92 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



March 



A VIOLET IN HER HAIR. 



A violet in her lovely bair, 

 A rose upon her bosom fair I 



But, oh, licr eyes 

 A lovelitT violet di«olosel 

 Anil her v'wo lips the sweetest rosp 



That's 'neath the pikips. 



A lute beneath her graceful hand 

 Breatb<'>< music forth at her command. 



But Btiil her tongue 

 Far richer music calls to birth 

 Than all the minstrel power on earth 



Can give to song. 



And tlms ?he moves in tender light 

 The purest ray, where all is bright, 



Serene and sweet, 

 And slieds a graceful inflnence round 

 That hallows e'en the very ground 



Beneaih her feet. 



—New York Ledger. 



FIEED AT RANDOM. 



Haxdesty had been called down to the 

 tiTWn of his birth hy the summons of 

 the real estate agent into ■whose hands 

 he had intrusted the care of the proper- 

 ty he had received from his father's es- 

 tate. Estate is a big and general -word 

 and many people use it in a grandilo- 

 quent manner in speaking of a comer 

 lot in a marshy suburb. In Hardesty's 

 case it meant a little better than that, 

 but it "was no vast Anneke Jans tract by 

 any means. 



He had not been in that little town 

 for 17 years — indeed since the days of 

 his school attendance. He recalled how 

 on one summer afternoon he had vault- 

 ed out of a window just ahead of the 

 schoolmaster's hickory, how when wal- 

 loped for it at home he had left the 

 house in auger, and how that night he 

 had boarded a freight train bound Ciu- 

 cinnatiward — and had never gone back. 

 Often he had thought of the old place 

 and when the days of his middle age 

 came they found him wondering and 

 wondering aud dreaming at odd times 

 about Milt Woodard's cooper shop aud 

 the other things — but he did not go 

 back. 



After the death of his father and 

 when he had come into the old family 

 residence he seemed to wonder and 

 dream all the more. Once he had nu^t 

 the fathi r of Doras AJdermau at a quad- 

 rennial scission of, the Methodist confer- 



ence and hail tiilkeu tn Liiji of i>f:ras, 

 who had been a schoolmate, but in gen- 

 eral he had had little communication 

 other than that witnessed in the letters 

 which passed between him.self aud the 

 real estate agent. Now, on this even- 

 ing, 17 years afterward, he truudlcd 

 into town in a sleeper and thought 

 smilingly of the day when he had rolled 

 out on a box car. The agent had writ- 

 ten him to the effect that somebody had 

 offered a famous sum for the old Har- 

 desty homestead, purposing to cut it up 

 into an addition to the city. The agent, 

 a boyhood friend, had suggested that 

 Hardesty come down from Chicago to 

 give personal attention to the matter, 

 for by so doiiig he believed that a few 

 thousand dollars more could be realized. 



Dreaming of the old days, Hardesty 

 left the train at the depot. It was a 

 stone and brick depot, he noticed, and 

 not the little frame structure in which 

 he and Tom Coyne had loafed in the 

 summer of old days. He remembered 

 Tom Coyne very readily, and thought 

 with especial amusement and interest 

 upon the episode of the bumblebees. 

 Before reaching the town he had decided 

 that the very first thing he would do 

 would be to go into the little old wood- 

 en station and examine the walls to see 

 if the initials "D. H.," for David 

 Hardesty, were still there where he had 

 cut them on the wainscoting, to the fury 

 of Johnny Clark, the station agent. He 

 had counted a grciit deal on the pleasure 

 of this investigation, and it annoyed 

 him somewhat to step off the car and 

 into a spick and trig depot of masonry 

 construction. 



After the affront of this evidence of 

 progress and prosperity bad somewhat 

 worn away ho started to walk down 

 the road to the residence of the agent, 

 his old friend. He knew the location of 

 the house, for as a boy he had been able 

 to draw a map of the town, showing ev- 

 ery residence, outhouse, chicken coop 

 and fence. Somehow, however, he found 

 the quest a bit difficult. New streets ap- 

 peared, inviting him to walk down into 

 what had been green fii^lds, but which 

 were now "additions" and "places, " all 

 built up with trimly painted frame 

 houses. 



He found the object of his search at 

 last imd ^\as admitted. His friend, the 

 agent, \\ ho had only partially exnected 



