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THE COURIER.
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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
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