Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 95

D. C, FEBRUARY 9, My father and I ran up the road till a rig came bouncing ing up that weeping strain, working it inte melody, louder and louder, till it became a rashing, swinging song of triumph and hope. 1 the cornetist teet:ring on the very edge of the platform, almost falling into the audience, plared away like mad. And Smoothface, leaning closer, was saying: “I always tripleiongued that bit. Sorta adds iass, I figure.” He scowled jealously at his uCCessor, But the evangelist gave me no time to con- fider this nice point. He had fixed his eyes a man halfway down the aisle, was stalk- g down toward him, beckoning. The man, nburnt face fiushed even darker, unaccus- omed collar cutting chafed neck, gnarled hands angling, rose, came to meet him, walking slow- v, then more swiftly, then running, to slump n the penitent bench. Hoiy Joe liited hfs hands, cried, “Hallelujgh!” nd the women started to come, in twos and rees, then in a mob, till the penitent benches pcame dotied with them, sitting there, heads bwed, moaning, crying, praying. Amos was gripping the bench with both pnds. His face was strangely pale. That per’s look, that starved look of desirc had bne. In its place was something else, some- ing half satisfaction, half fear. I saw him, and saw Holy Joe again, whirl- g suddenly; eyes glowing, fixed on Amos Cas- t. Saw the man rise, as if against his will, t stumbling, uncertain as he groped his way t into the aisle, as he turned toward the itent bench, like a sleepwalker. hen he vanished in a sea of bent bodies, ved heads, became another bent body, head wed. Then I lost him and Holy Joe's eyes kered over us for an instant, and Smooth- ¢ whispered: ‘Now clope. It's our chance. Easy! Slow!” [But we had to fight our way clear, fight rough peopic who crowded the aisle, secing not, feeling us not, as we thrust with knee d elbow. Smoothface, my father and my- f. Behind us Holy Joe the evangelist had punted to thc platform again, was praying. lhind us the cornet was singing softly. Past these people came, almost over us, crowding ward. 'Look sharp.” My father stalked toward road. “Miles beiween us and here is good es was strangely pale, as if Holy Joe had te him too, zs if he broke chains reluctently this escape. Yet as we neared the road he te into o run and leaped the fence. en turning, paused. For Smoothface was longer with us. But beside the great tent hes moved «nd, for a moment, we glimpsed short figure as he struck deeper into the i And we knew we would call for him yain. Poor Smoothface. Whatever the out- pe he would not leave here alone. Pariners? kt <till meant as much to him as ever. boys around the horses raised a shout. My father and I ran up the read, till a came bouncing out of tho meadow v hcre after us. Qs the tent stood and turned our way. But by then the woods were solid on either hand and, climbing a fence, we hid. In those woods we remained till it was dark, lying quiet, listening as, one by one, the demo= crats and buggies rattled by, listening for pur- suers who came not. Hid, as somewhere back younder Smoothface was hiding, Smoothface, who seeing the wheels go round, must remain to remove the mainspring. For that I guessed, was still his purpose. And I wished him luck in it. Darkness came at last. We took the road. Alead lay Baldhead, where Yarb Doctor lived, chained down by plants. Ahead lay the answer to a question I now could guess. For though my tall father. had been silent through the twilight hours of waiting, I had sensed with- out words what, perhaps, mere words could not have told me. Through the darkness, then, we went, silent still, till the road curved and a trail climbed away through trees. Up and up this trail, till lights gleamed from scattered farms below, and the stars seemed nearer. Up and up, till at last our feet tramped growth that crowded the path and sweet odors came up from the ground in waves. Till ahead a square of radiance showed beneath the two trees that bent grandly to form a lofty arch, black against the blacker starry sky. And, “Here's Yarb Doctor's,” said my father, paus- ing as if to gain his breath, looking back over the dark, wide sweep of country. “Here's answers, all we'll need,” said my father, *“unless Yarb Doctor's changed and won't talk. And, oh, Jamie lad—" He gripped my shoulder, swung me about till I faced him, though I scarce could know what his lips were working. Small need, I say, of words between us now. I had guessed, now guessed again, the question he had brought this weary way. Back went memory to my farm home, to my father facing my landbound uncle who would have had me stay, saying: “You ha' showed him your world. Now, I'll show him a bit o’ mine.” And he had showed me, all this year. We had ranged far. And, at iast, with wonders behind me seen, still other promised wonders shead, I had faltered, had failed him. I had envied ether ordinary folk who lived behind fences, on whom the law smiled. Anca he—he had s:en—or guessed. “Fair is fuir,” a saying cf his, was yet more than a say- ing. It was a creed. Up heore Yarb