* 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
JUANITA 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 JENNIE L. HOPKINS. 
 
 DENVER, COLORADO: 
 THE ZALINGER PRESS, 
 
 MDCCCXXCIV. 
 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress in. the year 1884, by 
 
 BENJAMIN F. ZALINGER, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
To 
 
 MY YOUNGER SISTERS, 
 FROM WHOSE BRIGHT YOUNG LIVES 
 
 I HAVE 
 DRAWN MUCH COURAGE AND INSPIRATION, 
 
 THESE SIMPLE SKETCHES 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Realizing fully how tame and colorless 
 these little sketches may seem, in comparison 
 with all the gorgeous inventive plot, and infin- 
 ite variety of the elaborate literary frippery of 
 our day, I am yet bold enough to throw my 
 precious nurselings on the mercy of the public, 
 hoping there are some among you, who may 
 feel their simple, homely worth, as I have felt 
 it in their creation. 
 
 J. L. H. 
 DENVER, MAY IST., 1884. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 JUANITA 13 
 
 FANCIES OF THE SNOW 45 
 
 PICTURES IN THE FIRELIGHT .... 59 
 
 JUNE ROSES 73 
 
 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE .... 85 
 
 PLEASANT PEOPLE 105 
 
 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS . . . . 113 
 
 SUNDAY MORNINGS 143 
 
 THE OLD HOMESTEAD 151 
 
 MY SKETCH BOOK 159 
 
 AN AUGUST VISION 193 
 
 COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER .... 203 
 
 SISTER PACHITA 213 
 
 ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 237 
 
 APRIL RAINS 243 
 
 MY VALENTINE 251 
 
 THE LADY'S DREAM 269 
 
JUANITA. 
 
 | 'AN LUIS Valley lay burning in the 
 sun one day one very warm day in 
 r midsummer, when there was scarcely 
 ^ air enough any where to show that any- 
 thing lived ; not a leaf or twig of the 
 scant low verdure was stirring, and there was a 
 white hazy torpor over everything, that para- 
 lyzed effort, and made existence almost a bur- 
 den. Away out at the edge of the world, a 
 blue rim of mountains lifted their hazy peaks 
 Heavenward, actually clothed with snow-drifts, 
 in seeming invitation to mortals to go thence 
 and enjoy their grateful coolness. Snow-drifts 
 in midsummer! Ah! how delicious they looked 
 
14 JUANITA. 
 
 to Juanita, as she wearily urged her lazy mule 
 through the valley that August afternoon, when 
 everything was at white heat, and she was so 
 tired and unhappy. 
 
 Yes, she knew the mountains lay just over 
 there, and that if one ascended high enough he 
 might escape perhaps, one-tenth of the heat 
 away up there among the shadows of the great 
 rocks, but Juanita knew also, how tedious was 
 that trail, and how much exertion must be put 
 forth to urge her lazy beast up that tortuous 
 path, for Jack was essentially a Mexican mule, 
 both by birth and education, and was not par- 
 ticularly anxious to distinguish himself by deeds 
 of daring. Juanita had early preferred him to 
 the burros, when her father had decided to put 
 her in charge of that great vicious herd of cattle 
 some two years since, and somehow, she had 
 never had so good a friend in all the world as 
 
Jl'AXITA. 15 
 
 Jack was. Certainly he was lazy, but Juanita 
 was that herself; he objected to water otherwise 
 than for drinking purposes, and when the Am- 
 erican groom had insisted on giving him a 
 washing once when she had gone with a bunch 
 of cattle to Las Vegas, Juanita had only laughed 
 at His Muleship's resistance, and stared quite as 
 blankly as Jack had done, when the groom had 
 assurance enough to propose that she should go 
 down to those famous baths, and immerse her 
 pretty hands and face just for beauty's sake. 
 You see Jack and Juanita had a good deal in 
 common, and I don't believe the girl ever 
 thought for an instant of chiding the mule for 
 his little misdeeds. 
 
 Ned Hewitt, the young New York artist who 
 was camping out in the valley, said the mule 
 had a good face, and Juanita always imagined 
 that Jack smiled when she came near, and when 
 
1 6 JUANITA. 
 
 she laid her dark pretty face against his nose, 
 he always stood quite still, not even blinking 
 in the hot sun, although that may have been a 
 direct result of Jack's disinclination to move 
 under any circumstance, but Juanita chose to 
 believe it was because he loved her, and per- 
 haps, after all, that may have been the reason, 
 for Jack had never had anyone else to love him, 
 and what was worse, neither had Juanita. 
 
