Prairie Gold Part 23

Leave, ah, leave me not alone.

Still support and comfort me.

All my trust on Thee is staid.

All my help from Thee I bring.

Cover my defenseless head With the shadow of Thy wing."

The wives are all crying quietly. Rosie and Bett are sobbing with the wild abandon that such natures know. Tears are falling upon the idle hands at the card table. The men at the bar are strangely quiet.

_Man at the Faro Table (lifting himself up on his elbow)._ I ushe s.h.i.+ng--I ushe s.h.i.+ng zhat--I ushe s.h.i.+ng Jeshus--Jeshus--I ushe s.h.i.+ng--(_He drops his head over on the table and weeps drunkenly._)

_Little Child (pulling at her mother's shoulders and whining peevishly)._ Who is Jesus, mamma? Do we know Jesus? (_Happily._) Will he cover my head with a pretty birdie's wing? (_The mother shakes with sobs and the child speaks more caressingly._) Don't cry, mother. I like my hat with the posies on it. You can have the feathers, nice, good mamma. Don't cry.

_Murphy (absently, looking at the minister)._ They sang that at the funeral. Sally didn't have no call to hide anything. She was that white and pure. I always felt her slippin'--slippin' away. She worried so them last days because of the little kid. "Take him back home, Murph," she kept sayin'. "A little child has got to have some raisin'.

A kid has got to go to Sunday school, Tim, dear, and there ain't never no meetin's in G.o.d's Back Yard."

_Man at the Bar (dejectedly, going over to the door)._ It's all right for the young-uns, but when a man has got a thirst and is down on his luck, I don't allow that G.o.d is going to help much. You got to get 'em young, parson, and keep 'em headed straight. It's h.e.l.l turning back. I tried it, and I couldn't make it go.

_Minister (gently, as if speaking to someone very near)._ Oh, Jesus, lover of all these misguided souls, come down to this little room to-night, for it is dark here, and, Oh, so cold and dreary. Speak to them, Jesus, as you did to me. Let them see the glory of Thy face.

Will someone pray?

_Murphy (looking across at the loafers and speaking half as an invitation, half as a command)._ Are you staying, boys?

_One of the Men (doggedly, as they look at one another sheepishly and no one moves to go)._ Ain't we always stayin' till closin' time?

_Murphy (warmly)._ You sure do, boys. (_He buries his head in his crossed arms over the music-box._) It's your lead, parson.

The Wild Crab Apple

_By Julia Ellen Rogers_

The wild, sweet-scented crab apple! The bare mention of its name is enough to make the heart leap up, though spring be months away, and barriers of brick hem us in. In the corner of the back pasture stands a clump of these trees, huddled together like cattle. Their flat, matted tops reach out sidewise until the stubby limbs of neighboring trees meet. It would not occur to anyone to call them handsome trees.

But wait! The twigs silver over with young foliage, then coral buds appear, thickly sprinkling the green leaves. Now all their asperity is softened, and a great burst of rose-colored bloom overspreads the treetops and fills the air with perfume. It is not mere sweetness, but an exquisite, spicy, stimulating fragrance that belongs only to wild crab-apple flowers. Linnaeus probably never saw more than a dried specimen, but he named this tree most worthily, _coronaria_, "fit for crowns and garlands."

Break off an armful of these blossoming twigs and take them home. They will never be missed. Be thankful that your friends in distant parts of the country may share your pleasure, for though this particular species does not cover the whole United States, yet there is a wild crab apple for each region.

In the fall the tree is covered with hard little yellow apples. They have a delightful fragrance, but they are neither sweet nor mellow.

Take a few home and make them into jelly. Then you will understand why the early settlers gathered them for winter use. The jelly has a wild tang in it, an indescribable piquancy of flavor as different from common apple jelly as the flowers are in their way more charming than ordinary appleblossoms. It is the rare gamy taste of a primitive apple.

Well-meaning horticulturists have tried what they could do toward domesticating this _Malus coronaria_. The effort has not been a success. The fruit remains acerb and hard; the tree declines to be "ameliorated" for the good of mankind. Isn't it, after all, a gratuitous office? Do we not need our wild crab apple just as it is, as much as we need more kinds of orchard trees? How spirited and fine is its resistance! It seems as if this wayward beauty of our woodside thickets considered that the best way to serve mankind was to keep inviolate those charms that set it apart from other trees and make its remotest haunt the Mecca of eager pilgrims every spring.

The wild crab apple is not a tree to plant by itself in park or garden. Plant it in companies on the edge of woods, or in obscure and ugly fence corners, where there is a background, or where, at least, each tree can lose its individuality in the ma.s.s. Now, go away and let them alone. They do not need mulching nor pruning. Let them gang their ain gait, and in a few years you will have a crab-apple thicket. You will also have succeeded in bringing home with these trees something of the spirit of the wild woods where you found them.

--From _The Tree Book_.

A Ballad of the Corn

_By S. H. M. Byers_

Oh, the undulating prairies, And the fields of yellow corn, Like a million soldiers waiting for the fray.

Oh, the rustling of the corn leaves Like a distant fairy's horn And the notes the fairy bugles seem to play.

"We have risen from the bosom Of the beauteous mother earth, Where the farmer plowed his furrow straight and long.

There was gladness and rejoicing When the summer gave us birth, In the tumult and the dancing and the song.

"When the sumach turns to scarlet, And the vines along the lane Are garmented in autumn's golden wine-- Then the land shall smile for plenty, And the toiler for his pain, When the soldiers of our army stand in line.

"With our s.h.i.+ning blades before us, And our banners flaming far, Want and hunger shall be slain forevermore.

And the cornfield's lord of plenty In his golden-covered car Then shall stop at every happy toiler's door."

Oh, the suns.h.i.+ne and the beauty On the fields of ripened corn, And the wigwams and the corn-rows where they stand.

In the lanes I hear the music Of the faintly blowing horn And the blessed Indian summer's on the land.

The Children's Blessing

_By Virginia Roderick_

On the slope of a hill, beneath silvery olives, a group was gathered about the young stranger. He had entered the village only that morning, seeking the companions.h.i.+p of such Nazarenes as might be there. And they had brought him out here in the open to receive his message. But though he carried them greetings, and news from the distant groups of the Christ's followers, it was plain that he had not been sent to them on a mission.

They waited until he should be ready to explain his quest.

"You did not see Him, then?"

Into the young man's eyes there came a great, yearning sadness. "No,"

he answered. "But you," he asked eagerly, "did none of you see Him?"

They shook their heads, all of them.

"We were too far away," one murmured.

"But I had for spiritual father one who had seen Him," the traveler offered, his face lighting. "You know how He blessed a company of little children? How He put His hands upon them?" He paused and they nodded silently. "My teacher was one of those children," he said, his dark eyes aglow with reverent pride.

A quick glance flashed about the group; but no one spoke and the traveler went on, the radiance of his face blotted out again in sadness. "It is because he is gone that I am a wanderer now. I was always with him, and we went about together, preaching the Kingdom. It was all so clear to my teacher because he had seen Him. He told me of His wonderful look."

They fell silent, brooding and thoughtful.

Then one asked: "What was it like--the blessing He gave your teacher?

Did he gain goods and store?"