Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1915 — FolK We Touch In Passing [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FolK We Touch In Passing

By Julia Chandler Mang

THE HEART OF A BOY The Boy lay through the long night ■with wide-open eyes save when some member of his family passed through his small room, whereupon he closed them in pretense of sleep, but when the gray dawn sifted silently through his unshaded window he could no longer endure the stillness he had kept Slipping swiftly into his clothes, he crept through the kitchen door, stole through the enshrouding fog of the soft spring morning to the front of the house and stood gazing silently across the village road to the house on the other side which the mist veiled from his sight. He wondered vaguely if the white roses still hung their drooping heads against the panel o* the front door or if they had been taken in with the rest which kept watch beside Little Girl as she lay among the white satin folds of her lovely casket, her lips smiling bravely in answer to an Angel's call. They had told The Boy the day before that he might go in and his mother had taken his hand in hers to give him courage, when he gently disengaged it and sped away to the woods, following the trail along which he had held back the flapping branches for

Little Girl ever since he could remember, and the hour had been twilight when he returned. He had made sure that no one was near Little Girl when he slipped into the room where she lay smiling and left the arbutus he had brought clasped in her stiff little fingers. In his bunt for the trailing flush of scented color he had assuaged some of the anguish that ate into his heart. It had seemed to him often that Little Girl was at his side, pointing out the hillsides where the loveliest flowers hid beneath the pine needlea When he tucked the loveliest of his fragrant blossoms under the stiff little fingers The Boy’s eyes lingered on the quiet face with its tender lips smiling and seeing no one near he stood on tiptoe, kissed the once rosebud mouth and fled again into the woods they both had loved and traversed. And now it was morning; the day of the funeral! The house across the road was shrouded in fog, and vaguely The Boy wondered if the arbutus lived yet in the little dead hand, and if Little Girl still was smiling. Ah, but she would not smile when they put her under the ground! And the arbutus would die without air. All night he had pondered the matter in his mind, and dully he had told himself over and over again that they must not put Little Girl beneath the ground where it was cold and dark and lonely. But even as he said these things to himself he knew in his aching heart that it would be done, and now as he stood in the soft spring fog, his tearless eyes straining across the street, panic seized his young heart—the sort of panic that is born of the utter futility of human purpose in opposition to the will of God. Miserably The Boy crept back into the house, and from a window watched the new day born. As the morning passed and the fog lifted he saw someone come out of the house across the road and take down the white roses that drooped

against the front door. Instinctively he knew the time had come. Hearing his mother’s call, the heart of The Boy contracted strangely. His painstricken eyes swept the room in which he seemed alone. With pulsing heart he left his place at the window. Climbing the narrow steps which led to the attic he threw himself on a pile of old carpets and when Little Girl was being borne away from the house across the road no one missed The Boy save, perhaps, his mother, who if she gave the matter a thought, concluded he had gone ahead. For an hour he lay on the carpets, his heart numb with suffering; his eyes wide and tearless; his mind tortured with the scene in the cemetery he could not bring himself to witness. Later he heard his family stirring in the kitchen below, and once or twice he heard his name called, but he made no answer. All day he lay wondering if yet the arbutus was dying in Little Girl’s hand, and if the smile of the AngeL had left her. lips, and when he could bear the companionship of his thoughts no longer he sat up on the pile of rugs and his eyes wandered to the corner of the old attic where he and Little Girl had played at love and housekeeping

There was the table set with her bits of china just as she had left it, and in a broken chair sat her battered doll. The Boy stumbled to his feet, clasped the make-believe child of his play hours with Little Girl in his strong, young arms, and when the evening shadows fell they found him still sitting on the pile of rugs swaying back and forth to the rhythm of his sobs. In the night, when he had been in bed many hours, The Boy awakened with a sense of calamity. At first be was conscious only that the rain waa pattering gently against his window, a circumstance which usually filled him with a peculiar sense of peace. ' Then, suddenly, he remembered. < Springing out of bed he ran to his window. The dawn of another new day was near, and it had but just begun to rain. Hastily The Boy slipped into his clothes and quietly stole from the house. It was yet dark, but his stout heart knew no fear as hatless he ran through the village street, and into the winding road beyond, coming up pantingly before the gate which opened into the little cemetery which lies over against the lake on a sloping hillside. Softly The Boy let himself in. Instinctively he knew the new-made mound, all covered with flowers, where Little Giri lay, and swiftly he took off his warm coat and with exquisite tenderness spread it over the earth home of Little Girt Not satisfied, he raised the umbrella he had brought for his own protction and left it thus over the beautiful little face framed in its halo of golden curls and wearing its brave smile of youth At the foot of the hill The Boy stood coatless, and as he looked back upon his work his brave heart swelled with the pride of protection; a smile crept into his big brown eyes and he was quite unmindful that he was drenched to the skin.

At the Foot of the HUI the Boy Stood Coatless.