Sometime I may need it so,
  Groping somewhere in the night,
It will seem to me as though
  Just a touch, however light,
    Would make all the darkness day,
    And along some sunny way
    Lead me through an April-shower
    Of my tears to this fair hour.

O the present is too sweet
  To go on forever thus! 
Round the corner of the street
  Who can say what waits for us?—­
    Meeting—­greeting, night and day,
    Faring each the selfsame way—­
    Still somewhere the path must end.—­
    Reach your hand to me, my friend!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN

Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me,
Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity,
You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart,
Which was like a healin’ ’intment to the sorrow of my hart.

When I burried my first womern, William Leachman, it was you
Had the only consolation that I could listen to—­
Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from the blow,
And when you said I’d do the same, I knowed you’d ort to know.

But that time I’ll long remember; how I wundered here and thare—­
Through the settin’-room and kitchen, and out in the open air—­
And the snowflakes whirlin’, whirlin’, and the fields a frozen glare,
And the neghbors’ sleds and wagons congergatin’ ev’rywhare.

I turned my eyes to’rds heaven, but the sun was hid away;
I turned my eyes to’rds earth again, but all was cold and gray;
And the clock, like ice a-crackin’, clickt the icy hours in two—­
And my eyes’d never thawed out ef it hadn’t been fer you!

We set thare by the smoke-house—­me and you out thare alone—­
Me a-thinkin’—­you a-talkin’ in a soothin’ undertone—­
You a-talkin’—­me a-thinkin’ of the summers long ago,
And a-writin’ “Marthy—­Marthy” with my finger in the snow!

[Illustration]

William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could then;
And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again,
And I see the tears a-drippin’ from your own eyes, as you say: 
“Be rickonciled and bear it—­we but linger fer a day!”

At the last Old Settlers’ Meetin’ we went j’intly, you and me—­
Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be;
And sence I can remember, from the time we’ve neghbored here,
In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer.

It was better than the meetin’, too, that nine-mile talk we had
Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so bad;
When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on “Shanks’s mare,”
And “blaze” a road fer them behind that had to travel thare.

And now we was a-trottin’ ’long a level gravel pike,
In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like—­
Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind,
A-settin’ in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect peace of mind!