communication, in sprawling capitals, ran thus:


"PAPS GOT ME AGIN. I HAF TO GO. DAM HIM. DOC TEL
HER TO KEEP MY BOOCKS. GOOD BY. I FED OLE CHARLY. I
FED HIM OTES AND HA AN CORN. HE WONT NEED NO MORE FER
A WEAK. AN BRAND TO. DOC TEL HER GOOD BY."


It was a curious bit of composition--uncouth,
assuredly, and marred, maybe, with an unpardonable
profanity--but it served. In the silence and gloom
of the old stable, the doctor's fingers trembled as
he read, and the good wife's eyes, peering anxiously
above his heaving shoulder, filled and overflowed
with tears.

I wish that it were in the veracious sequence of
this simple history to give this wayward boy back
to the hearts that loved him, and that still in memory
enshrine him with affectionate regard; but the
hapless lad--the little ragged twelve-year-old that
wandered out of nowhere into town, and wandered
into nowhere out again--never returned. Yet we
who knew him in those old days--we who were
children with him, and, in spite of boyish jealousy
and petty bickerings, admired the gallant spirit of
the lad--are continually meeting with reminders of
him; the last instance of which, in my own experience,
I can not refrain from offering here: