Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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LUKE. 3W ; Harte. | you’re, readinY—a novel? >—well, dern my skin! You ^'WUl Krown and bearded and 'such stuff er that In,— out jrals and their swtethearts! Jfo wonder you’rMhin ei a knife. Look at n^*!—olar two hundred,—and v } nevef .read oat in my life! That^dji* rpluiou o’ novels. And ez tdnueBt fw|r round here. They belougced to the Jed?e'g dauirh ^ A#.-tfU^i.ge who came up last if*n jrtWunt ofRislungsandtheiuoun- l:iinatknd the balsam o’ pine and And tijjhrer.—well, she read f, and that’s what's the mat- j the river is ■ Jjrlth her. Yet shl tollers was sweet onthe Jedge, tfishe stuck by him day and night, Alone'U* the cabin up ye-,—till she j-. gti'W like a ghost, all white. fell, And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit,—well, It was only a minit, you know, that ez cold and ez white she lay Ez a snow-flake here on my breast, and then—well, she melted away— And was gone .... And tharareher books; but I says not any for mo. Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn’t agree. They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife, And look at me!-c’ar two hundred, —aud never read one in my lifel Hunting Aesthetic Lodgings. FJerome K. Jerome ] After you pass Old Windsor, somewhat uninter esting, and does not become it self again until you are nearing Bovency. George and I towed up past the Home Park, which stretches along the right bank from Albert to Victoria Bridge; and as we were passing Datch- Sbc wus o »ly a shp of athing, ezlight t „ 0 u_j ^ f ...o et . George asked me if I remem ahd ea up and away E* rifle-smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn’t my kind,— , . -noway! Speaking o’gale, d’ye mind that house rise the hill, A n#ie and a half from White’s, and trtt above Mattingly's mill? tdc^Well now t/ta/ sagal: What, fusaw her? Oh, come now, thar, quit! £»he was only bedevlin’ you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit. Now she’s wbatt call a gal,—ez pret ty and planip ez a quail; Teeth ez white ez a hound’s and they’d through & tenpenny nail; Eyos that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know “whar I was hid.” She did! Oh, it’s jist like her sass, for she’s peart ez a Katy-did. But what wa* I talking of?—Oh. the Jfdge and hisdau^hter, -she read Novels the whole day long, and I - reckon she read them abed, And sometimes she read them out if jpnd to the Jedge <>a the porch iv where he sat, Anift was how “Lord Augustus” said ad how “Lady Blanch’’ she hat. ckest of all that I heard, MB thet they read 'bout a eking” by name, and a pchock full o’ the greenest a*a 'asked me to hear, but I is Mabel, not any forme; Y kin sling ui> own lies, chap and 1 shouldn’t agree, mehow or other she was always iGl brought her to mind about whom she had read, or in belike of thet kind, And thar warn’t no eud o’ the names . that she give me thet summer up here, rtrin Hood,” "Leather stocking,” “Rob Roy,”—-Oh, I tell you, the critter was queer, d yet ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way. She could jabber in French to her dad, aud they said that she knew how to play, - And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar,—which the man doesn’t live ez kin use, nd slippers—you see ’em down yer —ez would cradle an Injin's pap- poose. Yet along o’ them novels, you see she was wastin' and mopin' away, And then she got shy with her tong ue, and at last she had nothin' to - A^d whenever I happened around, her face It was hid by a book, And it wasn't until she left that she give me ez much ez a look. AM this was the way it was. It was Bight when I kem up here To say to ’em all “good by,” for I recaoued to go for deer “Sun up” the day they left. So 1 shook 'em all round by the hand, Y?ept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand. Rut jlst ez I passed the house next •& morning at dawn, some one. Like a little waver o’ mist, got up on the hill with the sun; Miss Mabel it was, all alone,—wrap ped up in a mantle o’ lace,— And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o’ the sun in her face. And she looked me right in the eye, I’d seen suthin like it before When 1 hunted a wounded doe to the edge o’ the Clear Lake shore, And I had my knee on its neck, and jlst was & raisin' my knife When it give me 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 by To you in your own house, Luke,— these woods, aud 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. “And we’ll always think of you, Luke, 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 Luke, as you know you once used to say, A rifle-smoke blown through the • woo Is, a moment, but never to f ■tay.” And then we shook hsnds. She turn ed, but