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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (May 21, 1894)
THE HESPERIAN , JOHNNY AND THE DUTCH PIPE. Watertown was smoking, all the way up from the giant red chimneys of Jean and Farwell's iron works down to little Johnny Turner who, at great danger of setting the house a fire, was smoking his father's lighted pipe und?r the bed quilts. And Johnny's father was out of sorts which had been very common to him of late. He could not find his long Dutch pipe, the dearest companion of his life. He had sought everywhere, but in vain. He had cherished, at first, a suspicion way down in his secret heart that Margaret, or the 'Brig," as he in his nautical way sometimes called her, knew where he had put it, but that out of sheer stubbornness she would not tell him. Then gradually he came to think that she had hidden it, because she was jealous of his love for it. When, just a few minutes before, she had gone into the boxy, green and red parlor to gossip with some neighbor woman, as he supposed, about the advisability of hanging geraniums and other house plants by their roots in the collar during winter, or else, whether it were better to cut a little boy's curls at two than to let them grow until he was eight, then he had risen from his humble seat in the corner and had proceeded cau tiously to look for his luckless pipe. In the cupboard, in the bake-box, in the warming oven everywhere he looked, and he even stirred around in the flour-barrel, but it could not be found. He had had just time enough to get set tled in his chair again when he heard the distant approach of the Brig. Ah, but ill fortune awaited herl A storm was brewing. It burst upon her unexpectedly. Margaret entered. Johnny's father arose. He turned, and faced her stern and pale. A groat ado, perhaps you think, over just a hidden pipe? But it was not that alone, oh no. He told her, then, in a voice so cour ageous, so calm, that Margaret stood there staring, how he had married her for love, and because she was so handsome, with such black hair and red, red cheeks, and eyes as blue and innocent as well ho had thought, anyhow, that they would always be as happy as doves, but all had turned out differently. In one way and another she had slighted him, it was no use to mention how. But now his pipe was gone. She had hidden it. The only joy and comfort that he had had she had taken from him. He would never get another, for that would soon be taken from him too. All that she cared for was to talk and talk the whole day long, or take Johnny out for an airing in now kilts. Even little Johnny, when his father took him up and tried to be kind, rewarded him only with kicks and screams. Life had become unbearable. No, ho would not listen. He had long ago made up his mind to leave her. She would get along, doubtless, a good deal better without having him and his dirty old pipe in her way. As fortune would have it the "Good Luck" sailed that afternoon. Ho left the room, slamming the door. Later he entered the kitchen dressed in his old sailor suit and carrying a cloth and leather satchel. He walked up to his silent wife, still standing at the window and look ing far off beyond everything, and gave her a letter. Then he went out through the open door, ,,and took his way down the long, crooked, muddy streets, dark in the mist, to the wharf where he was soon swallowed up in the thicker mist and in the crowd of moving horses, men and boats. All night long in a brig at sea a man lay tossing and dreaming, half asleep and half awake, cf a brig "Margaret" at shore, with black hair and red, red cheeks and eyes as blue and innocent as then he would waken and hear the water dashing. In Watertown a lamp burned all night long in a kitchen window, and a woman sat in an humble seat in the corner waiting for a man in a sailor's suit and carrying a cloth and leather satchel. On the woman's lap lay a long Dutch-pipe and an open letter.
