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Show ...0r Boys and Girls... ED. . ED DY AUNT SUSY. "his department Is conducted solely in the lnter- It cur P,rl anJ boy reaaer- e ''Aunt T?usv 58 F,a to hoar anT t,mo frra th ,s nnd nephews who read this pare, arl to git r'e nu the advice and help In her Dower. H-rlte on cne eide of the paper only. not have letters i too )one 5 ' fh-iclT'l Flories and verses will be gladly receire f J rc'i!v alted- The inanuscripts of contributions not accepted wid ; m returned. 5 Address aH letters t Aunt Busy. IntermoantaJa ASK THE NEXT BOY. Vliat fish has its eyes nearest together? The What rape would a condemned criminal prefer? 1 ;' -Eswi'f- . , i Ic,w many insects does it take to make a land- : iorJf-Ten-ants. Wlicn iocs a groose stand on one leg? When it ftv up the other. ' What state is round of both ends and high in .hemiJ.lk' Ohio. Whi'h is correct: 5 and 6 is 13, or are 13? :' 7;hrr. WJiy is a colt like an egg? Because it has to be lnhh In 'fore it is used. : I,w many bushels of earth can you take out of a hnle that is three feet square and three feet deep? onc. It lias all been taken out. .' If cue man carries a sack of flour and another j rnr.n carries two sacks, who has the heavier load? Xho one that carries the sack of flour. The flour i is heavier than two emptj' sacks. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. Tho heroine of an unwritten chapter in the early ; ife of General Ulyspes S. Grant lives today in Natchitoches, La., a little place that has more than . 0ne claim of distinction. Besides being the oldest town in the United ', States Natchitoches holds in careful keeping I French. Spanish and Indian records that, so far, no poremment historian or exposition commissioner j has been able to prevail upon her to put on public j exhibition. A dislike to shine in the limelight char- ccti'rizt s he reitizens in like manner. ; In 1S40-4G Grant, then a young lieutenant xm- 3,T General Berryman, was stationed at Camp Sa-j Sa-j lnlirity. the frontier fort which guarded the United States citizens in and about Xatchitoche from the Spanish outlaws and the Indians. The "old inhab-S inhab-S itants" recall those days. Xone of them suspected, however, what the future held in store for him. Least of all did pretty Mary Campbell, to whom he surrendered on first sight, have clairvoyant power i to behold him the chief of his nation, with the proud j distinction of being the "first lady of the land" as en offering to his bride. ! Lieutenant Grant thought Ins heart -was broken i vhou Mary Campbell refused to listen to hi9 woo- ing:. Then to prove his indifference to worldly advantage, ad-vantage, she whirled around and married Jeremiah i Sullivan, a carpenter, and settled down to a black-; black-; berry jam cixetence in a cottage, without even a , cook. It is nearly sixty years "during Christmas" since Mary Campbell rejected a future president for a bubble carpenter. Feeling that such a one was eminently emi-nently qualified to give an opinion of "love in a cottape,"' I visited her little home where she had lived for more than half a century with the man of Ler choice. The "J erry Sullivan house" sits on the top of a I flower garden hill, the way from a barbed wire gate leading- straight up to the "citadel" by a patch not unlike the one which WoLfe followed when leading his host to storm Quebec. The similarity did not Ftop there. Strangers are always warned in Xatchitoches I that Mrs. Sullivan keeps a "gun and a dawg" for reporters if they go up to interview' here. "Well, anyway, nobody had ever got close enough to interview inter-view her on the subject of General Grant. , Maybe this was one of her "off" days. She was bonding unsuspiciously over freshly plowed rows in her kitchen garden to one side of the house. A ''slat'' sunbonnet perhaps interfered with her hear-ir.? hear-ir.? a stranger approaching. She was old and wrink- i l-d and bent. She needed somebody to help finish the rows ; she admitted that she had rheumatism in l her shoulders. Friendship under these conditions grows like a I maiipo. Before we tucked the soft earth carefully. . about the last "set" she volunteered the information that ''there dawg over yonder didn't have any tr-eth," hut that "fo'ks thought he was powerful j vicious.'' This led on to the subject of firearms, and ft h next divulged the fact that she had a rusty old i ri'toi, but she was always afraid to load it, and i nothing under heaven would make her pull the trig- f "film was there to be afraid of after this? A woman who has rheumatism and nobody to listen while she tells what she has been taking for it 3s usually willing to pay any price to detain a caller I yh" n sympathetic. Mrs. Jerry Sullivan found Ws. -If b-d into the history of the town. Well, she I r'-ckuiiod she could tell the history of Natchitoches , anyone could! She plunged into a wonderful i Mory of the days when the land was young, when j lavy Crockett was a picturesque figure around the ! f-'aiubling board in the old adobe house across the river. n those days Natchitoches was the outpost c:i the Texas trail. It was the point from which all travelers sot out to San Antonio and the City of : -Mexico. sqe remembered when there were barrels ?"hl in the old gambling house across the river, tnd how the "banker" would let any traveler who '; had gone broke in the game put his hand into the i treasury and draw out as much gold as he needed, Ousting to his honor to return it. At the question, did she know any of the soldiers ln th. old days, Mrs. Sullivan looked up suspicious- h'- It was no time to retreat. Then came the direct ; query: '-Did she know General Grant?" : ''Who's been telling you that old story?" she de- j nand.