 Even on such a heated day as this, Hewitt 
 thought, one could scarcely be indifferent 
 enough, not to pity a bright young thing like 
 this, who had nobody in the whole world to 
 care for her one might easily imagine such a 
 state of things existing in the life ot a mule, 
 but a girl for whom no one cared? A girl with 
 a form like a wood nymph, and a pair of eyes, 
 dark and lovely enough to have ravished a 
 prince ? A girl in the very bloom of her glow- 
 
]U ANITA. 
 
 ing youth, living away out here in this lonely 
 valley, with only a poor dumb mule for a com- 
 panion? Ah! surely it was hard enough, but 
 was it any worse than the hot-house lives the 
 girls of his own fashionable set led in New 
 York ? Was it any worse, pray, than the weary 
 hollow life Miss Fanny Gray, his fiancee, was 
 leading now, in one of those hot, crowded wa- 
 tering-places on the Atlantic coast? He knew 
 she was dancing, flirting, wearing herself out, 
 body and soul. Did he care ? Possibly. He 
 knew he should go home in the autumn to 
 chide her for looking so thin and pale ; for be- 
 ing so listless, and taking no kind of interest in 
 anything whatever, himself included. It had 
 been so for the last two Autumns. Their quar- 
 rel on this score would not be very serious. 
 Serious things were not in the habit of happen- 
 ing to Ned Hewitt. He was rich, young and 
 
1 8 JUANITA. 
 
 handsome, with a pretty taste for painting, and 
 had never passed a sleepless night in his life. 
 
 He was lying under a blanket beneath the 
 shade of a great yellow umbrella; it was too 
 warm to work to-day, he had remarked to Juan- 
 ita a half hour since when he had invited her 
 to share his hastily improvised tent; he was 
 very sleepy too, but somehow when that vision 
 of Fanny Gray, dancing and flirting at Newport, 
 came intoohis mind, Juanita cannot be said to 
 have suffered much by the comparison, even 
 though she lived alone in a desert with a dumb 
 animal and a grade of human beings who were 
 much less to her than it was. 
 
 A half-formed desire to congratulate Juanita 
 on her glowing health and freedom from all the 
 restrictions of society, flitted through Hewitt's 
 mind, but he was not serious enough to put so 
 earnest a thought into words ; who among us 
 
JUANITA. IQ 
 
 all, would ever think seriously if circumstances 
 did not demand it? Who cares to shoulder 
 burdens unless necessity compels him to do so, 
 and necessity had never compelled Ned Hewitt 
 to do anything. Nature had given him a very 
 pretty talent for painting, and though he had 
 never really exerted himself, he had finished 
 some very pleasing pieces for his friends, and 
 had come here a year ago with a sort of indefi- 
 nite consciousness that he was a little weary of 
 society, and that possibly he might work up 
 something in picturesque Colorado, that would 
 gain him admission to the Academy of Design. 
 This was his one ambition in life, although, of 
 course, there was Miss Fanny Gray always flut- 
 tering somewhere in the back-ground in silken 
 draperies, but she had never expressed much 
 interest in his work, and it was not for her sake 
 he desired admittance to the famous school ; 
 
20 JUAXITA. 
 
 he wanted a membership for reasons of his own; 
 if admission depended on great effort, however, 
 he had small prospect of ever attaining it, and 
 he owned this laughingly to himself, but to use 
 his own mental expression it would be a devil- 
 ish fine thing to live with geniuses at the clubs, 
 to smoke long pipes, and tell long stories over 
 great foaming mugs of ale, all those jolly 
 nights, of which he had as yet seen but a 
 glimpse. 
 
 Juanita was eyeing him curiously. How 
 fair he was, with those masses of soft brown 
 hair, and those frank open blue eyes, which 
 reminded her of wild forget-me-nots. How 
 delicate his hands were, with the long taper 
 fingers, and pink shapely nails ! She was al- 
 most tempted to touch them, to see if they 
 were real. He seemed to her as pink and 
 white as the waxen saints the padre had brought 
 
J I- ANITA. 21 
 
 with him for the chapel, the last time he had 
 been to Denver. How beautiful he was to her! 
 And he was sleeping now, so peacefully there 
 on the hot earth, with only his white hands for 
 a pillow, dreaming that a portrait of Juanita had 
 gained him the longed-for admission to the 
 Academy. In his dream he saw just how she 
 would look when those long, tangled masses of 
 wavy black hair were brushed out, and piled in 
 heavy coils on the back of her head; when 
 jewels sparkled in those tiny ears, and golden 
 snakes coiled themselves on those dusky arms ; 
 scarlet and cloth of gold would be her robe ; the 
 girl was beautiful enough to make a study for 
 a Spanish princess, and the usually impassive 
 artist was intoxicated at the thought of what 
 she would be on canvas. 
 
