Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1906 — MY FIRST SWEETHEART. [ARTICLE]

MY FIRST SWEETHEART.

Little sweetheart of my boyhood, I remember yon so well! How I helped you climb the burn roof and how heavily you fell! How we leaned above the water in the brook that purled about aud yon slipped and tumbled into it and I reached and dragged you out. How we joined our hands in skating and I sought the thinnest ice and we both of us broke through it! Ah, those childhood days were nice when I boosted you for oberries and you slipped and barked your skin till your mother heard you crying and came out and took you in, with a stern, forbidding gesture warning me to go away, as a rough and careless youngster, who would be in jail some day! Little sweetheart of my boyhood, I remember how we went up the walk to sohool together and my eyes on jou were bent with a wealth of pure affection that found vent in apples red, stolen from some neighbor’s orchard, and in flowers for your head, gathered from the dales and hollows, that were shyly given you with their spirit of rare fragrance and their jewels of the dew. How you took them with the blushes dyeing red your pretty cheek; and the eyes your lashes sheltered, with what eloquence they speak even now as I remember bow the fragrance and the dew seemed the spirit and the jewel of the sweetness hidden in you. Little sweetheart of my boyhood, I remember when you stood with your bonnet idly flying as we searched the field and wood for some flower olosely hidden, as I might go search today for the flower of those moments that is withered quite away. I remember how we reckoned of the future and the flame of a boy’s desire for conquest led me hope some day my name wotild go ringing down the ages and the laurels that I won. might be brought aud laid before you just to hear you say, ‘well done.” How the world seemed fair before us and the days and dreams went by till the flowered gate swung open and we passed out—you and I. Little sweetheart of my boyhood, how I wonder where you are. and if chance, the fickle current, may have borne you near or far. How I wonder if you ever sit and dream when lights are low of the childish joys that blessed us in the havy long ago. How I wonder if the lover who was bidden come and woo by tbe voice of cunning Cupid is as tender and as true as I sought to be when dreaming that your bonnet and your gown oompassed all the sweetness garnered on the path of ages down. And my eyes are wet and gleaming like the flowers wet with dew as I wonder in my dreaming if your childish dreams came true!— New York Times. Put up your team at Vanoe Collins’ new feed and hitch barn near the river, bridge. An armload of old papers for a nickel at The Democrat office.