Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 1895)
THE HESPERIAN ho seemed like a gamin grown up and grown old in the trade. His face was thin and wrinkled and scarred. His eyes one could hardly see for the straggling gray hair that hung over them. His hand skook, and he walked as if it hurt him. Ho did not sing out gayly like the little follows. He just crept up to you quietly and timidly and handed a paper towards you, and if you thrust it aside it seemed to hurt his feelings 'as if ho wore a child. I wondered if he had a mother somewhere to patch his clothes so 111. In a quaint old street of a quaint old town, I viewed from a car window ono morning just before sunrise, there stands a very little house all overgrown with vines and hidden by bushes. In front of the house is a big 'sign board. It is almost as largo as the house. But all that it has to say is "Ru dolph Fishor." Now, who is this Rudolph Fisher that ho should advertise himsolf in such a manner? Is he a smuggler of whis key for he lives in Iowa a judge, or mayor of tho town? Is ho a butcher, a bakor, or a candlo-stick maker? Is ho a young man, working hard for a living, or is ho gray, and living in poaco and plenty? Tho picture that camo to mo when I saw that "Rudolph Fishor " was that of a littlo old man making shoos. I thought that ho camo from a hind across tho soa, and that ho lived alono and spoko English vory quainly when ho spoko at all, and that ho ato vory littlo and worked vory hard, often by a tallow-candle far into tho night and that lie had a strong box undor his floor. IV. Sho is a littlo gray-hairod woman who comes to church ovory Sunday with hor son. Sho is not vory old. Hor chooks are rosy and hor oyos sparkle behind hor glassos. Hor widow's dross does not seem to tfuit hor, sho looks so bright and happy and con tented. But then sho tolls mo sho is so. Sho lias hor son loft, and ho is so good to hor. Her husband, when he died, told John to be good to his mother and John promised as ho knelt by tho bed. And John is really vory good to her sho Bays. Is ho not hand some and tall and straight? Ho looks so like his fathor and he is so like him too and will bo such a good man. Sho is glad James died before thoy grow so poor and lost thoir money, and before John's health failed so he could not work all tho time. But sho is contented, sho says, John will got better soon. There is nothing olso on oarth so sublime, so tender, so tragic, sometimes as a mother's faith in hor son. It is far greater than a man's faith in God. And when I look at the littlo widow in church and see how proudly sho looks at hor son, I forget to liston to tho proachor and tho choir. For I know and evoryono knows that the young man staggered homo drunk last night and tho night bofore, and that somotimos it is much worso than that B. In the Orchard. The breezes through the orchard blow cooling and sweet ; The mellowing apples fall So softly they scarce make the daisies nod, Asleep by the old stone wall. "Beyond in the cornfield a rustic is heard, As proudly the tall stalks bend Their tassel-crowned heads as the wind passes o'er, And all their low whispering blend. The shadow-nets lie on the long orchard 'grass; Above is the leaf-flecked sky; And gauzy-winged flics in the sunshine nnd'fihadc Are hov'ring and glancing by. A mourning dove coos from the neighboring wood. My book has lost charm for 'me, And only the ipoem of nature "I read, As I sit in 'the apple 'tree. 'M'a'ude Atkinson.