 And so he had spoken kindly to the girl who 
 sat there with her hands clasped on her knees, 
 
22 JUANITA. 
 
 and her eyes filled with a new and intelligent 
 interest. Jack grazed peacefully at her side. 
 Fortunately for him the grass grew so thick- 
 ly here he did not have to walk three paces 
 during the entire afternoon. 
 
 Juanita, looking at him fondly, shrugged her 
 pretty shoulders, and thought of this in her own 
 way. The droll idea that the mule would starve 
 before he would walk a mile in the hot sun for 
 a dinner, brought a half smile into the corners 
 of her mouth, and revealed two rows of teeth 
 like strung pearls. Juanita knew that her father 
 had always despised her for her beauty. Why 
 had she not been a sturdy boy like the others? 
 This was the question he had asked himself and 
 the padre, for the last sixteen years, in fact ever 
 since the girl was born. "A girl is no use at 
 hunting or fishing," old Jose always said, "She 
 can only tell her beads, and go to confessional. 
 
JUANITA. 23 
 
 Look at those slim hands and wrists. Do you 
 think they could perform any kind of labor?" 
 And so, negle6led by her father and brothers, 
 and ill used by the grim Mexican woman who 
 was her step-mother, the girl spent most of her 
 time roaming through the valley until finally 
 her father put her in charge of a herd of cattle, 
 and so she was never at home any more from 
 sunrise until sunset, and twice a year she went 
 with her father and brothers to the cattle mar- 
 ket. This was what Juanita told Hewitt when 
 he awoke, he speaking Spanish quite as badly 
 as she spoke English, but what pair of young 
 people alone with Nature ever failed to under- 
 stand each other? Hewitt told Juanita it was 
 a burning shame her people should treat her so ; 
 told her that in civilization such things were 
 not allowed; told her in thrilling tones of the 
 place his own sisters occupied in the house- 
 
24 JUANITA. 
 
 hold; told her how beautiful she was, but 
 strange as it may seem, he did not speak to her 
 of Fanny Gray. I have always thought it a cu- 
 rious phase in the life of an engaged man, that 
 he never speaks of his inamorata to any young 
 and pretty woman, notwithstanding what his 
 confidences may be with elderly family friends, 
 but it does not follow necessarily that this is 
 any indication of unfaithfulness on the lover's 
 part. The truth is, young hearts in the fullness 
 of inexperience and the strong mesmerism of 
 a pair of handsome eyes, are always irresistibly 
 drawn so closely together, that confessions and 
 explanations are out of the question, and doubt 
 not that if many noble but over-sensitive wo- 
 men were to take the naturalness of this silly 
 love-making into charitable account, there 
 would be many more happy marriages, and a 
 great many less broken hearts than there are 
 
J U ANITA. 25 
 
 in the world. It is a well-known fact that three- 
 fourths of the young men of the present day, 
 have a sweet glance and a loving word for any 
 pretty girl whenever time and place afford, but 
 notwithstanding all this, in most men's hearts 
 there lives a real woman, for whom if put to 
 the test, they would fight in the lists. The 
 trouble is now-a-days they are not put to the 
 test, and so all this foolish meaningless love- 
 making goes on, and sometimes the jealous 
 shafts sink so deep into the real woman's heart, 
 that stung to desperation, she breaks her vows, 
 and so snaps the chords of her love-life asunder 
 for all time. This state of things was as fa- 
 miliar to Ned Hewitt's ideas of civilization, as 
 was the sight of the innumerable pretty girls 
 themselves, but as I said before, he had never 
 done anything in earnest in his whole life, and 
 I am afraid there was no " real woman" living 
 
