Page 220 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

That Johnny had made his mine! up— he’d be a pointsman, too.
“ He says when he's big like father, he’ll woiv in the box with you,”
I frowned, for my heart was heavy, and my wife she saw the look ;
Why, bless you, my little Alice could read me like a book.
IVI to Id! her of what, had happened, and I said that T must leave,
For a pointsman's arm ain't trusty when terror harks in his sleeve.

13 ut she cheered me in a minute, and that night, ere we went to sleep,
She made rne give her a promise which T vowed I'd always keep—
It was ever to do my duty. “ Do that and then, come what will,
You’ll have no worry,1' said Alice, if things go well or ill."

Now the very next day the missus had to go to the market town,
Slic’d the Christmas things to see to, and she wanted to buy a gown;
She’d be gone for a spell, for the Parley didn't come back till eight,
And I knew on a Christmas eve, too, tlie trains woidd be extra late.
So she settled to leave rne Johnny, and then she could turn the key—j
For she'd have some parcels to carry, ana the boy would be safe with me
He was five, was our little Johnny, and quiet arid nice and good—
lie was mad to go with father, and I’d often promised he should.
It was noon when the missus started— her train went by my box—
She could see, as she passed my window, her darling’s sunny locks,
I lifted him up to see mother, and he kissed his little hand.
Then sat like a mouse in the corner, and thought it was fairyland.
But somehow I fell a thinking of a scene that would not fade,
Of how I had slept on duty, until I grew afraid;
For tlie thought would weigh upon me, one day 1 might come to lie
In a felon’s cell for the slaughter of those I had doomed to die.
The fit ;.hat had come upon me like a hideous nightmare seemed,
Till I rubbed my eyes and started like a sleeper who has dreamed,
For a time the box had vanished— I’d worked like a mere machine—-
My mind had been on the wander, and I'd neither heard nor seen.
With a start I thought of Johnny, and I turned the boy to seek.
Then I uttered a groan of anguish, for my lips refused to speak;