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Pretty Ann, and Joe, the hostler, one day chance to meet. Strong is Joe, and simple, and Ann is shy and sweet. As man and maid have done before, they love, and marry, too. And live happy ever after? Ah, this tale is new to you! Yes, the tale is drear, prosaic; and so poetry won't do. A baby boy comes to bless the union. Joe is working in the stables when they tell him of his joy: his heart is gay and happy, and he tells the horses so. Then, it might be the angels were jealous of such mortal happiness; it might be the devil, seeing the stage so set, entered to play the leading role. The tempter comes to the woman. He is a gentleman, suave, polished, charming, a man of manners; and Ann, knowing not the manners of men, hears and heeds and falls as the angels fall from heaven, another Eve heeding the serpent's call, facing a morn of desired delight, and the twilight of despair. One night Joe comes home with a happy cry of \"Wife!\" But the only answer is the whisper of desolation, the ghostly voice of ghastly vice! He reads the note she left him, and, Joe don't know much about God, excepting what he feels, don't know much about anything but bosses, but he asks the Lord to pardon and protect the weak woman he loved. Like a frail blossom lacking sunshine, the motherless baby droops and dies. Joe goes his way, making no complaint, 'ceptin' what he tells his bosses, 'ceptin' what he tells his God! Far away in mighty London, the woman rises into fame. Through her lover's influence and wealth, she becomes a noted actress. Her beauty wins men's homage, and she prospers in her shame. Then the day of reckoning! Time plays no favorites: the immutable law of the years takes its course; youth flies, her beauty vanishes, her charm withers: and the pretty toy, grown useless, is flung aside, as of old. The wedded morn and roses, and the widowed night, and mourning; light and life today; dark and death tomorrow; the errand of folly, and the wage of sin, from Adam to eternity! In a far-off country town, youth and strength gone, his soul seared by the sad sorrow of woman's sin, Joe reads in a newspaper how a once-famous actress, alone and in poverty, is dying. The fickle world has forgotten her fame: the fickle worshipers of wanton beauty have forgotten her very name. But Joe has forgotten only her sin and shame; only Joe remembers; only Joe is true. He comes to her and tells her he forgives her, tells her he loves her for what might have been, for the soul he would meet again in the Far Away, in the Beyond, across the vale. Held in his arms, the eyes that had seen sin look into the cleansing tears in his, and close in death! On the stone over her grave Joe wrote one word, the honored name of \"Wife.\" A blossom we fain would pluck today from the flowers above her dust; a blossom as pure as love that lasts, a blossom sweet as the peace and purity we hope Ann found in the Distant Land.
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