Doctor lived. Yarb Doctor had the gift of tonguss. Yarb Doctor knew the roand, yet had left it., My father would ask his queastion and Yarb Doctor would answer; and when this was done, perhaps I might judge be- twecn them. Two roads ahead—and I to choose, = Fair is fair—and since w2 left the jungle by the motor camp my fath<r had been more than fair, had made no mention of Chi or California, had painted no glowing picture of lands we were to have seen. Fair je faiv—und he hnd been more than fair, brushing in, cne after the other, the drab colors of the cpen road. Not blindly would I choosc. On that point he was determined. I could imagine, now, thc question. “Here’s my kid,” my father would say. “Here’s my kid, Yarb Doctor. He ain’'t easy in his mind. He locks qucer at folks chained down. He sorta hones for over the fence. “Here’'s my kid. He liked New Orleans. We had grand days in Kansas. In that loggin’ camp he showcd h: was a man. Men enjoys the open road, Yarb Doctor. ““Here’s my kid, and here's you, Yarb Dactor. You that's scttled down after knowin’ the road. What's he to do? It's thus and so, thus and so. The roads fork here and may nevar fork again for him, Yarb Doctor, an’ you been down both roads, you have.” And Yarb Doctor would answer. Well, what would he answer, that cld man who knew all things? Time would tell. The cottaze loomed up ahead, black, with brightness in the window. The path circled around it to the door. But at the window my father paused and looked in. Then stiffened, reach>d gropingly for me, drew me2 up beside him. till I, too, could sce. YARB DOCTOR lay on his bunk. Oid, gray of beard, face ruddy, as in health, eyes closed. Yet on his fac> the look of one who sees at last as he has n-ver secn before. Yarb Doctor lay in state with a lamp on either side and a clean fresh slip on his soiled pillow. Ghosts hanging from the rafters, or they lookad like ghosts; were, indeed, but bunches of dried herbs. Shadows in the corners, and, on the table, Yarb Doctor's spartan kit of tinware, polished bright. Stove, cold, as Yarb Doctor was, “I reckon—I reckon he can't never tell us that answer—him that's found one for him- s2lf,” whispered my father, and gripped me tighter. The shadows in the far corner split—some- thing white, a young girl, came out into the middle of the room, stood looking down on Yarb Doctor. “I reckon it’s no use stayin’,” said my father, “and yet—and yet—they'll bury him by the church, bclike, unless—" He hesitated. Then led the way to the door and knocked. The young girl said, simply, that her name " was Felicity, that her father lived yonder across the hill, nor told us Yarb Doctor was dead. Merely that she had “done for him” of late. We buried him, at dawn, in his own wild gar- den. He had made it, that garden, imprisoning wild things in orderly captivity. “Now he was gone and the wilderness would close over it all again—would close over ‘him. The fence he had crossed would vanish and he would sleep on and on, not with the army of orderly dead beside the white valley church, but here as one of ours should sleep, gaunt trees above him, wild things growing on him, as the years passed. ‘We buried him while the dew lay heavy, then stood facing each other as the sun rose higher. The girl, Felicity, crying softly, watched us. She had come back from her home across the hill to be with us at this moment. She had told nobody that Yarb Doctor was gone. My father had given her reasons for her silence. 13 = Now she watched us. If her pereeptions were acute she must have known that Yarb Doctor's burial did not end matters, that something else remained to be settled. *You see, Jamie lad, 'tis trail's end for him, Yarb Doctor. 'Tis, belike, end of one trail for ycu. If you so choose.” And he led the way to a bald knob of granite that thrust out through the trees. “Her2's fences to climb, if y¢ must, while we may.” B‘.:TLOW lay the valley, and, beyond, gently rising slopes and ordered farms. Far off a red barn bulked aimost black in the morning shadow, a barn I knew. It was but a mile from the farm I had called home. Below, a dusty road and two tiny figures moving furtively, one tinier than the other: figures that paused now and then to look back as they came nearer and nearer, till they were almost below us. Horse and rig behind them and a man who drove with whip plying. A man we recognized and, recognizing, could guess who those others wers, though they now lay cowering in the bush. “He waited. Smoothface waited—for his partner,” said my father, He was silent, though speach struggled for utterance, though there was much yet to say. Smoothfac: had braved arrest, had lurked back there in danger, and in the end had triumphed. Holy Joc was on th2 road again, The rig clattered by, and we could see Amos Casset clearly now below us as ho whipped his hoise on. Round a curve, gone—and the bushes below us crackling as those two came out, Smoothface and the Evangelist, Holy Joe, to- . gether again, and somcthing that glittered in the morning sun, something bright that Smoothface fondled for a moment, as they stoed together on the road, then