Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1905Various
Science
Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1905
Various
Agriculture -- Southern States -- Periodicals; Horses -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
The fireman said nothing, and Tim slowed up No. 496 in the yard. Then
he jumped down and went in to report.
“No. 3 twenty minutes late,” he said, as he came back. “Take keer o’
things till I git back. I’ll not be gone long.”
“You ain’t that there thirsty for a drink this mornin’ are you, Tim?
You don’t drink to speak of, and I never knowed you to leave old 496
befo’.”
Tim said nothing, but climbed up and opened his big box. The fireman
smelt something sweet, and very tenderly Tim took out a longer
pasteboard box.
“Flowers,” said the fireman. “Say, Tim, old man,” he laughed, “I’ve
caught on--it’s a gal.”
“She _was_ a gal,” said Tim, quietly, “and the pretties’ and sweetes’
one that ever hit the soil o’ this wurl. An’ the little boy wa’nt no
fluke.” He brushed at his eyes as he spoke, and left another grimy
smear there.
“I’m a-goin’ over to the little cemetery a bit, Jim--yes, you stay with
496. They’re buried over there. We lived--her an’ the little ’un--we
lived here after we was married. She was allers sweet on Easter, and
for flowers and sech, an’ I love to do this for her an’ the boy. Been
doin’ it twenty year’. We don’t know nothin’, an’ maybe it’s all
so--an’ if anybody’ll rise again it’ll be her--with her faith--for I
tell you, Jim it was as a little child. Yes, they was both my children.”
He was taking the flowers out, lilies and roses and carnations and
cultivated violets, big and blue and beautiful. In his big, grimy,
black hands, and amid the soot and dust of 496 they lay beautified and
glorified, and the sweet odor went through the rough fireman until he
saw pictures of a far-away home.
Silently Tim trudged across the hill to the little cemetery. The
village was asleep, the unkept streets empty, the cold, gray mist hung
low over everything, and finally Tim disappeared in it. But twenty
minutes later, when the sun had risen and 496 was butting through the
gray, her throttles open, the smoke belching from her stack, Tim stood
at his post, a smile lighting up his grimy face, his eyes fixed on two
graves amid pines, far up on the hill upon which shone lilies and
roses and violets.
They thundered past, and the old engineer took off his cap and, turning
to the fireman, said, above the roar of wheels and steam:
“She used to say it this-a-way, Jim--I’ve heard her so often, an’ fer
five years she taught it to the little boy befo’ he left.” He looked
toward the sun rising through the mist, and said slowly:
“_In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, toward the first
day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
sepulchre._
“_And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord
descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door
and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the woman,
Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified. He is
not here for He is risen._”
He shut off steam as he pitched down a steep grade, and then Jim heard
him say:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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