Conrad Cemetery

by Barbara Hamilton

I am in Benjamin Conrad's line. Benjamin Conrad, his wife Barbara (Hedrick), sons Jockey and Peter just disappeared after they died. There is no information about where they are buried. There is no information about where Daniel, Benjamin's brother, is buried, either. Since the census shows Daniel living with Benjamin when Benjamin died I feel he is probably buried in the same place. I spent years trying to find where this family is buried. Now I have three stories and with them I'm satisified that I know. I would like to share this information.

Left: "One of the Conrad brothers" sketched by Joseph diss Debarr from the WV. archives and History in Charleston, WV. This would be Benjamin, Daniel or John Conrad, who were among the very first pioneers in this area.

Right: A current map of the Lake Burnsville Recreation Area which was created in the 1970s by damming the the Little Kanawha headwaters. The flooding created the meandering lake out of the system of creeks that had draind this fertile and picturesque area and it changed the landscape beyond casual recognition. Click on this image to enlarge it. Look for the area near the center of the map which is colored a brighter green. If you look closely, and search for the first left prong of water past Tripletts Run, that is the location of where the iron bridge over the Little Kanawha River was located. There was a side road to the left which went toward Fleshers Run and Kanwls Creek which was but a short distance after turning left off the Napier-Burnsville Road.

First, my husband and I went to Bulltown to camp for several years. A historian worked in the museum at the campground and asked older folks questions regarding where Benjamin might have been buried. He finally ask one elderly man who made him promise not to tell me. The old man said Benjamin was buried on goverment property and if they knew it they would move him, but he was out of the water and they didn't need to know where he was. The day he was buried they carried him across the Iron Bridge on the Napier-Burnsville Road and up the side of that hill, having quite a time to get him up there. Since today I would need a boat to get across the water I never suceeded in getting there.

Left: Sons and daughters of Amanda (Riffle) Sands-Grove-Foster. They were 2-great grandchildren of Benjamin Conrad.

Then this story. A man by the name of Hubert Riffle [now-deceased son of Hayward and Addie (Conrad) Riffle, and 4-great grandson of Daniel Conrad. -ed] lived close the Iron Bridge and when he was a young man he was asked to go to top of the hill and cut filth. He returned home telling his mother he found an old cemetery. She replied thats the "Ole Ben Conrad Cem."

A few of the untold number of Conrad descendents in the Oil Creek area: Fibi (Conrad) Skinner (Daniel Conrad's daughter), Robert Lee Mitchell (Benjamin Conrad's 2-great grandson), Juanita (Stutler) Burgett (Daniel Conrad's 4-great granddaughter), Ord Conrad (great-grandson of both Daniel and Benjamin Conrad), Genevieve (Skinner) Heater, (2-great granddaughter of Daniel Conrad), Earse Posey (2-greatgrandson of Daniel Conrad).

Finally, an older man has come to light who worked for the Army Corp of Engineers at Bulltown. He said at one time he knew where "the Benjamins cemetery" was. Go down Long Run and turn right. walk 3-5 miles. He isn't able now and said it was probably so grown up he couldn't find it now. I wonder if one could go down Long Run and find this cem. I wonder if the headstones were marked and if they can be found.

Young Love and a Long Bicycle Ride

By Helen (Hawkins) Losh as Told to David Parmer

There are lots of old adages about first loves or infatuations. “First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.” “We always believe our first love is our last and our last love is our first.” We could go on and on. Well, “love,” to young sixteen year old Helen Hawkins of Dumpling Run, was a long painful bicycle ride, a ride she remembers to this day and now can laugh about, but at the time it wasn’t funny.

