Life — October 18, 1900 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

314 Love’s Waking, OVE lies asleep. What dreams be round i him thronging Poets may guess But he tired of hope and fear —of longing— stress— yeurs, from the world’s first beginning ; Too tired to wake, At Wealth’s loud call, at Beauty's w winning, Or answer make, Though king true m Plead, praise mand, and minstrel, in nid wy Than anything on earth, ah, rest is sweeter! Love lies asleep. Lo! Two young pilgrims come from wood- land closes, Barefoot, yet gay, Clothed with scarce else than garland-ve of roses, Sweet beggars, they— Full of health's bliss, of life, of joy, im- mortal, Untouched by sin. Who know not why they sing beside Love's portal Till Love joins in, Madeline Bridges, An Ancient Enemy. «jt rained night before last, and drizzled along till about ten o'clock yesterday forenoon,” said Uncle Zadok, with an unaccustomed gentle- ness in his acrid voice, ‘and then the sun popped out, and the folks scattered this way and that and left me alone, “Presently, it began to drizzle again and, naturally, I had to do something to pass the time. So, bime-by, I grunted my rheumatic way up to the attic, and poked around under the rafters, seein’ what I could see and inhalin’ the honest smells from the bunches of sage and summer-savory hangin’ by the chimney, and listenin’ to the pickity-pick of the rain on the shingles. Directly, I thought I heard a rat gnawin’, and started to hunt him out; and pretty soon I came across what was one of my bitterest enemies, in the long-ago when I was a lad and dragged a couple of wart-trimmed feet day after day to the faded old school- house on the hill—a mildewed book that had been reposin’ for years at the bottom of a venerable hair-trank, close back under the caves. “Tt was a history of the world, «LLPE « written when the earth was a lot more homeopathic than it is at present, or at least the important parts of it were a good deal less numerous. When I used to study it I was ready to make oath that its author was an oppressor of the youth, with his painstakin’ de- scriptions of the quaint cuttin’s-up of one and another illustrious Tom, Dick and Harry, and his solemn moralizin’ thereon. I used to snort at his in- genuons descriptions of the prominent figures of history, beginnin’ with the Primeval Man, with his stone-headed smasher trimmed with the dried gray- matter of his fellow-citizens; King What’s - His- Name, who regularly thrashed his wife, causin’ the historian to observe that kings bore a marked resémblance to common folks, and Xerxes, who started to invade Greece, and, findin’ Mount Athos in his path, sent u note to the mountain com- mandin’ it to get out of his way, and who also, havin’ built a bridge of boats across the Hellespont and havin’ it torn to pieces by the waves, com- manded the sea to be soundly whipped. for its disrespectful conduct ; likewise Chang-tsong, a Chinese emperor, who made a specialty of sleepin’ on the bare ground with a sheep-bell tied to his neck, and when, upon turnin’ over, the bell awakened him, hoppin’ up and declarin’ it was mornin’,and that every- body but sluggards had slept long enough ; and also the various persons prominently figgerin’ in the Trojan War, about which, after givin’ Homer's views on the sub- ject, the historian remarked that the whole thing was probably much less impor- tant than Homer let on, for poets, he had discovered, did not always tell the trath ; and so forth, touchin’ up one illustrious crank and another, clear down to what was the present at the time the history was written. “‘Tremember how I used to hate that old book and its author, as I toiled night after night by the light of a tallow-dip in order to memorize my lesson sufficiently well to gabble it off without under- standin’ on the morrow. But, yesterday, when I looked through the quaint old volume, with its stilted phrascology, its leaves yellowed by time and freckled with mildew, and read again the historian’s grave from- this-we-should-learns, I discovered that he was not, after all, the enemy my boy- ish fancy had thought him, but a dear, delicious old wag. And, readin’ along, I forgot my long - standin’ grudge against him, and kind of rabbed my eyes, on account of the dim Lght in the garret, of course, and —— ‘But mebby you’ve known how it was, yourself, some time or other.”’ Tom P. Morgan. Proof Positive. ERKER : Doubt the Genesis story of the unity of the human race ! Why, sir— Happy : But men of science — “Men of science! Listen to any conversation in any language, any- where, and you will find the men talking about their digestion, and the women about their cooks.” F women were mind readers, pos- terity wonld be a thing of the past. THe cENsons! y OF THE PRESS. comicbooks.com