1896.]
I called on a maiden last night
And suggested a small undertaking;
But she wouldn't consider it right—
She said I was faking.
She called me a flirt, and laughed
Like an innocent child awaking;
She told funny jokes, and chaffed—
While my heart was breaking.
Thus gaily the time she whiled
Until my leave-taking;
Then bade me goodnight, and smiled—
Though my heart was breaking.
But I saw a bright tear in her eye
And she looked so appealing,
That I waited a moment, and—why—
I think my heart's healing.
THE PRIDE OF THE GULCH.
Placer Gulch was a small mining village in one of the wildest
and most mountainous districts of Northwestern Colorado. It is
no longer there, because the disaster which I am about to recount
wiped it entirely out of existence. Its inhabitants were, for the
greater part, rough, hardy miners, all eager in the search for
hidden wealth.
But there were a few women in this small village, lost among
the multitude of peaks, and among them was one tall, lithe and
graceful—a young girl whose pure native beauty might have
caused even some of her more polished Eastern sisters to grow
pale with envy. Her name was Marion Dudleigh, but she was
better known as the " Pride of the Gulch." Yet, although much
complimented on her beauty by these coarse miners in their rough
but honest way, she was too artless to become vain. Indeed, she
seldom seemed to' think of herself at all. Everyone in the little
village remembered how, during the preceding Summer, when
little Tim Downing was taken ill with diphtheria, it was she who
nursed him through sickness back to health, even at the risk of
her own life. And for that simple act of kindness she was beloved
of all who knew her.
On the evening when our story opens she sat at the door of her
father's cabin, listlessly watching the setting sun. A moving
object approaching her up the hill attracted her attention.
The Pride of The Gulch.
HEART'S EASE
T. N. B