Life — February 11, 1892 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE- THE POET’S VALENTINE. E wrote a valentine in dainty verse, And she, though pleased, regretted he should spend ‘The time on her ; knowing full well his purse Was lighter than his rhymes, But in the end It was the same, for though he never told it, The mercenary fellow went and sold it, LIFE’S FAIRY TALES. E F* away in the Idaho country, at a place where the prairie and the forest meet, there stands a lofty Pine. Although surrounded by many sisters, all of imposing beauty, she is easily the belle of the neighborhood, from the richness of her coloring and the perfect symmetry of her limbs. in earliest youth her natural dignity and ease of manner were the envy of much older trees. All pines have pleasant voices, but hers has qualities un- known to others. And when the Westwind lingers among the branches, there comes a murmuring music that steals away the senses and lulls the listener to a drowsy ecstasy. They were great friends, this pine tree and the Westwind, It was breathed along the forest that friendship was too cold a name for it, and young pines would wink and nudge each other when they saw him coming. Although the mighty traveler flirted freely with every beauty in his path, the delays in her vicinity were very marked, their whisperings often lasting until after midnight “PME WHITE MEN CAME AND DROUE AWAY THE KED ONES.” As time went on the white men came and drove away the red ones, and, then out upon the prairie, a dozen miles away, they began a town beside the river. Then a settler came and built a house, laying out his farm close up against the forest. He fell upon the timber, slaying many trees, until at last he stood beside the anxious belle, and sent his axe into the trunk. A quiver as of farewell to life sped upward to her top- most boughs. The shuddering murmur among her branches was like a prayer for pity. In response another gash was opened in the bark. But here the Westwind gently fanned the chopper’s face and besought him to forego his work. The only answer was a 5 swinging blow, and the axe was nearly buried in the quivering trunk. At this the mighty traveler felt within him a force and fury he had never known before. Whirling savagely about he threw himself against the des- troyer and commanded him to stop. The man was surprised at this ca- vorting of the elements, but again he raised his axe, and again the steel struck deep into the yel- low wood. With anangry cry, something like a wail, but more like a roar, the Westwind wheeled about and swept across the plain. He loosened the roof of the chopper’s dwelling as he hurried by and scat- tered his fence rails far and near. Drawing him- self together to occupy as little space as possible, he bounded with unheard of leaps over the prairie and across the river, past the town and out into the open country. Then he circled savagely about, and, rear- ing himself aloft for hundreds of feet in a whirling, tumultuous tempest, darkening the earth, until it seemed as if the night had come, he started on his errand. Unearthly were the shrieks of the rushing air. Rising high into the clouds, he fell like a thunderbolt upon the earth, and it quivered beneath the shock. With irregular, gigantic, frightful bounds he rushed toward the startled town, which, lying in his path, he hurled in splinters about the prairie. The mayor was landed behind a stable nearly a mile from where the cyclone struck him. For a brief period the air was comicbooks.com