26 JLJANITA. 
 
 down in the depths of his naturally kind heart 
 He had never felt so strongly about anything 
 as he did to-day, and the wish that was father 
 to that serious thought was a selfish desire to 
 paint Juanita's portrait. All that -long hot after- 
 noon, while he talked to the girl, he could 
 think of nothing but that portrait in scarlet 
 plush and cloth of gold. Already he fancied 
 himself famous, sought after, admired, the fash- 
 ion of the hour among the picture-loving people 
 of Fifth Avenue. His glowing imagination 
 even went so far as to picture a scene not unlike 
 that depicted in a work of Fortuney's, which 
 he had seen in a Parisian Salon, where the 
 Academicians, noble old men, in court dress 
 and powdered wigs, come to select a model for 
 the School of Design. Juanita should be the 
 model; her warm Southern beauty should in- 
 spire the genius of a great sculptor, who would 
 
JUAX1TA. 27 
 
 chisel an image of the portrait from snow-white 
 marble. The art critics of our own country 
 would have the place in the scene that those 
 grave men hold in the picture, his painting, 
 the work of his own hand on a rich marble 
 table, with the magnificent wall of the Academy 
 for a back-ground, should take the place ot the 
 celebrated statue in Fortuney's painting, and he 
 knew that to accomplish all this he had but to 
 make an accurate copy of this wondrously 
 beautiful girl, whom chance had thrown so 
 strangely in his way. 
 
 He was exhilarated, elated, triumphant. It 
 was as if he had drunk new wine, and from the 
 first he never doubted his success. Towards 
 evening Juanita sprang upon Jack's back, and 
 riding in and out among her truant herd, was 
 soon threading her way through the valley to 
 her father's ranche, where she and the cattle 
 
28 JUAN1TA. 
 
 always sought shelter for the night. 
 
 Hewitt followed behind her at a little dis- 
 tance, and upon arriving at the straggling 
 village, where a dozen adobe huts surrounded 
 a tiny plaza, and a very small chapel of some- 
 what rude, though superior architecture, lifted 
 its gray walls high above the houses, was 
 interested to see Juanita drive her herd into a 
 rude shed, spring gracefully from Jack's back, 
 give him food and water, and then reappear 
 tripping down the path with a great goat-skin 
 water-jar on her head, from which she had re- 
 moved her broad straw hat, to make room for 
 it. It was sunset now, and her day's work was 
 done. She might loiter by the spring quite as 
 long as she liked, only returning in time for old 
 Jose and his sons to have a long fresh draught 
 of the sweet mountain water before they 
 sought their dingy blankets, and sleep. The 
 
JU ANITA. 29 
 
 spring was nearly a quarter of a mile from the 
 house, an unconscionable distance Juanita had 
 always thought it, but to-night Ned Hewitt 
 met her half way down the path, and no walk 
 had ever seemed so short or pleasant. 
 
 It was near nine o'clock when they returned 
 and Hewitt accompanied the girl to the brow 
 of the hill, back of which lay her father's 
 house, carrying the water for her, that she 
 might see, he said, how men bore the burdens 
 out in the world, and smiling at the dexterity 
 with which she finally took it from him and 
 swung it lightly to the top of her pretty head. 
 With some difficulty he made her understand 
 that he was a painter ; one who made pictures, 
 you know, with a brush, on canvas ; but what 
 did she know of such things ? he said to him- 
 self. Pshaw! why had he not brought his 
 brush and palette up the hill from the little inn, 
 
3O JUANITA. 
 
 that he might have given practical illustrations 
 of his subject ? Juanita looked puzzled. A 
 picture a face her face? Oh! yes; some- 
 thing like those lovely things the padre had 
 brought from Denver, but they were of saints 
 and crucifixes, and one was an image of the 
 Blessed Saviour nailed to the Cross ; would he 
 make her look like that, or like that other sweet 
 image of the Holy Virgin? 
 
 Hewitt smiled again. No; she would look 
 like none of these, but only like her lovely self. 
 Would she give him a sitting? that is, could 
 the cattle take care of themselves for an hour 
 in the morning while he painted her sweet face. 
 
