His extravagant affection for Frazer made a shadow the only simile
of his constant presence with him. The boy's nervous timidity and
gentleness had found its chief outlet in the watchfullest care of him
and the things he cared for. He had seemed wholly lacking in the lore
of his class regarding life in the open. He had never gone among the
horses or cared to use a gun, but had taken upon himself the cooking
and domestic duties of camp life.
The men, in their vigorous courage and spirit, had found the boy
monotonous except in the satisfaction he picturesquely afforded, and
Frazer had accepted his homage with a mind so absorbed in his own
affairs as to be little short of indifferent to the lad's presence.
As they had traveled heavily on over the Texas plains and slept under
the Texas stars, Frazer could remember the softness of the small hand
that had wakened him from sleep in its searching for the comfort of
his presence. And one night the child had crept close to him.
"Señor——"
Frazer had wanted to sleep; he had answered nothing.
"Señor!" The boy's hand lingered this time in an earnest pressure upon
his own.
"Yes?" he had said.
"It is only—may I stay always with you?"
It had seemed a simple thing to promise to keep him with him, and
Frazer had gone to sleep in the very midst of the passionate little
torrent of Mexican gratitude.
In the excitement of his early months in California the boy had seemed
vastly a nuisance in transportation. Frazer had stayed only long enough
in San Francisco to acquire an outfit and vocabulary, and hurried off
to the southern mines. The boy rode closely by his side, indifferent
to fatigue, his cheerfulness clouded by the fear that he might be
overlooked and left behind.
Those months of feverish toil, and exaltation, and depression! As they
lengthened into years, with the pot of gold still at the inaccessible
end of the rainbow, and the blunt unloveliness of the frontier life
rusting the vigor of his finer fiber, Frazer remembered his sense
of restless resentment because the woman whom he loved and had left
would not make any acknowledgment of his mistake or his failure. The
impersonal tone of her early letters had been easier to bear than the
silence she was beginning to make him endure. It seemed to him the
tensity of his resolve to wrest the success of yellow gold through the
clustering difficulties had only taken its firmest hold of him before
the illness came that had hastened a revelation perhaps unfortunately
delayed.
He remembered through the first hours before unconsciousness had come
to him how glad he had been to feel that the boy was with him. They
were living in the roughest of cliff cabins, alone, and he had ordered
him off to camp for a doctor. The boy had given him whisky, and then
had stood in so irresolute a fright and suffering that Frazer had sworn
him into action.
He knew now that he had lain four weeks near death; but when he
opened his eyes upon that mellow October twilight, long ago, he was
unconscious of anything but a pair of dimming Mexican eyes that
dropped tears on his gaunt face, and an intense feminine sobbing
mingled with expressions of love for him shaken out of the abyss of a
suffering woman's heart. The hot cheeks that rested on his own were
those he was used to in the boy. The clothes on her limbs in all
their pitiful poverty were the masculine ones he had liked to see so
picturesquely carried, but the strain in the voice and the music of its
words were new, and amazing, and appalling.
In the silence of weakness he listened, and over and over again he
heard the reiteration of her resolve.
"There is nothing, beloved, that can drive me from you but the death
from your hand which will not kill."
And after awhile he had said to her:
"Little one, why did you do it?"
But he had known it was the wisdom of the wisest before she had
answered him, that for a girl this life offered greater perils as well
as fewer chances.
She did not light their candle, but remained on her knees by the bed,
getting his medicine at intervals by the lingering light that came in
from the window.
"It will be just the same," she had whispered; "it need make no
difference, señor."
And Frazer had lain there, facing the fact of the very great
difference, in a regret that could fancy no arrangement not death-doing
to this woman who had nursed him, and had loved him, and had told him
so.
"The woman at the hotel—the landlady," he had said to her in his weak,
thin voice, "she would care for you if I paid her, or you might go
East. You might go to school."
But the helpless poverty of his present condition had forced a wan
smile on his dry lips, and the girl was writhing as with actual
physical pain and would not listen.
In his weakened condition he could not concentrate himself sufficiently
to adopt any decisive measure. He had felt the tumult of her emotions
gradually still itself as he laid his hand on her short, black hair,
and when her breathing was even and quiet he had asked her, feeling a
revolt within him, "The doctor, and the boys—have they guessed it?"
But how had he expected her to know anything of any man but the one she
loved? She did not know, she had answered him; she had not thought to
think of it.
And she had not slept through the long night hours, nor had he, and in
the morning the fever was high again.
In the dragging feebleness of his convalescence both had avoided any
reference to the revelation that night. Things went on as before,
but the humble devotion and care of Frazer's Mexican protégée was as
properly interpreted by the quick camp instinct as it was immediately
acquiesced in and forgotten.
From this time Frazer had little communication with the civilization
he had deserted, and none whatever with the woman who waited in the
South in silence and the suffering of doubt. He remembered the utter
emptiness of his life and his hope as the following years of his toil
and alertness yielded him only bitterer disappointments. There came
children now, little dark miniatures of their stout, faded mother,
whose heart was as full of reverence and love for him as was her girl's
heart, and who seemed not to know that the hours which he lived with
her were lost hours.
It was on his way home to her one night, in the gentleness which masked
his hideous unrest, that his eye discovered the ledge of quartz which
had more than laid the foundation of that success he had early strived
for. It had not taken long to form a company, and before the year was
out gold came to his pocket in as unsweated for a fashion as the air to
his lungs.
The men, his partners, had thrown back their shoulders and inflated
their chests. The blood ran in their veins to more composite measure,
and they planned diversion and further manipulation after their
different natures. Three of them were for the East and the world
again—and, O God! but the frenzy in his own brain. They had come to
him seriously as man to man and explained their sense of his absolute
insanity in throwing up the entire future of his career by life in this
place, tied down in his fashion. Other men,—they themselves,—were
under obligation, but not so deeply that money would not bridge it
and—damn it!—friends and family must have some consideration in
successful men's lives.
That night had been another so strongly accented that its impression
would, never fade. He had sat at the oilclothed table, in the little
cabin, and tried to sufficiently detach himself from the children and
himself to get an unbiased view-point. He could see only the light of
her love in her eyes, the child-love in theirs, and, through their
gentle subjection, their genuine faith in and dependence on him. The
shabbiness of his environment she did not permit to become slovenly,
but the common vulgarity of it all surged through his eyes like light.
He had sent the children from him and gone out into the pines, until
the vast, sweet silence of their majesty laid more on him than he could
bear.
As he came in the door she had handed him a letter left by a miner
on his way from camp. She had lighted two candles, and pulled up his
chair, and hushed the talking of the children in their bed. She had sat
near and searched his face for what the actual possession of the letter
could not have given her, and felt only misunderstanding because she
had never seen a struggle between the spirit's life and death.
Frazer had read, "Whatever the mistake, we can yet outlive the pain of
it. I am waiting for you." She had signed the name he had made for her,
and he could not look at it twice for the blinding tears under his lids.
Geraldine was waiting for him!
Geraldine's mouth, which drooped at the corners and created the dimples
she hated, when it fell a-smiling, was ready to yield to him!
Geraldine's face, and beauty, and spirit were true to him!
He could not tell how long it was before he got possession of himself.
The candles were dripping low in their tin sockets, and one of the
women who loved him was still in her chair near his elbow, frightened,
and quiet, and intense.
He had held out a hand to her and she had come over and knelt at his
side.
"Little one," he had said, "this life is not right for our children.
To-morrow we must get the priest and be married. There is money now,
and they must be taught to live more cleverly than their father and
their mother."
He had left her perplexed in her relief, while he threw himself on the
bed for the sleep of utter exhaustion.
The burden of life would be doubly worse with the material leisure
money could bring, but Frazer had never stopped toiling all his days.
He could not.
Money in the helpless hands of his wife meant only unwelcome care for
her, and their exclusion in a larger, isolated home was in no sense
different from life in their cabin.
Frazer held himself aloof from the movement of the growing towns and
cities, and watched the weak physical fiber of his children, marked by
their unambitious Southern strain. Energy for acquirement of any sort
was not theirs, and for his family his money meant only the material
supply of food and clothes.
From this very home on the reservoir banks he had gone to his mines
with a regularity interrupted only when it was necessary to follow the
coffin of one of his children to the rocky, shrub-dotted cemetery on
the hills. There had been three of them, and none of the apparently
sturdy children had escaped the fatal collapse of consumption.
That morning he had driven there the fourth time. The body of his wife
was laid under the ground after her thirty years of faithful care,
according to her light. And Frazer was alone with his money, and his
love, and the suffering he had made it his business to bear.
ADVERTISEMENTS.
[Illustration: ℞ _Drink Londonderry_
Copyright, 1895, by Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Co., Nashua, N. H.
]
[Illustration:
GOFF'S BRAID
IS THE
BEST MADE
"For ...
Dress Binding
... it is ...
Unequaled."