Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1885 — “Curse the Brat!’ [ARTICLE]

“Curse the Brat!’

It was a sunny-haired little girl that played about his rknee as he tried to write. She climbed on his fodt and jolted and jostled him and spoiled his beautiful penmanship in a kray that was most discouraging. For a long time he bore his trial patiently, but even patience has a limit, and when his child suddenly clasped his arm around the elbow and threw her whole weight upon it, drawing his pen zig-zag across the beautiful manuscript, leaving a ghastly line, then he sprang up and seized the blith offender in a passion and cried to her mother: “C urse the brat! Take her away IP That evening he felt restless and miserable. He laid his work aside and trotted his babe on his knee and cooed to her and tried all his arts to bring that glad smile and silvery laugh back to the, little lips again, but she, while she submitted to his caresses and Lore his affectionate dallying patiently, did not once enter into the spirit of it. She seemed a different child—he felt that he was another man. He began to realize how much he loved his little one, and he strove as he had never striven in all his former life to bring joy into the little heart his cruel words had so wounded. As he bent over her and endeavored to enlist her thoughts, he kept seeing het little lips tremble and her blue eyes turn reproachfully up toward his and fill with scalding tears. He would have given a thousand such pages as his child bad spoiled if he could only have recalled his harsh wordsand the angry look that went with them. Alas I the shaft had left his hand and he could not stay it, and even while the great drops of perspiration anxiety brings were standing on bis brow, he saw it sink quivering in the tender breast of his little victim. In his arms it sank into a .troubled sleep. * ♦ * * * ♦" .

The sun is just rising over the eastern hillSj A man, worn with" anxious watching, rises from his bed, turns back the covers and- gazes upon the face of his sleeping child. It is almost purple. It is livid, and the bright, blue eyes with contracted, sightless pupils, stare away into space, as a demon voice at his elbow cries : “Curse the brat! Take it awayl” “Heaven forbid!” he moans in his agony of mind. “God forgive my hasty words and spare—O, spare and bless my child I” The little lips move but they do not speak. They are only drawn into a hard knot by the pain the child feels, and.. the reddish purple of her little face is creased with two white, hard lines that begin at the side of the nostrils and extend down to the chin. The little eyes are underscored with more of the hard, white lines, and there is one across the chin, where the pretty dimple once nestled so lovingly, and the delicate walls of the nostrils, once jpink with life and health, are almost transparent, while the sluggish blood looks like blue, fine threads drawn here and there through the finest wax«. He is a man of knowledge. He knows what all that means. He presses his ear to her jerking little bosom and hears the snapping in tire useless little lungs. He hears it and knows with each sound, one of the threads of life is yielding, breaking, and that when the vivifying rays of sunshine are withdrawn from earth his child will be taken away —taken away from him forever. • .★*_* ♦ * ♦ *

The day is almost done. The sun is set and the shadows are reaching out and laying their spectral arms upon the earth and all its living habitants. Their grimmy fingers are closing upon that man’s child—the child of that man who cursed if and asked that it be taken away but yesterday. Thereis no gleam of consciousness in the eyes of the little sufferer—no words break from its withering lips—no ray of hope shines into the breaking heart of him that cried out and called upon heaven and earth to take it away. The lamps are lighted but turned low. The fleeting breath of the suffering child comes Shorter and faster; the sobs of the weeping mother grow louder and more full of grief; the cold sweat breaks from his brow and his lips are set so hard and firm they almost bleed; his eyes are bent upon the face of his dying child, so glassy and hot they shine in the lamplight, but seeing nothing but the bony hand of Death clutching the throat of his babe and strangling it to the last. He sheds no tears, though the fountain, of his soul is burdened to bursting —he breathes no word, though his brain is full of thoughts that burn as fire. His baby gasps, shudders, dies! The curse he called out from heaven is wrought out, and his cry: “God help me, my baby has been taken away” will ring in my ears for, ever more.— F. E. Huddle, in ington Through Mail.