All You Need is a Good Horse

In 1936, Helen Hawkins, the youngest daughter of Oscar and Bernice (Mick) Hawkins, lived over a mile up Dumpling Run. At the time the Dumpling Run Road was a hot, bumpy, dusty road in the summer and a thick, gooey mess of a road in the winter. But, like every good farm family with a good horse, roads in summer or winter were no problem, and riding a horse was an effortless way to get around. Helen would often mount the family riding horse “Mary” to go to the store or to visit a friend. Her brother Oscar Junior rode the same horse to visit his Orlando girl friend, Jane Stutler. And, as every horseman or horsewoman will tell you, it is easy to maintain your dignity riding a nice looking horse.

Enter the Sorcerer’s Device: The Bicycle

Bicycles are fine to ride on smooth pavement, and will they fly!! The modern bicycle, with thin tires and gears on the handle bars, is a wonderful way to make the asphalt disappear behind you on a Sunday afternoon. Helen’s oldest sister, Thelma (Hawkins) Fletcher, had left Dumpling Run after graduating from Burnsville High School in 1928, married Chester Fletcher, and moved to Chicago, a city with thousands of bicycles. Ever the one to spoil a younger brother, Thelma decided that her young brother, Oscar Junior, should have a bicycle. Keeping in mind the troublesome Dumpling Run Road, Thelma bought Junior the biggest and most rugged bicycle money could buy—a boy’s bike that is, not a girl’s bike with a sloping center bar to accommodate the dresses that all girls of the 1930s wore.

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Right: Helen's sister Thelma (Hawkins) Fletcher and their brother Junior

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Helen Had Eyes for Denver

At the age of sixteen the thoughts of young girls often turn to love. In the summer of 1936, Helen often cast admiring glances toward Denver Losh, Jr. whenever she might see him. Denver lived at Cogar, over two miles southeast of Burnsville, with his parents, Denver Sr. and Della, and his younger brother Lawrence. In 1936, if a girl took a hankering to talk to a boy, it had to be done in person because there were no telephones on Dumpling Run. Helen, a young lady of independent mind, decided that she would visit Denver Jr., and what a better and unusual way to go than to commandeer her brother’s brand new bicycle.

The Ride of Her Life

It took Helen only a short time to learn to balance herself on her brother’s bicycle. The only trouble was that Helen was but five feet tall and the bicycle seemed as tall as she and almost as heavy. Helen decided that since she could pedal the bicycle and keep it going without crashing it, she had passed the test for her bicycle license. And off she went.

Cogar seemed a short distance by train. With the blink of an eye, the Cogar station was just around the corner from Burnsville. But, that wasn’t quite the way it seemed to the petite Helen as she struggled to push the heavy bicycle up the hill near the mouth of Oil Creek. And the pedals seemed to be farther to the ground than she remembered when she had been learning to balance and ride the two wheeled monster in an upright position. Or, her legs seemed to have shortened. In any event, before she got to the Oil Creek Bridge, the thought occurred to Helen that this simple bicycle trip maybe wasn’t such a good idea after all. However, stubbornly, she continued on.

As Helen pedaled onto the brick street in front of the Charlie Crutchfield house on Main Street in Burnsville, her teeth began to rattle along with the fenders of the monster beneath her seat. It now occurred to her for the first time that brick streets are not very smooth. And it was getting more difficult to pedal that fool bicycle with her dress bunched up on the center bar. In addition, Helen didn’t remember Burnsville being such a large town, from one end to the other. And, it didn’t help matters any when the street ran out of bricks at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Depot and reverted to a dusty, bumpy, rock-based teeth shaker. But, Helen was a trooper and she continued to pedal on.

Dogs like to chase people on bicycles. As if Helen didn’t have enough to worry about, those pesky four-footed creatures became just another problem. And it seemed like there was a dog at every house she passed which either liked to bark at passers-by, or test his mettle in a speed contest against the two-wheeled racer. But Denver would be glad to see her, she was sure, so Helen pedaled on. However, it surely seemed farther to Cogar than what she had thought.

