The Ballad of the Sad Café-6

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    Now some explanation is due for all this behavior. The time has e to speak about love. For Miss Amelia loved Cousin Lymon. So much was clear to everyohey lived in the same house together and were never seen apart. Therefore, acc to Mrs. MacPhail, a warty-nosed old busybody who is tinually moviicks of furniture from one part of the front room to another; acc to her and to certain others, these two were living in sin. If they were related, they were only a cross between first and sed cousins, and even that could in no way be proved. Now, of course, Miss Amelia owerful blunderbuss of a person, more than six feet tall -- and Cousin Lymon a weakly little hunchback reag only to her waist. But so much the better for Mrs. Stumpy MacPhail and her ies, for they and their kind glory in juns which are ill-matched and pitiful. So let them be. The good people thought that if those two had found some satisfa of the flesh between themselves, then it was a matter ing them and God alone. All sensible people agreed in their opinion about this jecture -- and their answer lain, flat top. What sort of thing, then, was this love?

    First of all, love is a joint experieween two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experieo the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two e from different tries. Ofte>..t>beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He es to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only ohing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he ; he must create for himself a whole new inward world -- a world intense and strange, plete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring -- this lover  be man, woman, child, or indeed any humaure on this earth.

    Now, the beloved  also be of any description. The most outlandish people  be the stimulus for love. A man may be a d great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw ireets of Cheehaw oernoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as dearly as anyone else -- but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person  be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, aiful as the poison lilies of the s. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someoender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

    It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience  cause him only pain.

    It has beeioned before that Miss Amelia was once married. And this curious episode might as well be ated for at this point Remember that it all happened long ago, and that it was Miss Amelias only personal tact, before the hunchback came to her, with this phenomenon -- love.

    The town then was the same as it is now, except there were two stores instead of three and the peach trees along the street were more crooked and smaller than they are now. Miss Amelia was een years old at the time, and her father had been dead many months. There was iown at that time a loom-fixer named Marvin Macy. He was the brother of Henry Macy, although to know them you would never guess that those two could be kin. For Marvin Macy was the handsomest man in this region -- being six feet one inch tall, hard-muscled, and with slow gray eyes and curly hair. He was well off, made good wages, and had a gold watch which opened in the back to a picture of a waterfall. From the outward and worldly point of view Marvin Macy was a fortunate fellow; he o bow and scrape to no one and always got just what he wanted. But from a more serious and thoughtful viewpoint Marvin Macy was not a person to be envied, for he was an evil character. His reputation was as bad, if not worse, than that of any young man in the ty. For years, when he was a boy, he had carried about with him the dried and salted ear of a man he had killed in a razht. He had chopped off the tails of squirrels in the pinewoods just to please his fancy, and in his left hip picket he carried forbidden marijuao tempt those who were disced and drawn toward death. Yet in spite of his well-knowation he was the beloved of many females in this region -- and there were at the time several young girls who were -haired and soft-eyed, with tender sweet little buttocks and charmi<s>?99lｉb?</s>ng ways. These gentle young girls he degraded and shamed. Then finally, at the age of twenty-two, this Marvin Macy iss Amelia. That solitary, gangling, queer-eyed girl was the one he longed for. Nor did he want her because of her money, but solely out of love.

    And love ged Marvin Macy. Before the time when he loved Miss Amelia it could be questioned if such a person had within him a heart and soul. Yet there is some explanation for the ugliness of his character, for Marvin Macy had had a hard beginning in this world. He was one of seven unwanted children whose parents could hardly be called parents at all; these parents were wild younguns who liked to fish and roam around the s. Their own children, and there was a new one almost every year, were only a nuisao them. At night when they came home from the mill they would look at the children as though they did not know wherever they had e from. If the children cried they were beaten, and the first thing they learned in this world was to seek the darkest er of the room and try to hide themselves as best they could. They were as thin as little whitehaired ghosts, and they did not speak, not even to each other. Finally, they were abandoned by their parents altogether ao the mercies of the town. It was a hard winter, with the mill closed down almost three months, and much misery everywhere. But this is not a town to let white orphans perish in the road before your eyes. So here is what came about: the eldest child, who was eight years old, walked into Cheehaw and disappeared -- perhaps he took a freight train somewhere a out into the world, nobody knows. Three other children were boarded out amongst the town, bei around from o to another, and as they were delicate they died before Easter time. The last two children were Marvin Mad Henry Macy, and they were taken into a home. There was a good woman iown named Mrs. Mary Hale, and she took Marvin Mad Henry Mad loved them as her own. They were raised in her household and treated well.

    But the hearts of small children are delicate ans. A cruel beginning in this world  twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child  shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. ain, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things. This last is what happeo Henry Macy, who is so opposite to his brother, is the ki alest man in town. He lends his wages to those who are unfortunate, and in the old days he used to care for the children whose parents were at the café on Saturday night. But he is a shy man, and he has the look of one who has a swolle and suffers. Marvin Macy, however, grew to be bold and fearless and cruel. His heart turough as the horns of Satan, and until the time when he loved Miss Amelia he brought to his brother and the good woman who raised him nothing but shame and trouble.

    But love reversed the character of Marvin Macy. For two years he loved Miss Amelia, but he did not declare himself. He would stahe door of her premises, his cap in his hand, his eyes meek and longing and misty gray. He reformed himself pletely. He was good to his brother and foster mother, and he saved his wages and learhrift. Moreover, he reached out tod. No longer did he lie around on the floor of the front porch all day Sunday, singing and playing his guitar; he attended church services and resent at all religious meetings. He learned good manners; he trained himself to rise and give his chair to a lady, and he quit swearing and fighting and using holy names in vain. So for two years he passed through this transformation and improved his character in every way. Then at the end of the two years he went one evening to Miss Amelia, carrying a bunch of s flowers, a sack of chitterlins, and a silver ring -- that night Marvin Macy declared himself.

    And Miss Amelia married him. Later everyone wondered why. Some said it was because she wao get herself some wedding presents. Others believed it came about through the nagging of Miss Amelias great-aunt in Cheehaas a terrible old woman. Anyway, she strode with great steps down the aisle of the church wearing her dead mothers bridal gown, which was of yellow satin and at least twelve ioo short for her. It was a winter afternoon and the clear sun shohrough the ruby windows of the churd put a curious glow on the pair before the altar. As the marriage lines were read Miss <samp></samp>Amelia kept making an odd gesture -- she would rub the palm of her right hand down the side of her satin wedding gown. She was reag for the pocket of her overalls, and being uo find it her face became impatient, bored, and exasperated. At last when the lines were spoken and the marriage prayer was done Miss Amelia hurried out of the churot taking the arm of her husband, but walking at least two paces ahead of him.

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