Show the 0 old ad settler my mv dear san Jua ners I 1 I 1 it was in a little utah town which we shall call Hay center that was the horse and buggy days joe walsh was the glib and handsome clerk and proprietor of the prosperous village store where people laughed themselves sick over his corking jokes while they shelled out their cash over his shoulder joe was a humorist a mimic lie he enjoyed it everybody else enjoyed it with one notable exception that was vas clouse peterson known up and down the valley as pete the way pete was always in travail with his words was suf funny and sufficiently distressing to him even before jo walsh began specializing in mimicking his agonized efforts to make known the simplest and most unimportant thing joe would pretend to be in hard labor with some uri word which when he finally succeeded succeed Ld in getting it out of his mouth would be some fool thing they had not expected and it would convulse them with laughter it was always pete that he was impersonating and the unfortunate became such a notorious joke that he hardly dared to be seen on the street clouse peterson lived alone he wanted a wife but if he had found a girl willing to listen to him or even to look at him his balky tongue would have made him superlatively foolish in trying to tell her he loved her or that he wanted to marry her joe was also exploiting this phase of petes life for his eager customers pete had f lowers flowers around hi little home he had chickens a cow a neat orchard a garden by which he met his living needs he poured out his sorrows to his roses and liis his tulips as he toiled over them breathed it without words to his apple blossoms and he stayed more aar more closely within his own fence as joe made him more and more the object of amused smiles A day came when he could endure it no longer he sold his little home and went away joe had a little daughter angeline angie rigie A an adorable child the pride of her fathers heart hear whether it was because she saw how much people were amused by her fathers stuttering stories and aped him to win favor or whether it was the action of some natural retribution trib ution angle angie had learned to say but a few words when she began to stutter as if her baby tongue had a caught on some terrible snag at t six she was worse an and in her teens she was terrible she mix with n nor or allow herself to be seen by other young people she was morose she hid from all visitors ana and shed many tears joes sallies became less frequent As a stuttering comedian he quit entirely he contemplated his beautiful daughter cursed and blighted with this stubborn embargo which no specialist could relieve then sammy came on the scene by some quirk of events he met the evasive angie and contrived to meet her again he was the first and only boy that had ever got into her love hungry world and his sympathetic attention was sweet relief to her self im imposed p ased solitude she was beautiful he loved her his love was ir her fathers objections notwithstanding sammy spoke with ease but he stuttered mentally and joe thought it a tragedy for angie to think of becoming his wife all the same she became mrs samuel parsons and they became the laughing stock of the valley as much as clouse peterson had been their financial abilities were nil their operations a huge joke but tor for her father they would have had neither food nor shelter the tide of ridicule became more than they could stand and like clouse they moved away from hancen ter joe was no longer a humorist but a pensive old man he hired clerks for his store and a voided avoided the public he mou mourned arned when a report reached his ears that pete had returned a ragged tramp pd and that he had been seen weeping in the evening at the gate of his old home and gazing at what used to be his flowers he could not sleep if pete had returned he must find him before he went on he did find him pete had taken up his abode in a cave above the fields hiding there in the daytime day time lest people should see his retched fetched rags joe found his way to that cave he took the embarrassed hermit in his arms and his once glib tongue was choked at the the root come back clouse he managed to plead ill see that the old is yours again I 1 can get it I 1 want you to have it a cow chickens anything to make what it was with old pete back in in the home he loved somehow no one ever saw him again as something funny people went there to see how he had restored the flowers and everything as it use used d to be joe was there often coq looking icing thoughtfully at the flowers and saying kind words with his arm around old petes shoulders but joe longed to make one more offering of atonement and when at length he got angie and her cammies back to a home ot of their own in Hay center his one regret was that he could not go back along the trail of his life and come forward again without giving givin d sorrow to ta anyone |