LUKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 3

LUKE.

; - , • (In the Colorado Park, 1873.) Wei's that's you're readin' 5— novel 1 A novel— ■well, darn my skin 1 You a man grown and bearded, and his tin' such stuff ez thai inStuff about gals and their sweethearts 1 No vender you're thin ez a knife. Look at me I—clar two hundred— never read one in my life! That's ray opinion o' novels. And ez to their lyin' round here, They belonged to the jedge's daughter—the jedge who came up last year. On account of his lungs, and the mountains, and the balsam of pine and flr; And his daughter—well, she reads novels, and that's what's the matter with her. Yet she was, sweet on the jedge, and stuck by him day and night,. '■ Alone in the cabin up yer—till she grew like a ghost, nil white. , She was only a slip of a thing, ez light and eji up and away Ez rifle-smoke blown through the woods, but she j, wasn't my kind—no way ! Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill,. A mile and a-half from White's, and jist above Mattinply's mill ? •• You do 1 Well, now that's a girl 1 What, you saw v her ? O, come now, thar quit! She was only bedev'lin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit. Now, she's what I call a gal— pretty and plump ez a quail; Teeth ez white ez a bound's, and they'd go through a tenpenny nail; Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know " whar I was hid T' • ' • ' She did ? O, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart as ' a katydid. But what was I talkin' of I—o, the jedge and his '■ daughter-she read Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed, And sometimes she rend them out loud to the jedge on the. porch where he sat, And 'twas now "Lord Augustus"said this, and how " Lady Blanche" she said that. But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read'bout a cLap, " Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest o' sap ; And they a.-,ked me to hear; but I says: " Miss Mabel, not any for me; When I likes I kin sling ray own lies, and that chap and I shouldn't agree." Yet somehow or other she was always .say:?.' X brought her to mind Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin' belike of thet kind, „ Andthar warn't no end o ! the names thet she gave me thet summer up here, * " Robin Hood," " Leather-stocking," " Rob Roy"— O, I tell you, the critter was queer. And yet ef she- hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way; She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said thet she knew how to play, And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar— 1 which the man doesn't live as kin use. And slippers- you • see 'em down yer—ez would cradle an Injun's papoose. Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastiu r and mopin' away, And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last . ■ had nothing to say; And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book, And it warn't until she left that she gave me ez much ez a look. t ■ And this was the way it was: it was night when I kern up here * . ' To say to 'era &11 "good-bye," for I reckoned to go for deer At "sun-up" the day they left. So I shook 'em all by the hand, 'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they gave ma to understand. But just ez I passed the house next morning at dawn someone, Like a little waver o' mist, got up on the hill with the sun; ' Miss Mabel it was, alone—all wrapped in a mantle * o'lace— ... And she stood there straight in the road, witn a touch o' the sun in her face. And she looked me right in the eye— seen suthin' When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the " Clear Lake shore, • . ~ , And I had my knoe on its neck, and jist was raisin v my knife ' , .... . When it gave m© a look like that, and—well, it got off with its life. "We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good .. , '" . To yon in your own house, Luke— woods and the bright; blue sky ! You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has > found you still As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel-tree Hill. 1 " And we'll always think of you, Luk-J, as the thing we could not take away— . • The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the spray. : " And you'll sometimes think of me, Luke, as you know you once used to say, - A rifle-smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay." And then We shook hands. She turned, hut a . suddent she tottered and fell, • And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her , ,»aminfrr-well, • ' - It was only a minit, you know, that ez cold and ez •• white she lay Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then—well, . she melted away— ; , And was gone- ... And thar are her books; but I says not any for me, Good enough may be for some, but them and I • mightn't agree. . • ': ' They spiled a decent girl ez might har» mp.de some chap a wife: , . ; , » And look at meclar two hundred— never read one in my life. ;\" i * ' ' BbetHabte. ————■■»■■■■■■■■■■«