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Show ALONG LIFE'S TRAIL By THOMAS A. CLARK Detui of Men, I iiivertiity of Illinois. (), 1924, Western Newspaper Union.) THE VANISHED POMPS OF YESTERDAY EDWARD, the seventeen-year-old son of my next-door neighbor, was in a state cf mind. He was going to take his "girl'' to a party and was a good deal hvmillated because the family fam-ily did not own a coach or a limousine, and the journey from her house to the scene of the social orgie a distance of four or five blocks would have to be made in an oiwo car. "It's rotten luck to .oe to take a girl that way," he complained to his mother, all sympathetic ss mother's always al-ways are. "I dTin't know what she'll think. All the other fellows have closed Packards or Mormons, and I have to go in an open Bnlck." It was Indeed a cruel fate. It was not thus when I was seventeen. seven-teen. We went In stylo then. I was to take Hattie Barlow to the Fourth of July celebration in Mink Grove. She was a mighty pretty girl, and she was thirteen. It sefms a little young now, as I think it over, but that fact never occurred to me then. I made elaborate preparations for the event. I washed the lumber wagon and swept it out carefully. I made a fresh cushion for the spring seat, and tied a new ribbon on the long buggy whip I carried. I trimmed the manes and tails of the mules I was to drive and brushed and curried tliem until their coats shone like ebony, though I didn't know much about ebony then. We went In the morning so that we could be part of the parade which was headed by the local band and lead by Taylor Bowlett riding a spirited bay horse and wearing a beautiful red sash made of shiny paper muslin. It was some parade! I remember that Hattie wore a white shirtwaist and a bright blue silk skirt that ber aunt had sent her from Boston. Her -hat was white with a band of yellow daisies around It, and as I said, she was mighty pretty. I had two dollars and a half tn spend. We stayed all day and had lunch In the grove, and rode the merry-go-round, and ate ice cream, and popcorn pop-corn balls, and everything; but dinner we ate at the Martin house, the big hotel in town. It was the first time I had ever eaten at a hotel and it cost me twenty-five cents each for the dinner, but there were no tips. We didn't start home until after the fireworks. fire-works. We drove slowly, and the moon was shining and the night birds were calling and, as I think I've said before, she was mighty pretty, and I was very happy amid the splendor of it. But It's all vanished now, though Sir Frederick Fred-erick Hamilton didn't have a thing on us that night 1 |