|SPRING, gentle, touchful, tuneful, breezeful, soothful spring is here.
It has not been here more than twenty minutes, and my arctics stand
where I can reach them in case it should change its mind.
The bobolink sits on the basswood vines, and the thrush in the
gooseberry tree is as melodious as a hired man. The robin is building
his nest--or rather her nest, I should say, perhaps--in the boughs
of the old willow that was last year busted by thunder--I beg your
pardon--by lightning, I should say. The speckled calf dines teat-a-teat
with his mother, and strawberries are like a baldheaded man's brow--they
come high, but we can't get along without them.
I never was more tickled to meet gentle spring than I am now. It
stirs up my drug-soaked remains, and warms the genial current of life
considerably. I frolicked around in the grass this afternoon and filled
my pockets full of 1000-legged worms, and other little mementoes of
the season. The little hare-foot boy now comes forth and walks with
a cautious tread at first, like a blind horse; but toward the golden
autumn the backs of his feet will look like a warty toad, and there will
be big cracks in them, and one toe will be wrapped up in part of a bed
quilt, and he will show it with pride to crowded houses.
Last night I lay awake for several hours thinking about Mr. Sherrod and
how long we had been separated, and I was wondering how many weary days
would have to elapse before we would again look into each other's eyes
and hold each other by the hand, when the loud and violent concussion of
a revolver shot near West Main street and Cascade avenue rent the sable
robe of night. I rose and lit the gas to see if I had been hit. Then
I examined my pockets to see if I had been robbed of my led pencil and
season pass. I found that I had not.
This morning I learned that a young doctor, who had been watching his
own house from a distance during the evening, had discovered that,
taking advantage of the husband's absence, a blonde dry goods clerk had
called to see the crooked but lonely wife. The doctor waited until
the young man had been in the house long enough to get pretty well
acquainted, and then he went in himself to see that the youth was making
himself perfectly comfortable.
There was a wild dash toward the window, made by a blonde man with his
pantaloons in his hand, the spatter of a bullet in the wall over the
young man's head and then all was still for a moment save the low sob
of a woman with her head covered up by the bed clothes. Then the two men
clinched and the doctor injected the barrel of a thirty-two self-cocker
up the bridge of the young man's nose, knocked him under the wash stand,
yanked him out by the hem of his garment and jarred him into the coal
bucket, kicked him up on a corner bracket and then swept the quivering
ruins into the street with a stub-broom. He then lit the chandelier and
told his sobbing wife that she wasn't just the temperament for him and
he was afraid that their paths might diverge. He didn't care much
for company and society while she seemed to yearn for such things
constantly. He came right out and admitted that he was of a nervous
temperament and quick tempered. He loved her, but he had such an
irritable, fiery disposition that he guessed he would have to excuse
her; so he escorted her out to the gate and told her where the best
hotel was, came in, drove out the cat, blew out the light and retired.
Some men seem almost like brutes in their treatment of their wives. They
come home at some eccentric hour of the night, and because they have
to sleep on the lounge, they get mad and try to shoot holes in the
lambrequins, and look at their wives in a harsh, rude tone of voice. I
tell you it's tough.