hid beneath :lis.]eont as, together, they took th> mountain rail, The red barn was bright red now as the shadows shrank before the morning sun. Be- yond, a farm waited for me, mine at a word if I went home to claim it. And below footsteps sounded on the trail. Smoothface and Holy Joe, coming up the path, bound over the hill, partners once more., The girl Felicity took two little steps forward, eyes on me, lips opening, then closing in silence. ¥ My father stirred uneasily and, turning, faced the hillcrest above. And I I was young. And here I stood on a mountain looking over a.world that might, in part, be mine, an crd:rly world where order- Iy people were now stirring—looking, wondering, and choosing. For choose I must. Now, Smoothface leading, the pair were al- most on us. My father's face broke into a ° smile, though his voice showed strain as he said: “He's nabbed the cornet. He's nabbed the music as well as the Gospeler. He's on the road equipped complete, Jamie lad—and that's a partner, a partner!” The girl Felicity, as if guessing my dilemma, voiced a local proverb, “Going’s the starting of coming,” said she, and watched those two come up the hill to join us. Then T, too, knew that four of us would take the mountain trail, (Copyright, 1930.) When Lincoln W as Twenty-One. Continued from Eleventh Page grieving sorely, blamed her husband for neg- lect. A kind of feud between him and the whole Grigsby family grew out of this. Abe “laid for” the Grigsbys from then on. When Reuben and Charles Grigsby were married in the Spring of 1829, Abe was not* invited to the double wedding. BUT he contrived a practical joke on the bride-couples that made him famous around Pigeon Creek. With the help of a con- federate he arranged a “mistaken” exchange of rooms for the bridegrooms on the wedding night. Reuben, in the dark, found the bride of Charles waiting for him, and vice versa. The whole settlement roared’ with the rough fun of it. ‘Then, to spread the news, Abe wrote a bal- lad celebrating the event. It went the rounds; every one knew it by heart and had the laugh on the Grigsby boys. Abe followed this with another ballad about still another Grigsby, whom he made the butt of some pretty broad jesting. Abe was more than ever a local hero after all this. But in the end there had to be a fist fight to settle the matter. This is the only record during the whole life of Lincoin of his holding a grudge against any one. " And to Abe, remembering his beloved sister, it was a just grudge. But it was char- acteristic that he worked the grudge out in a Jjoke. » Men liked him, women loved him, dogs adored him. He was always picking up stray dogs, saving them, feeding them and giving them odd names. One was Oppur, short for Opportunity. Oppur was a decrepit, mangy “critter” that Abe had saved from being shot, because, as he said, “he looks something like the way I feel sometimes.” Honey was an- other of his dogs. Honey was at Abe’s birth- day party and went on the trip into Ilinois with him. 'I‘HE story of how Abe saved Honey's life on that trip is as good as any to Hllustrate the kindly nature cf this 2I-year-old giant ef ithe kackwends. The comigrants were fordini an icy stream, and the dog was left floundesing behind. Against every protest Lincoln took off his shoes, waded back through the freezing water and carried the shivering pet to safety. The dog, as Lincoln himself related afterward, gave “frantic leaps of joy” when on solid ground again. That night of his twenty-first birthday, when he went alone to the hillside graves of his mother and sister, Honey, the dog, was very likely at his heels. There was love in Abe’'s heart—Ilove, above all, for lonely and helpless creatures. Out in the world that lay before him a whole race of lowly and lonely creatures waited for him. He had seen them in chains on that trip down the Mississippi. They had touched his heart. HE had seen America, too, on that memorable 3 journey. He had passed through the great artery of America. State after State of the Union had reached to him and touched him— Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas Territory, Mississippi, Louisiana. He knew what the Union meant. o And out in the widespread reaches of tha Union of States, with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” guaranteed by the Con- stitution, there ought to, there surely must, be a place for a man like him to win his way! That's how he felt at 21. (Copyright, 1930.) Fish Ruled Out of Meat Class. IP any one has any doubts as to whether or not fish is meat, Uncle Sam has officially proclaimed fish not to be meat. To make it emphatic, the declaration goes even farther and specifies that to sell fish as meat is illegal and contrary to the pure food and drug acts. The controversy all came about over the preparation of meat meal for stock feeding, in which fish was employed to some extent. Some stock raisers prefer pure meat meal and others prefer fish. The Federal Government says that the raisers shall know which it is they pur- chase, and has issued warning that no fish will be permiited ia the mcat meals. ..