a suddent she tottered and bered our first trip up the river, and when we landed at Datchet at ten o’clock at night, and wanted to go to bed. I answered that I did remem ber it. It will he some time be fore I forget it. It was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. We were tired and hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchet we took out the hamp er,, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and started off to look for dig gings. We passed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper over the porch: but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for some reason or oth er, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and I said: “Oh, don’t let’s go in there! Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t one with honey suckle over it ” So we went on till we came to another hotel. That was a very nice hotel, too, and it had honeysuckle on it, round at the side; but Harris did not like the look of a man who was leaning against the front door. He said he didn’t look a nice man at all, aud he wore ugly boots: so we went on further. We went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels, and then we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few. He said: “Why, you are coming away from them. You must turn right round and go hack, and then you will come to the Stag.” We said: “Oh, we had been there, and didn’t like it—no honeysuckle over it.” “Well,then,” he said, “there’s the Manor House, just opposite. Have you tried that?” Harris replied that we did not want to go there—didn’t like the looks of a man who was stopping there—Harris did not like the color of his hair, didn’t like his boots, either. “Well, I don’t know what you’ll do, I’m sure,” said our informant; “because they are the only two inns iu the place.” No other inns!” exclaimed Harris. “None,” replied the man, “What on earth are we to do 1 ”’ cried Harris. Then George spoke up. He said Harris and I could get an hotel built for us, if we liked, and have some people made to put in. For his part, he was going back to the Stag. The greatest minds never realize the<r ideals in any mat ter; and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all earth ly desires, and followed George We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the hall. The lindlord came up and said: ‘Good-evening, gentlemen.” ‘Oh, good evening,” said George; “we want three beds, please.” Very sorry, sir,” said the landlord; “but I’m afraid we can’t manage it.” “Oh, well, never mind,” said George, “two will do. Two of us can sleep in one bed, can’t we?” he continued, turning to Harris and me. Harris said, “Oh, yes;” he thought George and I could sleep in one bed very easily. “Very sorry, sir,” again re peated the landlord: “but we really haven’t got a bed vacant in the whole house. In fact, we are putting two, and even three gentlemen in one bed, as it is, This staggered us for a bit. But Harris, who is an olfl, traveler, rose to the occasion and, laughing cheerily, said: “Oh, well, we can’t help it We must rough it. You must give us a shake-down in the billiard-room.” “Very sorry, sir. Th ree gen tlemen sleeping on the billiard table already, and two in the coffee-room. Can’t possibly take you in to*night. We picked up our things, and went over to the Manor House It was a pretty little place said I thought I should like it better than the other house: am Harris said, “Oh, yes,” it would be all right, and we needn’t look at the man with the red hair besides, the poor fellow couldn’ help having red hair. Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it. The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear us talk. The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greeting that : we were the fourteenth party she had turned away within the last hour and a half. As for | our meek suggestions of stables, billiard-room, or coal cellars, she laughed them all to scorn: all these nooks had been snatch ed up long ago. Did she know of any place in the whole village where wo could get shelter for the night? “Well, if we didn’t mind roughing it—she did not recom mend it, mind—but there was a little beer shop half a mile down the Eton road—” We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and the bags, and the coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. The distance seemed more like a mile than half a mile, but we reached the place at last, and rushed, panting, into the bar. The people at the beer shop were rude. They merely laugh ed at us. There were only three beds in the whole house, and they had seven single gentlmen and two married couples sleep, ing there already. A kind- hearted bargeman, however, who happened to be in the tap- room, thought we might try