Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1889 — PROFITABLE SOLILOQUY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PROFITABLE SOLILOQUY

BY DWIGHT BALDWIN.

'HY do you talk to yourself so much, father?” “For two reasons, Bessie. ” “Number one?” “I like to talk to a sensible man.” “Number two ?” “I like to hear a sensible man talk.”

“Good! good!” cried Fred Faxon, clapping his hands and laughing heartily. “I don’t know that it’s good,” said Farmer Eben Hayes, “but it has the merit of bein’ the Lord’s truth!” “And that’s everything, father,” said his petite and pretty daughter, as she seized him round the neck and gave him a hug that brought a quick flush to the face of both men —pain producing it with the elder, envy with the younger. Hayes Hollow, as the farm had been called for three generations, was the finest and most productive of all in the beautiful valley, and its owner was considered a wealthy man, being rated much as a millionaire is in a large city. Bessie was his only child and the prospective heiress not only of the iorm and its appurtenances but, as many believed, of a good deal of wealth which was invested in other ways. Fred Faxon was a young man who for two years had been reading law in the city twenty miles away, and was soon to be admitted to the bar. He had met Bessie Hayes the preceding summer while spending a vacation in the valley. The decided mutual attraction between the two had been increased by subsequent meetings and no end of letters, until it had reached the stage where the word “love” could alone express the situation. Mr. Hayes had been much pleased* with the young man, and at the request’ of pretty Bessie, who generally carried her point, had invited him to spend his week’s vacation at the Hollow. It had been a happy time to the lovers—those little seven days; but they had flown by all too quickly, and the train that was to bear the prospective lawyer away from fields of wheat, drifting in waves of silver toward the harvest, to the city, with its dust, and grime, and wickedness, would he due within an hour. “I must run across and say good-by to the Turners,” remarked Fred, looking through the open door to a farm house on the opposite side of the broad country road. “Wait a moment, and I’ll go with you.” “No, daughter, let him go alone. I must hitch up to take him to the depot, and want a word with you first.” “What is it?” asked Bess, just a little petulantly, when Fred had started on his errand. “Don’t invite him here again.” “Who?” “Fred—Mr. Faxon, I should say,” “You don’t mean ” Words failed the little maiden, but her wide-open eyes supplied the deficit,

and expressed the most unfeigned astonishment. “I do, daughter, just that.” “But you’ve spoken so highly of him all along—and besides ” Again words failed the girl, but this time tears glistened in her blue eyes, and completed the sentence. “I’m sorry, Bessie, truly sorry, but I think it’s for the best.” “Nothing can be for the best that separates us for life. What have you against Mr. Faxon?” “I accuse him of no crime, but I fear that he is unworthy of you.” “Oh, father! Someone besides that sensible man of whom you were just speaking has been talking to you about him. A false suspicion never originated in your honest old heart.” “Well, I won’t deny—never mind that now.” Mr. Hayes paused to remove her pleading white arms from his neck. “Oh, father!” faltered she, the tears once more welling up into her eyes. “Well, then,” spoke up the farmer, who evidently felt himself to be weakening,“we’ll let the matter rest as it is, and it you’re not satisfied within six months —yes, six weeks—that he’s unworthy of you, then matters can hum along, and I won’t say a word. But nothing of this to him. Mind that.” Three minutes later the farmer was harnessing a horse. “I wish I had my life insured, for if they close down on me it ’ll kill me, an’ Bess ’ll be left without a nickel.” Eben Hayes was indulging in his old habit of talking to himself as he buckled the harness-strap. As he made this remark, Fred Faxon entered the horse-barn. It seemed strange that the sound caused by the opening of the door, and the sunlight it admitted, did not attract the farmer’s attention. He must have been deeply engrossed in his own thoughts, for he continued his soliloquy : “Who’d have thought that wheat would go ten cents higher, when there’s goin’ to be a full crop—at least about here ? I s’pose it’s short other places, though I was a fool to borrow that last $5,000 to try and save the other fifteen. What’ll folks say when the notes come due in two months, an’ old Eben Hayes is closed out? Jeff Wheeler’ll be glad, so’ll Sol Smith an’ Dick Stallsmith, but I reckon Bill Barr ’ll be a little grain sorry, ’cause he won’t be able to borrow any more money off me. I guess its a feelin’ that Parson Lake wouldn’t indorse, but I do wish that this city fellow would marry Bess, or get engaged to her, at least, before we have to move out of the Hollow, where she was born, and I before her.” Fred Faxon heard something which sounded very like a sob, and then stole noiselesslv from the barn and rejoined Bessie, whom he had left in the grape arbor near by. A week later, when the farmer returned home from the wheat-field, where he had been assisting his men in the glorious work of harvesting, he was astonished to find Fred Faxon seated with his daughter upon the vineshadowed porch. “Didn’t reckon on seeing you to-day,” said the farmer when the first salutations were over.

At the same time he stole a glance at the fair face of his daughter, which seemed an embodiment of happiness and content. “I’ve been admitted to practice.” “Oh! Glad to hear it.” “And the city courts not being in session ” “Don’t be silly!” interrupted Bessie, blushing like a peony. “I’d like to speak with you in private, Mr. Hayes.” “No need of it. My daughter and I have no secrets from each other.” “Well, she has promised, subject to your approval of course, to become my wife.” “Even that was no secret. I read it in her eyes the minute I turned the corner.” “And you consent?” “I s’pose I’ll have to.” “Wheat took an awful drop this week, sir.” “I hadn’t heard of it.” “The European war didn’t material-

ize and reports from the Northwest came in much more dropped twenty cents.” “That beats me.” “It didn’t me. I never mentioned the fact to you, but I have $30,000 which I inherited from my father three years ago.,, I was sure it would take a tunable, and sold a hundred thousand buihels.” “And have closed it out ?” “At a profit of twenty thousand. Now, I want to ask you a question.” “Fire away.” I . I • I I '

“What’ll you take for Hayes Hollow?” “You don’t mean ” “That I want to buy it for a wedding present to Bessie. Not to freeze you out, but just ” “Because you’re one of the whitest boys alive. You can’t do it, sir!” “But, Mr. Hayes, I ” “You can’t steal my thunder that way. I’m going to give it to her myself!” “But I heard ” “What?” f “That you were embarrassed and on the brink of failure. In fact, it was the information that you had lost everything, through the recent boom in wheat, that induced me to sell th« same commodity.” “There ain’t a word of truth in it' I never speculated in my life!” “But I heard ” “A pack of lies! I’m worth $15,00(

over and alxive this farm, and don’t owe a cent in the world!” “Then I must have been dreaming?” “No, but you placed too much reliance in the idle talk of an old fellow who likes to speculate in his mind, and who thinks it no sin to suppose a case for his own amusement.” “And you’re satisfied that Fred wasn’t after Hayes Hollow ?” queried Bessie. “Entirely I don’t believe that John will remember about those calves. He’s getting awfully forgetful.” Thus soliloquizing, Mr. Hayes walked discreetly away, leaving the happy lovers in sole possession of the vineprotected porch.

“GOOD ! GOOD !" CRIED FRED FAXON.

“don’t invite him here again."