Every passing car raised a cloud of dust which completely enveloped Helen as she strained to keep the ponderous bicycle moving. She should not have bothered to wash her face and put on a clean dress before she started. But, Denver would be glad to see her, dirt and all.

Finally, Helen could see the Losh home as she laboriously cranked the contrary bicycle through the town of Cogar. “The trip will be worth it just to see Denver’s smile,” she thought, despite the soreness she was feeling in the region of her derriere and the thought of having to make the return trip to Dumpling Run.

Something unsettling came over Helen as she neared the Losh home on the blasted bicycle. It was altogether too quiet and there were no familiar faces to greet her. She thought that maybe the family was inside despite fact that the windows were shut on this hot day. Dismounting the unfriendly bicycle and walking with the stride of someone who suffered from hemorrhoids, Helen climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. She knocked to no avail. Could it be possible? No one was at home!!

It wasn’t a happy bicycle ride back to Burnsville and then on to Dumpling Run. But it was a bicycle trip that she would remember, even five years later in 1941 when she exchanged vows of marriage to her beau Denver at the Burnsville Methodist Church. Moreover, Helen (Hawkins) Losh of Narrows, Virginia still remembers the trip of seventy years ago with humor and nostalgia. As for the bicycle – Helen doesn’t know what became of it, and she doesn’t care.

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I Wrestled a Gorilla

These memories by the Rev. Dr. Homer Heater, Jr. are from http://homerheater.com/ Homer grew up in the 1940s on Riffle Run, on Orlando's Rural Route #2. Riffle Run flowed south into the Little Kanawha at about the same place that McCauley Run flows north into Oil Creek. The area that was Riffle Run is now part of Burnsville Lake recreational area.

by Homer Heater

Sundays varied from lazy boredom to slightly interesting. World War II had brought most of the country out of the depression, but, as with so many other things, the message had not gotten to us yet. Money continued to be a scarce item so we had to use our ingenuity to come up with ways to amuse ourselves.
This particular Sunday, we had gotten wind of something going on in Falls Mill, a small town on the River, near, what was to us, an impressive water falls. Just above the falls was a swimming hole complete with cable swing. I do not remember what we had heard, but something prompted us to walk the six miles to see what was going on.

Left: Homer Heater in the 1930s
Right: A gorilla

My brother, John, and I promised Mom we would attend Sunday school, wrapped our swimming trunks in a towel, and started down the dirt road. The E.U.B. Church was a white frame building sitting on Route 5 next to the same little Kanawah River. We sat through the Sunday school hour not a little anxious to be on our way.

Left: Looking east from the lookout at Falls Mill,

1960s.

The Swimming Hole & A Show

A number of kids were already swimming when we got there. Some of them we knew from school, and we were soon enjoying ourselves. The swimming hole happened to be next to a level area used for a public gathering place. While we were swimming, a traveling country western show ­drove on the grounds and began to sell tickets for the afternoon performance. We argued, plausibly enough, that since we were in the area swimming long before the group arrived, we should not have to pay. Our argument was reinforced by the fact that we could not have paid the twenty-five cents anyway.

This postcard is from about the time young Homer took on the gorilla. People still talk about the country music concerts at Falls Mill. Many Grand Ole Opery perfomers performed there.

The Gorilla

That a treat! To be able to swim on a hot day and to enjoy the picking and singing of our favorite songs was enough, but what happened next was too much to believe. Two or three circus wagons were driven into the area, privacy fences were erected around them, and a man began to try to convince the crowd they should see the show. The country western program had concluded, so we all turned excitedly to this new attraction.

The huge posters advertised boxing and wrestling matches between two gorillas and any and all comers. In spite of the offer of one dollar per minute to wrestle with the gorilla, no one would volunteer. The hawker realized it was time to prove how harmless the gorilla was. He began to ask for two young boys to wrestle with the gorilla for a free ticket to the show. I whirled to look for my brother, but he had wandered off into the crowd. I grabbed another boy by the hand and convinced him to join me before others could get up the nerve and beat us to the opportunity.

