Second Book of Tales | Page 9

very still, and the winds kept whispering "Speed on, O ship," till at last the ship was come to port and the little girl was clasped in the soldier's arms.
Then for a season the soldier seemed quite himself again, and people said "He will live," and they prayed that he might. But their hopes and prayers were vain. Death's seal was on the soldier, and there was no release.
The last days of the soldier's life were the most beautiful of all--but what a mockery of ambition and fame and all the grand, pretentious things of life they were! They were the triumph of a human heart, and what is better or purer or sweeter than that?
No thought of the hundred battlefields upon which his valor had shown conspicuous came to the soldier now--nor the echo of his eternal fame--nor even yet the murmurs of a sorrowing people. Nellie was by his side, and his hungry, fainting heart fed on her dear love and his soul went back with her to the years long agone.
Away beyond the western horizon upon the prairie stands a little home over which the vines trail. All about it is the tall, waving grass, and over yonder is the swale with a legion of chattering blackbirds perched on its swaying reeds and rushes. Bright wild flowers bloom on every side, the quail whistles on the pasture fence, and from his home in the chimney corner the cricket tries to chirrup an echo to the lonely bird's call. In this little prairie home we see a man holding on his knee a little girl, who is telling him of her play as he smooths her fair curls or strokes her tiny velvet hands; or perhaps she is singing him one of her baby songs, or asking him strange questions of the great wide world that is so new to her; or perhaps he binds the wild flowers she has brought into a little nosegay for her new gingham dress, or--but we see it all, and so, too, does the soldier, and so does Nellie, and they hear the blackbird's twitter and the quail's shrill call and the cricket's faint echo, and all about them is the sweet, subtle, holy fragrance of memory.
And so at last, when Death came and the soldier fell asleep forever, Nellie, his little girl, was holding his hands and whispering to him of those days. Hers were the last words he heard, and by the peace that rested on his face when he was dead you might have thought the soldier was dreaming of a time when Nellie prattled on his knee and bade him weave the wild flowers in her curls.

THE 'JININ' FARMS
You see Bill an' I wuz jest like brothers; wuz raised on 'jinin' farms: he wuz his folks' only child, an' I wuz my folks' only one. So, nat'ril like, we growed up together, lovin' an' sympathizin' with each other. What I knowed, I told Bill, an' what Bill knowed, he told me, an' what neither on us knowed--why, that warn't wuth knowin'!
If I had n't got over my braggin' days, I 'd allow that, in our time, Bill an' I wuz jest about the sparkin'est beaus in the township; leastwise that's what the girls thought; but, to be honest about it, there wuz only two uv them girls we courted, Bill an' I, he courtin' one an' I t'other. You see we sung in the choir, an' as our good luck would have it we got sot on the sopranner an' the alto, an' bimeby--oh, well, after beauin' 'em round a spell--a year or so, for that matter--we up an' married 'em, an' the old folks gin us the farms, 'jinin' farms, where we boys had lived all our lives. Lizzie, my wife, had always been powerful friendly with Marthy, Bill's wife; them two girls never met up but what they wuz huggin' an' kissin' an' carryin' on, like girls does; for women ain't like men--they can't control theirselves an' their feelin's, like the stronger sext does.
I tell you, it wuz happy times for Lizzie an' me and Marthy an' Bill--happy times on the 'jinin' farms, with the pastures full uv fat cattle, an' the barns full uv hay an' grain, and the twin cottages full uv love an' contentment! Then when Cyrus come--our little boy--our first an' only one! why, when he come, I wuz jest so happy an' so grateful that if I had n't been a man I guess I 'd have hollered--maybe cried--with joy. Wanted to call the little tyke Bill, but Bill would n't hear to nothin' but Cyrus. You see, he 'd bought a cyclopeedy the winter we wuz all marr'ed an' had been readin' in it uv a great foreign warrior named