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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 29, 1896)
'"-- --.w- THE COURIER. cs Il r if.. 2 s THROUGH COLORED GLASSES I Nothing in This World He stopped, and allowed his boot clad, feet to sink ankle deep in the thick oozy mud. From his lips there came a sound that was a half aeob and half a groan. He was tired, so tired, and hungry and wet. He lifted his' head and looked, bout him. Ihe rain was fall ing with a steady noiseless drizzle as it had been falling for days. It encom passed and submerged the landscape with a gray and murky covering of woe. The lonesome country road was a nar row streak of mud extending in a straight black line through the brown and barren fields. Far in the distance a single farm house broke the monotony of the perspective standing solitary and alone, lost in the wilderness of desola tion. A lonesome little clump of trees lay between, their leafless, scrawny branches uplifted in mute supplication to the pitiless grim sky. The thin and haggard face of the wanderer was blanched with a peculiar, deathlike pallor. His lips were drawn tightly in over and against his teeth; his eyes were wild and staring, and in their depths lurked the demon of din- meadow lark sings his greeting to the rising sun, and hears again and again the cool, methodical. "Gentlemen! Are you ready? One, two, three, lire!" He feels, yet does not heed, the tender pressure of the lingers of the woman at his side, hip wife, on his browned and sun-burnt hands. He hears a shriek, 7oicing all the bitter, hopeless agoqy of a mother's broken heart, the .mother who prayed for Jamie, and see? those two, mother and wife, with bowed heads walk slowly and unsteadily away, while he, the hope, the staff, the comfort of their lives, is led to prison. "Tweuty years in solitary confine ment," he, Jamie, had lived them. Twenty years of a living death, with scarcely ihe sight of a human face, hardly the sound ot a human voice. Twenty years of shame, ot remorse, of agony. Twenty years of himself. Him self, before whom rose always and ever the vision of his friend, his wronged and murdered friend, lying cold and still, outraging the fresh clear beauty of the morning; the vision of a loving, girlish pair and gleamed gloatingly out on the figure standing trembling at his side as sky ls the man turned his face up to its he swore to lovo and honor and protect ceaseless drizzle. her; the vision of his mother, kneeling He looked about him once, and again, by her boy's bedside praying. Oh, God! then staggered wearily on . The only praying, for what? sound disturbing the solitude was the And then, to the mu6ic of the Homeric splashing of his boots in the soft, black laughtrr of the gods in Heaven he heard mud; all but the low spoken words, the words, always the words, "Gentle words in a quavering, broken voice, men! are you ready? One, two, three, "God bless you my son, my son,' and fire!" they sounded only in his mind. God How he bad orayed, all those twenty bless him! Had God any blessing for years, prayed for life and freedom, such as he? And the mind of the -"or a chonce to atone. How he dream wanderer traveled back a pace, and he ed of the day u hen he should hasten was a boy once more. back to them who waited and wept, to He saw his boyhood's love. Half grovel at their feet for forgiveness, and within the shadow of their vine clad then to atone by yeors of grief. Oh, the porch, the broken yellow sunbeams agony and hope, the repentence and playingsoftly and tenderly as the smiles high resolve of those twenty years; the of angels about her head she was stand- days and nights and weeks and months ing, the glad and holy light ot amother's f dreadening, numbing pain. For twen love shining in her eyes, waiting to wel- -v years a convict, with a man's long come him, as he came running home lDB and hopes and fears and aspirations, from the village school. Today, he was free, but his brain, his "Oh, mother, mother, mother.mother." heart, was dead. He half started at the sound of his own Fr a week ago, and a day, sobs voice, so straiige it seemed, so harsh and shook the convicts frame, he had sought rough; a voice sadly out of place in them, these two, for forgiveness. A that hallowed scene conjured up in the outcast's mind. Then, once more he knelt with hereby his lowly little cot, his hands clasped lovingly in hers resting on the pure white spread. Again he heafd her pray ing, in her gentle, loving voice for God to make her Jamie a good and noble man, and she knew He would. "Her Jamie, her dead son ;" and she him tenderly on the forehead and left him to dream of great things for him and for her in the days that were to come. Oh, the mockery of it all! How the Fates must have laughed, he thought, and gibberingly pointed their lean and skinny fingers at the pure and faithful woman who prayed with the noble con fidence of belief that God would make her Jamie good and strong. Another scene! As it were yester day, he sees himself standing in all the health and holiness of a pure young manhood, standing bareheaded and bare breasted, in the early morning light, The pistol in his hand is yet smoking, and there, at his feet, the sur geon and seconds bending over him, lies his friend, his friend, dying, innocent. Oh, God; the horror of it all. Then be stands before the bar of just ice, -before the twelve good men and trae. "Prisoner at the bar, are you" "Guilty, your honor, guilty!" His mind k dazed, his sease numbed. He seems still standing oa the green week ago he had knelt by the bedside of her was yet living.'o receive her dying blessing. "God bless you, my son, my son!" Still on and ou the wandering trudged, and the shades of night fell softly as the rain and hid him in her mantling folds. On high the fates, as theyepuo the warp and woof of human destiny laughed their mournful world-old laugh and shook their frowzled heads kissed ?nd B'd: "God make Jamie a good and uuuie man. H. E. NEWBRANCH Is so cheap as a newspaper, whether it be measured by the cost of its production or by it: value to the consumer. We are tdking about an American, metropolitan, daily paper of the first class like THE CHICAGO RECORD. It'ssn cheap and so good you can't afford in this day of progress to be without it. There are other papers possibly as good, but none better, and none just like it. It prints all the red", news of fii world -the news you care for- every day, Gad prints it in the shortest possible space. Yov can read THE CHICAGO RECORD and do a day's work too. . It is an independent paper and gives all political news free from the taint of party bias. In a word -it's a complete, condensed, dean, honest family newspaper, and it has the argest morning circulation in Chicago or the M?t 140,000 to 150,000 a day. Prof. T. J. Hatfield of the Northwestern University says: "THE CHICAGO RECORD comes as near being the ideal daily jour nal as we are for some time likely to find on these mortal shores" Sold by newsdealers everywhere and stf scriptions received by all oostmasters. Address THE CHICAGO RECORD. 1S1 Madison-st. THIS ADVERTISEMENT; Of Course srou. rii. And so Would Every Reader of Lincoln's Only Weekly Paper Who Reads the COURIER? Society Reads It Merchants Read It Wheelmen Read It Lovers of Bjse Ball Read It The Meri Read It The Womei Read It Literary People Read It feawn Tennis Players Read It, flKBcst of all Cough Medicines is Dr. Acker's English Rem edy. It will stop a cough in one night, check a cold in one day, prevent croup, re lieve asthma, and cure con- As a Fact, Everyone Reads It Youin its columns as an Advertiser? 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