I held my breath as the lady working with the hawker asked dubiously whether I might be too big. I was eleven and small even for that, but the gorilla had been trained to be gentle only with small fries. The hawker considered me to be small enough, and we entered the cage.

We soon discovered that the gorilla was not going to hurt us, and we began to push him around. We got him to the floor, and the hawker offered us fifty cents each if we could sit on his stomach. This proved to be an easy task, and we each walked out with a free ticket to the show and fifty cents cash.

Encouraged by the friendliness of the gorilla, a man volun­teered to join the fray. He was dressed with a football helmet and a pair of coveralls and ushered into the cage. The gorilla immedi­ately changed his tactics. He would hold to the top bars and swing into the man with both feet, knocking him across the cage.

When the show was over, I found my brother, and we started home. We stopped at the gas station and used part of our newly found wealth to buy a soft drink. If only John had been with me we would have had a dollar between us. It was otherwise a perfect day.

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Note: Another diversion at Falls Mill's recreational area was baseball. Orlando's team played other local teams there. Also, several Orlando boys and men played for Falls Mill, including the Orlando postmaster and lanky first baseman Claud Mick and later John Allman, grandson of the B & O's telegrapher Gav Allman.

Claud Mick is the first player on the left in the back row.

A Hero In the Hedgerows

by David Parmer

Charles Dana "Charlie" Posey hunted raccoons, rabbits, squirrels and deer on Posey Run. He loved to till the soil and see vegetables grow. He watched cowboy movies with his wife, Mildred and played cards, croquet, dominoes, and badminton with his family and friends. He loved to make home-made ice cream, apple butter, and sauces, and to go to the woods for walnuts, hickory nuts and ramps. Charlie is remembered as hard working, optimistic and full of humor. He had a penchant for breaking out in song with the romantic ballad, ‘You Are My Sunshine.” Their son Charles recalls that when the final words of the chorus of “You Are My Sunshine” were still on his father’s lips, his mother would always respond, “Oh, Charlie.”

Right: Charles Dana "Charlie" Posey and Mildred Finley
Left below: brothers Amel, Kenny and Charlie Posey.

Family

Charles Dana Posey saw his first light of day in Clarksburg in the early winter of February 1925. Born to Ezra Posey and Gertrude (Skinner) Butler Posey, he was the youngest of his family which included two brothers, Amel and Kenny, two sisters, Mildred and Mabel, a half brother, Gene Butler, and a half sister, Zella Butler. Ezra and Gertrude had a farm at Posey Run. Ezra farmed some and also worked for the railroad as a cook. Farming was marginal as far as income was concerned and the railroad work was spotty. So, Ezra went to Clarksburg for a while for work and that was where Charles was born. Later, Ezra and Gertrude moved back to Orlando when Ezra's work at Clarksburg ended.

Charles was the maternal grandson of Reverend Alexander Newton “Alley Hoss” Skinner, an early minister of the Reorganized Latter Day Saints Church of Orlando, and Sarah Eliza (Posey) Skinner, daughter of Benjamin and Francena (Robinson) Posey.

Charles Dana Posey's paternal grandparents were William Sanford Posey and Sarah Elizabeth (Riffle) Posey. William, who was known all his life by his middle name, Sanford, was the son of William Patrick Posey and Sarah (Stump) Posey. Sanford and Sarah had six children: Rozina (known as Rosie), Allie, Marshall, Ezra, Carrie, and Patrick. The oldest daughter, Rosie was married briefly to James Lough, but that marriage ended soon after the marriage and Rosie remained single the rest of her life. Rosie would frequently comment with respect to her brief marriage that her former husband "could deceive the very elect."

In 1947, Charles Dana Posey married Mildred Finley and they became parents of three children, Charles, Ronald, and Diana.

