Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/282

 come here and hearn strange things, but none stranger than that, if that wuz music. Why," sez I, "I might have heard it for years and years and never mistrusted what it wuz."

"Well," she said, "it wuz music, and be-a-utiful."

Jest then a young feller come in with a dark, eager, earnest face and sung a love song.

That wuz music. It wuz a song about how a slave loved a Princess, and as you heard it you could almost see the shinin' palm boughs, the splash of the fountain, the white, shinin' walks of the palace, and the beautiful dark-eyed Princess lookin' down from her latticed window listenin' to the words, every one of 'em had a heart throb, a heart ache in it. For he said in the song that he wuz of a race, "Who if they loved must die." Well, they didn't seem to like that very well, but I did, it made my heart ache and beat, with its passion and its power.

And then a modest, refined lookin' woman with her neck and arms covered up considerable, jest as they should be outside of bedrooms, come forward modestly and recited a poem, as pitiful a thing as I ever hearn in my life. About how a great, strong, manly, lovin' heart wuz cheated out of its happiness, its very life, by the vanity and sinfulness of a woman and the villiany of a man, of how he patient bore his sorrow, kneelin' and prayin' for her, and blessin' her for bearin' with him all the time she did, and how for his sake he begged the Lord to forgive her for runnin' off with the other man and leavin' her husband and child. He lived on heart-*broken, but pious and good as they make 'em, loved her all through her life of sin and shame, and then, when the villian deserted her and she wuz dyin' alone, he went to her and held her dyin' head on his bosom, and rared