"A Stick of Wood!" - essay by Thelma Clark, Senior, '23

(Published in the 1923 "Retrospect" yearbook of Bluffton High School, 
Bluffton, Wells Co., Indiana)

It's just a little swagger-stick now--but what a history it could tell!  
On its once brilliant sides is engraved the date of making, 1829, now 
almost effaced by time.  The original handle is gone, and there is a place 
where some one's inquisitive fingers had attempted to tear apart the wood 
to search for probable hidden treasure!  Hidden treasure, indeed.  But 
rather a wealth of fancy than of gold.  So here is the story my 
grandmother told my mother, and she told me, when it came into my 
possession.

Long ago, in the faraway duchy of Wurtemburg, lived a girl and a boy.  The 
girl was my great-grandmother, Louise Van Giesel, the boy--I know nothing 
of him, save his name was Henri and he loved her.

The girl lived in the city, far from the boy, never dreaming of his 
existence, until at eighteen, she spent a summer on the family estate 
hidden away in the Black mountains.  Even then to him she was the daughter 
of a Van Geisel, master of the place, to her he was Henri (his last name 
was never preserved) a peasant, a poor wood-carver, who only knew how to 
bow and stammer before Louise.  besides, was she not bethothed (sic) to a 
young Austrian, in the city where Henri had never journeyed?

How the meeting of these two came about, was never disclosed.  But it, as 
many things do, simply happened.  After a few weeks time she was no longer 
mistrees; he, peasant--to each other at least they were Louise and Henri.

As the summer passed the friendship, as friendships often do, deepened 
into love.  It was a rather fugitive romance at times, for the fear of 
discovery was always present.  But are not stolen fruits always sweetest?  
Louise found it so, at any rate.

Finally the too-short summer came to an end, and it was time for lovers to 
part.  Henri was too humble to beg her to stay with him, Louise too proud 
to first suggest this ending to Henri.  So, both resolved not to show his 
true feeling, met for the last time.  What happened here must again be 
omitted.  It was never told.

We do know that, at last, he gave her his firs (sic) and last gift.  It 
was a daintly hand-stick, fashioned during long hours, all by his own 
hands, of the choicest wood the mountains afforded.  Inlaid it was, of 
deep black walnut and old maple, the handle carved, fantastical--a master-
piece.  He told her bitterly he was like his gift, a toy, made for her 
day's happiness, then, broken, thrown away and forgotten.  Louise was too 
sad to reply.

That was the end.

Louise never saw him again.  She married the Austrian, as had been 
decided.  But always Henri's toy was carefully guarded.  She said 
afterwards she would have felt it was Henri himself she had wounded.

However, it was not until grandmother was ready to marry that she learned 
the story.  So impressed was she, that when she journeyed to the New 
World, it was brought along on the trip across the ocean.  It was on the 
voyage that the beatiful handl was broken off.

Thus it was that, in the twentieth century, I too, learned the story, and 
during the craze carried it for a swagger-stick.  The story so bore upon 
my imagination, that since that time I dared not desecrate it by usage.

So ends the tale.