Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION to return. That was her daughter sitting in front of him now. She looked like her mother. Even at this age she reminded him of Maria when he had first known her. She was eighteen then, young, willowy and full of love for him. He had been twenty and as ardent as only twenty years can make a man. They used to sit beside the stream over in the field behind the school and just think of one another and how good it was to live. It was that joy - of feeling the life in your veins, to know the thoughts which streamed through your head. Muddled emotional thoughts maybe, but every one of them more alive than the last. Maria had such lovely eyes. He remembered how her eyelashes had stroked her cheek when she smiled at him. It would be nice to go over to the stream now. It had been so long since he had seen it. _ Maybe the frogs still sat on the leaves or hid beside the stones in the running water. 98 He looked at his watch when the story ended. The prince and princess were going to live happily ever after in the book. He put it quietly and almost with reverence in the desk and closed it for the last time. The quietness in the village penetrated even into the class- room. There was only the sound of the insects and the fly buzzing at the window. The tree making a swishing with its leaves and branches in the wind almost covering the ~ sound of the crooning pigeons ~ on the red roofs. see “Shall we go for a little walk over to the stream?’’ he asked the children. The last little walk—and the thought almost choked him. He nearly lost control then, and the feeling brought the perspira- tion back in beads to his brow. The children arranged them- selves around him. He held the little girls’ hands and the freckie-faced boy looked up at him with confidence. Al- most as much as to say: “That’s ail right, Papa Jones, comicbooks.conis