the grocer’s, next door to the Stag, and we went hack. The grocer’s was full. An old woman we met in the shop then xindly took us along with her for a quarter of a milo, to a lady friend of hers, who occasionally let rooms to gentlemen. This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty minutes getting to her lady friend's. She enlivened the journey by describing to us, as we trailed along, the various pains she had in her back. Her lady friend’s room'; were let. From there we were re commended to No. 27. No. 27 was full, and sent us to No. 32, and 32 was full. Then we went back into the highroad, and Harris sat down on the hamper and said he would go no further. Ho said it seemed a quiet spot, and he would like to die there. He re quested George and me to kiss his mother for him, and to tell all his relations that he forgave them and died happy At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy (and I cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel chuld have assumed), with a can of beer in one hand, and in the other something at the end of a string, which he let down on to every flat stone he came across, and then pulled up again, this producing a pe culiarly unattractive sound, suggestive of suffering. We asked this heavenly mes senger (as we discovered him afterward to be) if he knew of any lonely house, whose occu- jants were few and feeble (old adies or paralyzed gentlemen >referred,) who could be easily 1 Tightened into giving up their s for the night to three de sperate men; or, if not this, could he recommend us to an empty pigsty, or a disused lime kiln, or anything of that sort. He did not know of any such >lace—at least, not one handy; jut he said that, if we liked to come with him, his mother had a room to spare, and could put us up for the night. W e fell upon his neck there In the moonlight and blessed rim, and it would have made a very beautiful picture if the boy. himself had not been so overpowered by our emotion as to be unable to sustain himself under it, and sunk to the ground, letting us all down on top of him. Harris was so overcome with joy that he fainted, and had to seize the boy’s beer can and half empty it before he could recover consciousness, and then he started off at a run, and left George and me to bring on the luggage. It wa« a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, and his mother—good soul!— gave us hot bacon for supper, and we ate it all—five pounds— and a jam tart afterward, and two pots of tea, and then we went to bed. There were two beds in the room; one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle bed, and George and I slept in that, and kept in by tying ourselves together with a sheet; and the other was the little boy’s bed, and Harris had that all to himself, and we found him, in the morning, with two feet of bare leg sticking out at the bottom, and George and I used it to hang the towels on while we bathed. We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have, next time we went to Datchet. TO THE THE Farmers housekeepers OF Darlington County and Vicinity: WE HAVE NOT BUILT OUR WAREHOUSE YET, But we take this op portunity to let you know that we are still in the ring for low prices, and that you can buy your GROCERIES COMPANY, whose place of business is at their new warehouse on Russel Street, near the C. S. & N. Depot, offer to the retail trade, as well as to consumers, in original, unbroken packages, FOR SPOT CASH, a full line of choice family groce ries, at the very lowest wholesale prices. Housekeepers are now re minded that they need not send off to buy their usual barrel of sugar or barrel of Hour, and the like, for they can get them just as cheap at their very doors, and save freight. Bicycling is excellent medi cine for a tired brain and dis ordered body. Writers who can afford it ought to ride. All phy sicians recommend it as a means of increasing the capacity for mental labor and imparting new life and energy. And if you ride a bicycle, by all means ride a “Rambler”, in unbroken packa ges from our store on The Public Square, Opposite The Bank of Darlington. Buying for CASH, we can give you prices as low as the lowest. We have on hand a large lot of • FLOUR, • bought before the re cent rise, which we can give you the ben efit of. CALL AM (JET OLR «BEFORE BLUE. MOM, COX: CO. “WOODS*'* '9^ desire to announce to the people of Darlington County in general, and to the ladies in particular, that they are now opening, at their handsome establishment on the east side of the Public Square, a large and varied assortment of Which for STYLE AND PRICES is not to be excelled in this section of South Carolina. Give them a call and examine their beautiful stock before decid ing where you will make youP Spring purchases.