-d testily. i "There must have been some truth in it to have lived s,, long," I said. I "Well, it isn't at all like they say it was," she r-t- rt.-d. Then you tell me the truth about it," I sug- I pec tod. "That's always the simplest way to go after J fabr. reports." 'I; 'PC apopaled to her, anyway, she remarked I I that "Jerry" wouldn't be home to his dinner for 5 i maybe an hour yet and she was lonesome. f ''Well, you see," seh began, "in the first place, them wasn't any reason in tbem days why anybody I should have wanted to marry the lieutenant. He Wasn't very strong on good looks. I may say he j Was generous. He'd give anything he had to any- ; ""iy that wanted it. I remember how he gave two or three ponies to little boys near by who didn't I have anything to ride on. But he wasn't as popular a some of his brother officers. He was, you might j f".v. just a plain young man." oho was pently led back to her subject, j j "Was a dashing wooer? Well, can't say he was. jlo used to come to my adopted father's house, just ; ' like the other officers did, and he saw me I was i callod pretty in those days," Mrs. Sullivan modestly 1 . added. "He wasn't the only soldier who swore he'd ! ' die with his boots on fore me. Now, don't you be t i ? !i believing all you hear about him being desperate when I told him the truth about my heart. He was a soldier and I never have thought it took him long to recover." 'Why didn't you marry him?" "Because I didn't love him," was the prompt reply, "and I did love Jerry Sullivan." "You might have been mistress of the White House," I said, "if you had married Grant. That's something." "That's nothing," emphatically. "This house belongs to me and Jerry, and if anything was to happen to it he could build us another one." But the White House," I ventured cautiously. ( "Now, I want to tell you right here," she said, 1 wouldn't be bothering with the White Housa Just think of having that whole place to keep clean !" She sighed with relief at being free from such cares. "I reckon I'd have worn out a dozen brooms a week just sweeping out the halls." "Was Jerry rich when you married him ?" "No; he was a carpenter, getting his $2 a day. He's never made more than that since." "He must have been very good looking charming," charm-ing," I suggested. "Yonder he comes now," she replied, pointing to where a bent old man toiled up the hill. "You can see for yourself." Mr. Sullivan was duly presented by his loving wife. His rugged face lighted up with honest pride when his wife told of the houses he had built. There was nothing about him to indicate that he was other than a simple country boy in his youth. Indeed, his wife declared that but for his gray hair, and hi3 bent shoulders and wrinkles, Jerry hadn't changed a mite since the day she married him. "I'm telling about Lieutenant Grant," she explained. ex-plained. "Jerry's always been kinder jealous of him. He don't like me to talk about those old davs " Mr. Sullivan ambled peacefully out toward the kitchen. There was the look in his eyes of the man who hopes you aren't going to interfere with his dinner. Mrs. Sullivan invited me to dine with them. There was an air about the place, however, that gave the impression that there would be a crowd. Where love is, after sixty years' hard wear on the heart, the most skeptical couldn't be a willing party of the third part. "Was that what you wanted me to tell you?" Mrs. Sullivan asked. "You see it really ain't anything. any-thing. All this talk about the lieutenant " "I want you to tell me this," I detained her, while Mr. Sullivan coughed impatiently in the next room. "Have you ever been the least bit sorry that you didn't take General Grant ?" "I never gave him a second thought," she replied, re-plied, "since I told him his ring wouldn't fit the third finger of my left hand." "And love in a cottage has lasted with you " "Look at Jerry," proudly. "Can you wonder? You see I took Jerry because he had such a fine education. Why, Jerry knows everything in the world! He can begin at the Garden of Eden and tell you every blessed thing that has happened since then!" "Then you say," I pursued her," "that it's all for love in your case, and the White House well lost?" "Yes, I say that," she rejoined. It's easy enough to pick up a hero and marry him, but a good husband hus-band is hard to find. And I always knew Jerry was a safe risk." "Mother," Jerry's long suffering voice floated out of the kitchen, "the cabbage is burnin'." And the story is told. Rose MacEea in Baltimore Balti-more Sun. |