THE relation on Maggie’s side is dead. Some said of heart failure, others said of a broken heart caused by disappointed ambition.
Yes, somebody else got higher than he wuz, and he fit too hard. Goin’ round electioneerin’, makin’ speeches by night, travellin’ by day, pullin’ wires here and pullin’ wires there, bamboozlin’ this man, hirin’ that man, bribin’ the other man, and talkin’, talkin’, talkin’ to every one on ’em. Climbin’ hard every minute to get up the high mount of his ambition, slippin’ back agin anon, or oftener, and mad and bitter all the time to see his hated rival a gettin’ nearer the prize than he wuz.
No wonder his heart failed. I should have thought it would.
So little Raymond Fairfax Coleman wuz left a orphan. And in his father’s will, made jest after that visit to my son Thomas Jefferson, he left directions that Raymond should live with his Cousin Maggie and her husband till he wuz old enough to be sent to college, and Thomas J. wuz to be his gardeen, with a big, handsome salary for takin’ care of him.
There wuzn’t nuthin’ little and clost about the relation on Maggie’s side, and as near as I could make out from what I hearn he kep’ his promise to me. And I respected him for that and for some other things about him. And we all loved little Raymond; and though he mourned his Pa, that child had a happier home than he ever had, in my opinion.
And I believe he will grow up a good, noble man—mebby in answer to the prayers of sweet Kate Fairfax, his pretty young mother.
She wuz a Christian, I have been told, in full communion with the Episcopal Church. And though the ministers in that meetin’ house wear longer clothes than ourn duz, and fur lighter colored ones, and though they chant considerable and get up and down more’n I see any need of, specially when I am stiff with rheumatiz, still I believe they are a religious sect, and I respect ’em.
Wall, little Raymond looked like a different creeter before he had been with us a month. We made him stay out-doors all we could; he had a little garden of his own that he took care of, and Thomas J. got him a little pony. And he cantered out on’t every pleasant day, sometimes with Boy in front of him—he thinks his eyes of Boy. And before long his little pale cheeks begun to fill out and grow rosy, and his dull eyes to have some light in ’em.
“MAKIN’ SPEECHES.”