Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1881 — Bertha’s Romance. [ARTICLE]

Bertha’s Romance.

j “Bertha!” _ “George!” She fell into bis outstretched arms, and for an instant nothing was beard except a noise like a horse drawing his foot out of the mud. George had kissed her. In vears agone Bertha Mon tracers and George Benson had played together as children. Now George always played it alone if he baa four trumps. Bertha was the only child of a proud father, who lavished upon her everything that credit could purchase, while George was the son of

noof but Republican parents, and sent out to with ti&wortd ere the roseate flush of boyiah health had ceased to mantle his brow. At the time our story begins, however, a roseate flush was no better to hint than one of any other color. He played them all, from bobtail to straight. Almost unconsciously he had drifted farther anil farther away on the broad stream of life from Bertha’s refining influence, and, although never in any sense a wicked man, had fallen in with a fast set, ami, as he expressed it in nis simple, 1 manly way, “was trying to keep up with th« procession.” One day his' old Sunday-school teacher had met George, and asked him if he was a slave to the wine-cup. George said he was not; that he thought a man who would drink wine from a cup ought to be looked after. Then the teacher asked him if his life waa a happy one, and George said he should relax his features. The teacher afterward learned' that this meant he should smile. Tills has nothing to do with the story, but shows that George had

been around some. A winter’s sunset was coldly giMing a cluster of shanties in Hoboken. One of the shanties, which seemed to shun the light, was built- in a small hollow, with its back against a rock. Two or three goats were playing in front of the door, and some hens were nestling in the dirt on the sunny side of the wail opposite. In the middle of the pathway a dead rat threw all the surrounding harmonies into a

mi norkey. From the door of the shanty a man emerged, and walked rapidly toward a low barn which stood in one corner of the lot. In half an hour he came back. “I have done It, Molly,” he said to a woman who came to the door. Bhe nodded her head and went inside again. He had greased a harness. Bertha and George were silting in tiie parlor of her late father’s residence. The old gentleman had died two months before and left his vast wealth to Bertha. This was tough on George, but he continued to come around to see her just the same. The young couple were evidently of an economical turn of mind, for, notwithstanding that the room was filled with costly furniture they occupied only one chair between them. “Whose ducky are 00!” said Gorge. “I’m oor ducky; whose ducky are 00?” Tliis from Bertha. “I’m oor ducky.” Let us draw a veil, over the painful scene, and then build a - partition behind the veil. They were married two weeks later.

“Wnat has the chapter about the shanty and the dead rat got to do with this story?” some may ask. 1 I got Victor Hugo to write that for me. It dosen’t fit In very well, but when it comes to descriptive work ■Vick is a cake-taker.