Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1875 — Goin’ Somewhere. [ARTICLE]

Goin’ Somewhere.

He'had been to town-meeting, had once voyaged a hundred miles on a steamboat, and had a brother who had made the overland trip to California. She had been to quiltings, funerals and a circus or two, and she knew a woman whose sister thought nothing of setting out on a railroad journey where she had to wait fifteen minutes at a junction and change cars at a'depot. So I found them—a cosy-looking old couple, sitting up very straight in their seat and trying to act like old railroad travelers. A shadow of anxiety suddenly crossed her face, she became uneasy, and directly she said j “ Philetus, I act’lly b’leeve we’ve went and taken the wrong* train!" “ It can’t be, nohow,” he replied, seeming a little startled. “ Didn’t I ask the conductor, and didn’t he say we was right?” “Yaas, he did, but look out of the window and make sure. He might have been a lyin’ to us!” The old man looked out of the window at< the flitting fences, the galloping telegraph poles and the unfamiliar fields, as if expecting to catch sight of some old landmark, and forgetting for a moment that he was a thousand miles from home. “I guess we’re all right, Mary,” he said as he drew in his head. “ Ask somebody—ask that man there !”• she whispered. “ This is the train for Chicago, hain’t ft?”,.inquired the old man of the passenger in the next seat behind. “ This is the train,” replied the man. “There, didn’t I say so?” chuckled the old gent. “It may be —it may be!” she replied, dubiously, “ but if we are carried wrong it won’t be my fault. I say that we are wrong, and when we’ve been led to some pirate’s cave and butchered for our money ye’ll wish you had heeded my words.” He looked out of the window again, opened his mouth as if to make some inquiry of a boy sitting on the fence, and then leaned back in his seat and sighed heavily. She shut her teeth together, as if saying that she could stand it if he could, and the train sped along for several miles. He finally said: “ Looks like rain over thar in the west. I hope the boys hev got them oats in.” “ That makes me think of that umbreller,” she exclaimed, diving her hands among the parcels at their feet. She hunted around for two #r three minutes, growing red in the face, and then straightened up and hoarsely whispered : “ It's gone!" “ W—what?" he gasped. “That umbreller!” “No!”

“Gone, hide and hair!” she went 6n; “ that sky-blue umbreller which I have had ever since Martha died!” He searched around, but it was not to be found. “Waal, that’s queer,” he mused, as he straightened up. “Queer! Not a bit. I’ve talked to ye and talked to ye, but it does no good. Ye come from a heedless fam’ly, and ye’d forget to put on yer boots ’f I didn’t tell ye to.” “ None o’ the Harrisons was ever in the poor-house!” he replied in a cutting tone. “ Philetus—Philetus H. Harrison!” she continued, laying her hand on his arm, “ don’t ye dare twit me of that again! I’ve lived with ye nigh on to forty years, and waited on ye when ye had biles and the toothache and the colic, and when ye fell and broke yet leg, but don’t push me to the wall!” He looked out of the window, feeling that she had the advantage of him, and she wiped her eyes, settled her glasses on her nose, and used up the next fifteen minutes in thinking of the past. Feeling thirsty she reached down among the bundles, searched around, and her face was as pale as death as she straightened back and whispered: “ And that's gone, too!" “What now?” he asked. “ That bottle with the cold tea in it!” “ It’s been stole!” he exclaimed, looking around the car as if expecting to see some one with the bottle to their lips. “ Fust the umbreller—then the bottle!” she gasped. “I couldn’t have left it, could I?” “ Don’t ask me! that bottle has been in our family twenty years—ever since mother died, and now* it’s gone! Hand only knows what I’ll do for a camfire bottle when we git home —if we ever do.” “ I’ll buy one.” “ Yes, I know ye are always ready to buy, and if it wasn’t for me to restrain ye the money’d fly like feathers in the wind.” “ Waal, I didn’t have to mortgage my farm,” he replied, giving her a knowing look. “ Twitting agin! It isn’t enough that ye’ve lost a good umbreller andr a camfire.bottle, but ye must twit me o’ this and that.” J Her nose grew red, and tears came to her eyes, but as he was looking out of the window she said nothing further. Ten or fifteen minutes passed and, growing restless, he called out to a man acrpss the aisle: “ What’s the sile around here?” “Philetus —Philetus H. Harrison! stop yer noise!” she whispered, poking him with her elbow.^ “I just asked a question,” he replied, resuming his old position. . “What’d yer brother Joab tell ye the last thing afore we left hum?” she asked. “Didn’t he say somebody’d swindle ye on the string game, the confidence game, or some other game! Didn’t he warn ye agin rascals?” / “1 hain’t seen no rascals.” “Of course ye hevn’t, ’cause yer blind! I know that that man is a villun, and if they don’t arrest him for murder afore we leave this train I’ll miss my guess! I can read human natur’.like a book.” There was another .period of silence, broken by her saying: “ I wish I knew that this was the train for Chicago.” “

“ Course it is;?’ / “ Hew do you know?” “ ’Cause it is.”4-' . “ Wall, I know it ain’t; but if you are contented to rush along to destruction I shan’t say a word. Only when yer throat is being cut don’t call out that I didn’t warn ye!” The peanut-boy came along and the old man reached down for his wallet. “Philetus, ye shan’t squander that money after peanuts!” she exclaimed, using one hand to catch his arm and the other to wave thfe boy on. “ Didn’t I earn it?” “ Yaas, you sold two cows to git money to go on this visit, but it’s half gone now, and the land only knows how we’ll get home!” The boy passed on, and the flag of truce was hung out for another brief time. She recommenced hostilities by remarking: “ I wish I hadn’t cum.” He looked up, and then out of the window. “I know what ye want to say!” she hissed; “ but it’s a blessed good thing for ye that I did come! If ye’d come alone ye’d have been robbed and murdered and gashed and scalped and sunk in the river afore now!” “ Pooh!” “ Yes, pooh, ’f ye want to, but /know!” He leaned back, she settled herself anew, and by and by— He nodded. She nodded. And in sleep their gray heads touched, and his arm found its way along the back of the seat, and his.hand rested on her shoulder. It was only their way.— M. Quad , in Hearth and Home.