Orlando School

During the 1930’s, Charles attended the Orlando School through the eighth grade. A well liked student, Charles became even more esteemed when he was selected as the janitor of the school and had money to spend on candy and pop. In the eighth grade, Charles was a classmate of Junior Hurst, Pauline Bennett, Ruth Mick, Bud Mick, J. C. Foster, Jack Riffle, Claude “Clutch” Riffle, and Kathleen Sharp. Ruth Mick remembers Charles as a quiet, thin, blond-haired boy with a fair complexion. Charles completed the eighth grade in 1941, little knowing that in two short years he would be conscripted into the United States Army.

Uncle Sam Says, “I Want You”

In May 1943, Charles had just turned eighteen by a couple of months and the ever-vigilant draft board sent Charles a congratulatory letter advising him that he had been selected to join the largest army club in the country. After the usual efficient military screening, the army decided that Charles would make an excellent chef and he was sent to sharpen his culinary skills at the bakers’ and cooks’ school at Camp Forrest, Tennessee. In June, 1944, after becoming proficient as an army cook, Charles was sent along with the 329th Infantry Regiment to France. The 329th landed at Normandy on D Day plus 17 (June 23, 1944), and was immediately sent to the front lines to relieve the 101st Airborne Division, south of Carenton, France. In its usual characteristically “fubar” fashion, the 329th told Charles that they had enough cooks and handed him a rifle and bandolier and anointed him an infantryman even though he had been trained to make bread and cook potatoes.

Left: Charlie in uniform

Right: "From Cornrow to Hedgerow" by Keith Rocco, illustrates battle in the Normandy hedgerows.

Seventeen Days in the Hedgerows

Hedgerows were an unsettling scene to infantrymen. Not only did they provide cover for the defending German paratroops and 17th German SS Division, they also limited the use of American tanks and other armored vehicles which usually supported the infantry. The 329th encountered the dreaded hedgerows at the small French town of Culot. The “breast fire formation” used by the 329th to attack the hedgerow defenses made “sitting ducks” of the American infantrymen and the German 88’s, machine guns and mortar fire reaped huge casualties among the mostly teen-aged boys comprising the 329th. Huge losses were incurred each day and miraculously Charles made it through seventeen days before a German mortar exploded behind him, nearly ripping his left hand from his arm and leaving shrapnel throughout his back and arm. His hand dangling from his arm, attached only by skin, Charles was evacuated to the rear to a military hospital, his fighting days over.

Left: Location of the town of Culot where Charlie fought.

Right: Photos from the internet of the time and place where Charlie Posey served.

A Medical Marvel

The thick Posey skin saved Charles from a future as a man with one hand. When he was evaluated at the field hospital, the army surgeons stabilized the dangling left hand and recommended that Charles be sent back to the United States by the next medical ship for further evaluation and treatment. At this stage of the war, public opinion was being jarred by not only the massive casualties and deaths of young American men but also by the thousands of amputees returning to civilian life. The Army Medical Corps had resolved not to take the easy route and amputate but in marginal cases to make the effort to save as many limbs as possible. By August 1944, after a mere two months in Europe, Charles, the erstwhile cook and infantryman, found himself back in the United States at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D. C. where he received the first of numerous surgeries to re-attach his hand and to remove shrapnel. For the next two years at Walter Reed and at the Ashford General Hospital in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Charles became very familiar with surgical procedures and became somewhat of a medical marvel. After nearly two years of surgeries, Charles had recovered some limited use of his left hand. Although his hand was gnarled in appearance and limited in the amount of weight he could lift, twenty-one year old Charles was separated from the service in April 1946 with a certificate of disability to go with his Purple Heart.

