Our sweetest love is always sweetest pain,
And yet the recompense—the recompense is there.
The sweet things of life do not lie so much in sight as in the heart that sees them.
Stories of the Soil
The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
TIM’S EASTER.
The first streaks of day were breaking. It looked to the fireman of 496 that the old engine was sticking her nose into the red dawn as she plowed ahead hauling her fast freight South on schedule time. Tim Doogan was at the throttle—an old engineer who stood at the head of the road’s list; for Tim had been in service longer than any of them, had never failed in his duty and for twenty years had never taken a day off except one—to bury his wife.
He had never even asked for a promotion, and when it had been offered—the highest post of the engineer—Tim shook his head and declined.