 Yes, she understood at last. Her dark eyes 
 glowed with pleasure, and a soft blush came 
 over her bright face, that made Hewitt's nerves 
 thrill with a new sense of her beauty. They 
 would ride out of the village in the early morn- 
 
JU ANITA. 31 
 
 ing, she said, and when she had disposed of the 
 cattle, he might paint her for hours, if he wished 
 only she wanted to look like the Holy Virgin, 
 and could he not paint Jack somewhere in the 
 picture too? Jack and the Holy Virgin! Oh! 
 Juanita, Juanita ! I fear those two images held 
 somewhat equal places in the heathen darkness 
 of your young heart! but I would have less deli- 
 cacy than Ned Hewitt if I were to smile over 
 your droll request, for the artist only looked at 
 her in his usually kind way, and tried to make 
 her understand that if he could get all the sweet 
 purity of her face within the lines of his picture 
 it's loveliness would far surpass that of all the 
 saints in Christendom. 
 
 And Juanita filled with a sense of something 
 new and beautiful in her gray life, went slowly 
 over the hill with the tinaja, and scarcely mind- 
 ed the scolding her harsh step-mother gave her 
 
32 JUANITA. 
 
 for having stayed so long at the spring, and 
 curled herself up on her heap of straw, to sleep 
 as she had never slept before in all her life, and 
 dream of pictures, and saints, and Jack ; but 
 most of all of Ned Hewitt, who seemed always 
 hovering everywhere, forever telling the mean- 
 ing of things, and smiling the same sweet, frank 
 smile through all time. 
 
 And so all that long white summer in San 
 Luis Valley, these two came and went from the 
 village to the mesa, and Hewitt carried both 
 the tinaja and the fagots for Juanita, that she 
 might see, as he said, how women were cared 
 for in his World; and I imagine her's had been 
 a very strange nature indeed, had not all these 
 little kindnesses, the first she had ever known, 
 not sunk into her heart, as grateful, cooling 
 water sinks into dry, parched soil. 
 
 Hewitt was as great an anomaly to Juanita 
 
jr ANITA. 33 
 
 as she was to him, and so each in his way 
 making studies of the other, the summer soon 
 passed away, and the crimson and brown and 
 gold of autumn was creeping into the mountain 
 foliage, before the sittings were finished, and the 
 elaborate sketches ready for painting. During 
 all those long, happy days Juanita had nearly 
 forgotten all her small miseries, going about as 
 though in a dream, maintaining a silence for 
 the most part, even with Hewitt, who invariably 
 rallied her upon it, and thought, in his careless 
 way, it must be the girl's natural timidity that 
 kept her so quiet in the presence of a stranger, 
 but I am not at all sure that w r as the reason, 
 and I think, on the whole, perhaps old lazy 
 Jack, who watched her with so much kindly 
 interest that summer, understood her moods 
 better than did the artist who was engaged in 
 studying every changing expression of her 
 
34 JU ANITA. 
 
 face. Juanita had never been so delighted with 
 anything as she was with the scarlet plush and 
 cloth of gold; upon first seeing it she had 
 clapped her hands and danced about like a 
 child, and when the sketches were finished, 
 Hewitt had given her the rich stuffs for her 
 own, and had added to the gift, the golden 
 snakes he had coiled about her arms, and the 
 great jewelled pins which were to hold up the 
 heavy masses of her hair in the picture. 
 Juanita's gratitude for these s-uperb gifts had 
 been as pure and simple as a child's, but the 
 padre had come upon her, as she walked across 
 the plaza with them on her arm, and had bid- 
 den her restore them to the giver, with so 
 much sternness in his face and voice, that she 
 had flown in terror to the little inn where 
 Hewitt lived, and begged him with many sobs 
 to take them back. 
 
JT ANITA. 35 
 
 That night the padre came to old Jose's hut, 
 and while Juanita tossed uneasily on her rude 
 bed, the two men sat on the wooden bench 
 outside the door, and she heard them mutter- 
 ing low imprecations against the vile Americano, 
 who dared to trifle with the daughter of the 
 colony. 
 
 "The girl was always a fool!" Jose said. 
 Had he not told the padre now nearly seven- 
 teen years ago, how the saints had cursed him 
 in sending him a daughter? 
 