Right: The Purple Heart

Left: Charlie's discharge papers

Life as a Civilian

Charles returned to Clarksburg resolved that his war injuries would not control his future life. In his youth, Charles had been a willing worker. When he was still barely school age, Charles had carried water to pipeline workers laying pipe through the country near his Posey Run home. Many a summer day was spent hoeing corn from daylight to dusk for neighboring farmers for twenty–five cents a day. And of course, he was a full-fledged janitor at the Orlando School when he was ten or eleven. So the inconvenience of a crippled hand did not prevent Charles upon his return to civilian life from obtaining employment with the Carnation Milk Company, and later with R. D. Wilson and the Fittro Brothers in Clarksburg as a truck driver. Subsequently, Charles attended machinist school and worked for Goldsmith and Black as a vending machine repairman. Toward the end of his career, Charles was employed by the Clarksburg Park Authority and Harrison County as a maintenance man at the Harrison County Courthouse.

Left: Mildred (Rutherford) and Charlie Posey

Words of Praise from a Son

The Honor Guard crisply cocked their M-1 rifles and fired in unison over the freshly dug grave of their departed comrade in arms. The staccato sound of the honoring discharges echoed throughout the adjacent countryside, barely disturbing the tranquility of the beautiful day. The American flag draping the casket was folded with precision by the aging honor guard veterans and presented to the deceased’s youngest son Ronald. On November 16th, 2009, Charles Dana Posey was lowered into his final resting spot in the Lumberport Lion’s Club Cemetery with full military honors. It was fitting that he died one day after Veteran’s Day 2009 closed its books on another annual remembrance of the heroes of this nation’s battles.

Charles Dana "Charlie" Posey, a son of Oil Creek, gave much to his country. He revered his family, and he made the most of his life. As his father reposed in the casket behind him, his oldest son, Charles, praised his father’s life on earth. Such loving remembrances reveal a beloved father and husband and a time well spent on earth by Charles Dana Posey.

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Note: Many years before Charlie's parents married his mother was widowed with two infants when her husband Thomas Butler was murdered. She had been a teeage when they married, and was still a teen when she was widowed.

A Kid in Winter

These memories of winter by the Rev. Dr. Homer Heater, Jr. are from http://homerheater.com/ Homer grew up in the 1940s on Riffle Run, on Orlando's Rural Route #2. Riffle Run flowed south into the Little Kanawha at about the same place that McCauley Run flows north into Oil Creek. The area that was Riffle Run is now part of Burnsville Lake recreational area.

About winter in the 1930s and '40s, David Parmer says, "Snow had usually blanketed the ground in Orlando by Thanksgiving, if not before. The Arctic chill swept out of the north and settled throughout West Virginia creating a crust of ice on the old snow, and on each new layer of snow which fell. Winters were much more severe then than they are today,"

by Homer Heater, Jr.

Ice Skating

Skating was not a very sophisticated process. We simply ran and slid on our boots. Coming home from school was made much more exciting by slipping and sliding down the creek. Usually nothing happened more serious than wet seats of pants, but once my sister Mary Jean took a serious fall and cut her temple open. It took several stitches, and she wore the scar to her death.

Many efforts were made to make wooden skates with metal run­ners, but as with so many of our makeshift products, they never worked well.

Above Left: Homer Heater Jr. from a school picture at the Riffle Run school.

Above Right: map of the Riffle Run's former location and the locations where the winter photos were taken.
1 former location of Riffle Run,
2 location of the Kilmarnock Farm,
3 where the Three Lick photos were taken,
4 Downtown Orlando.

Right: Homer and his wife Pat in a more recent photo.

Sleigh Riding

Winter sports always included riding down hills on home made wooden sleds. The person who had a manufactured sleigh with steel runners was considered fortunate indeed.

Above the school was a rather steep hill, though not a very long one. The entire recess would be spent dragging the sleds to the top of the hill, then sliding down to the bottom. Again there were seldom any problems, but once Wesley McCauley, on a very long and dangerous hill, slid right through a barb wire fence and broke his leg. That tended to take some of the steam out of the fun!

Left: Sheep on the Kilmarnock farm on Clover Fork in recent years.

