Two weeks after the accident Dyke told his nurse all about his misfortunes and about his wife leaving him. He said he had nothing to live for and might as well die. The nurse was a romantic soul and set about to win Dyke’s wife back to him. She wrote a long letter, telling her husband’s story of hard luck just as he had told it to her, and begged her to come at once to his bed and give him love and hope and sympathy, so that he would have something to live for.
There never was a happier set of hospital nurses than there was in that particular hospital when Dyke’s wife came to his bed and threw her loving arms around his wasted body and asked him to forgive her for leaving him when his heart was heavy with sorrow from grieving over Bessie’s death.
And then she embraced the nurse who had told Dyke’s story so beautifully and pathetically, and the doctor assured them all that the patient was going to recover rapidly now. He could see signs of health and love of life coming back to the haggard face of the hard-luck showman.
The story was written up by the same romantic nurse and sent to a paper, and the whole town was in sympathy with Dyke Dingleman and his wife. Next day when another big circus came to town the nurse wrote the manager, inclosing Dyke’s story, and advised a benefit exhibition. The city turned out and Dyke’s share of the net profits was $300.
PLAYING WITH HEARTS
He was a cripple, without education or any accomplishments, and it was wrong in Mary Mackey to encourage the boy in falling head over heels in love with her, but she was only a school girl, with a desire for romance and excitement, and Lyndal Mason, with his boyish adoration and loyalty was just what she wanted to make life tolerable. In a way she liked Lyndal, because he was full of romantic and heroic tales of adventure, most of the tales being coined to suit the occasion.
I often wonder why boys, without future prospects or opportunity to make life a success, are always falling seriously in love, with thoughts of matrimony in the near future.
Looking back to my own early boyhood days, I can see myself in love with girls who only laughed at my grotesque aspirations. I never once thought of the responsibilities that go with matrimony. I only knew that there was one girl on earth I could not live without possessing her love. But I did live through it all, after discovering that she did not care a fig for me. I always took consolation by falling in love with some other girl. By the time I was eighteen years old, I had been slighted and jilted so often that I began to realize my worth—or worthlessness, rather.