Fulton Journal

AN OLD LOVE LETTER
BY OSCEOLA.

With age and usage worn;
But still I trace, with eager breath,
Those lines—the same as yore.
"Your darling." and "I'll be at home
Next Sunday eve at nine,"
Are words as plainly visible
As any on the line.
She was at home, but where was I
Two thousand miles away.
Writing
"Pray excuse me.
[I] come that day."

I wrote her a cold, cold letter.
Declaring her false to me;
…That she my name need never lisp,
And me no more she'd see.
On that chap with a black mustache
Her smiles might all be spent,
And although my heart was breaking,
Time, of course, would heal the rent.
Twenty long, long years have passed,
And still I love as ever.
But she within her grave doth lie,
—
Down by the sparkling river.
That fellow with a black mustache
I judged her wrong, you see—
Was her brother just come home
From a trip across the sea.
And so I sit—an old, old man.
—
My form with age is bent—
now.
And read again those words of love,
For time ne'er healed the rent.

Wheeler's Ranche, Iowa,