Right: Three Lick, as it looks right now, January 2010. This color photo is from Marilyn Posey.

I had seen pictures of toboggans so I decided to make one out of a sheet of metal roofing. I simply cut it to the right length, rolled up the front, and bolted it to the body with a board in between. I tried it on the steepest hill we had, and it would really fly. The only problem was that there was no way to control it. My Dad came home from work for the week, found it, and cut off the front with the axe. I was always puzzled as to why he would do things like that when there was no advantage to be gained by doing it. Anyway my toboggan experiment was over.

Winter Evenings

Mom knew a lot of poetry. She always talked about the Peer­less Speaker, a book she had cherished as a child. During the long winter evenings when Dad worked away and she had all the responsi­bility alone, she used to quote us long poems called “Annie and Willie’s Prayer,” “I’s a Letter Mr. Postman,” and many more I no longer remember. Her stories of growing up in “Wildcat” entertained us by the hour. I later searched out a used copy of the Peerless Speaker and bought it.

Left: Forrest Allman, whose family lived in downtown Orlando, posing with the snow of 1940.

Trapping

Some of the kids farther up the hollow trapped for fur in the wintertime. We dabbled at it, but were never very successful. The Conrad boys caught fox, possum, and an occasional skunk. They got anything from five to twenty-five cents a pelt. The animal had to be skinned, the skin scraped, and stretched over a board. At the end of the season, they would take all their seasoned pelts and sell them to a dealer.

Periodically, someone would catch a skunk in their trap. The awful stench would cling to them like a coat. When they came to school and the warmth of the room began to bring out the skunk smell, the teacher would say, “All right, who has the skunk?” Someone would sheepishly admit to the guilt and would be immediately sent home. It often took two or three days to get rid of the smell. If a skunk sprayed you directly, the only thing you could do was burn the clothes.

Right: another color photo of Three Lick right now (January, 2010), from Marilyn (Cole) Posey.

Here is a poem Homer Heater mentioned above.

Papa's Letter

(I’s a Letter Mr. Postman)

author unknown

I was sitting in my study writing letters when I heard

"Please, dear Mama, Mary told me Mama mustn't be disturbed.

But I's tired of the kitty, want some ozzer fing to do,

Writing letters, is 'ou, Mama? Tan't I wite a letter, too?"

"Not now, darling, Mama's busy, run and play with kitty, now."

"No, no, Mama, me wite letter! Tan, if 'ou will show me how."

I would paint my darling's portrait as his sweet eyes searched my face.

Hair of gold and eyes of azure, form of childish, witching grace.

But the eager face was clouded, as I slowly shook my head,

Till I said, "I'll make a letter of you, darling boy, instead."

So I parted back the tresses from his forehead high and white,

And a stamp in sport I pasted 'mid its waves of golden light.

Then I said, "Now, little letter, go away and bear good news!"

And I smiled as down the staircase clattered loud the little shoes.

Down the street my baby hastened, till he reached the office door.

"I's a letter, Mr. Postman, is there room for any more?

'cause dis letter's goin' to Papa, Papa lives with God, 'ou know,

Mama sent me for a letter, do 'ou fink 'at I tan go?"

But the clerk in wonder answered, "Not today, my little man."

"Den I'll find anozzer office, 'cause I must go if I tan."

Suddenly the crowd was parted, people fled to left, to right,

As a pair of maddened horses at the moment dashed in sight.

No one saw the baby figure -- no one saw the golden hair --

Till a voice of frightened sweetness rang out on the autumn air.

'Twas too late -- a moment only stood the beauteous vision there

Then the little face lay lifeless, covered o'er with golden hair.

Reverently they raised my darling, brushed away the curls of gold,

Saw the stamp upon the forehead, growing now so icy cold.

Not a mark the face disfigured, showing where the hoof had trod --

But the little life was ended; Papa's Letter was with God.