 This and many other similar remarks, fell 
 upon Juanita's ear, as she lay in her close cor- 
 ner, and knew her father and the priest were 
 plotting against the fair stranger. Oh ! what 
 made her heart ache s-o, this long dreadful 
 night? why did she start at every sound as if 
 pursued by the Evil One himself? Had she not 
 her beads and her little crucifix, and did not 
 
36 JUANITA. 
 
 the Holy Virgin know how innocent she was? 
 Had she not always been regular at mass, at 
 vespers, at confessional? And what if they 
 killed this fair stranger, in their hard savage 
 wrath, which when aroused, knew no such 
 thing as mercy? He would not be the first 
 Americano who had accidentally (?) fallen over 
 a precipice in this wild desolate region, since 
 the hated invasion of the steam-horse, and even 
 if she had loved him a little Bah ! he had never 
 spoken to her of love, what was she thinking 
 of? true he had once or twice touched the tips 
 of her fingers with his lips, but what was that? 
 Juanita was used to the hot love-making of the 
 South. Thus she reasoned with herself the 
 whole night through, but when the morning 
 dawned she knew it was of no avail ; knew that 
 her heart had gone out unasked to a hated 
 Americano, and that her future could but be 
 
JUAXITA. 37 
 
 one of wretched penitence. Rising softly, as 
 the sun came streaming in at the little greasy 
 window, half blind with grief and terror lest 
 she should disturb her father's slumbers, and 
 so catch the first burst of that fiery wrath, which 
 she knew must soon descend upon her luckless 
 head, she left the house, and sought out the 
 chapel, where she sank upon the stone floor 
 before her favorite saint, pouring out her burst- 
 ing heart in such an eloquence of prayer, that 
 one might almost have fancied the gaudy red 
 and blue saints on the wall were shedding tears 
 of pity, and that the thorn-crowned Christ in 
 the altar window was sorrowing over her, as 
 over the one sinner that repenteth. 
 
 " Senorita, why do you cry ? " 
 
 The girl started shudderingly as with a 
 new fear, but it was only Ned Hewitt, standing 
 there in the purple glory of the altar window, 
 
38 JUANITA. 
 
 through which the morning sun was throwing 
 long bright shadows on his fair hair. 
 
 He was dressed as if for a journey. He 
 was going away, he said, and had come to bid 
 the Senorita farewell. Why did she cry? Was 
 she in trouble? Could he help her in any way 
 before he went? Ah ! she was lovelier than ever, 
 now that he must leave her, he said. Would 
 she think of him sometimes when he was 
 gone? 
 
 The girl had risen from her knees, and was 
 leaning heavily against one of the stone pillars 
 of the chapel. Yes, he was going out of her 
 life forever, and there would be left only the 
 Virgin, and Jack, and 
 
 Hark ! there are footsteps ! 
 
 " Fly Senor!" Juanita cries. "My father, and 
 the padre " 
 
 And thus it was that Ned Hewitt returned 
 
JUANITA. 39 
 
 so suddenly to New York, where some six 
 months later, the dream of that mid-summer 
 day was realized, for Juanita's portrait gained 
 him the desired admission to the Academy, 
 and for a time he was prince of good fellows 
 among all the young American artists. 
 
 There on the rich wall the portrait hangs 
 in all its glowing beauty ; its rosy lips parted, 
 just as they were that hot mid-summer day so 
 long ago, when he wrapped the scarlet plush 
 and cloth of gold about her, and wound the 
 golden snakes on her lovely arms. Like the 
 original it is very beautiful, and no visitor to 
 the Academy ever comes away without that 
 sweet image impressed upon his heart. 
 
 Most people fancy it is an ideal sketch of a 
 Spanish princess, and Ned Hewitt tells no 
 tales. Often as he stands before it, his own 
 eyes fill with tears that he is forced to dry up- 
 
4O JUANITA. 
 
 on the approach of his children, or his lady- 
 wife. The critics have discovered that he has 
 some talent, but he knows that strive as he 
 will, he can never hope to equal his portrait of 
 Juanita. Impulses like that do not come twice 
 in a life-time, and perhaps after all he loved 
 her. Who knows? 
 
 Mrs. Hewitt, nee Miss Fanny Gray, would, I 
 am sure, give a negative answer to so strange a 
 question, and so you and I had best not ask it, 
 but rather content ourselves with fancies. 
 
 And Juanita? 
 
 Far away in Santa Fe, where the summers 
 are even longer and hotter than they are in 
 San Luis Valley, where the glare of the bright 
 August sun beats down so pitilessly on the 
 rough stones of the plaza, and the white walls 
 of a convent rise among the green leaves of great 
 trees, lives a beauteous woman whose sweet 
 
JU ANITA. 41 
 
 sad face looks wonderingly out at the visitor, 
 from the garb of a nun. 
 
 Here in the convent yard, a mule now well 
 advanced in years, is grazing quietly on the 
 rich herbage, and presently the woman comes 
 slowly out to caress him, and feed him broken 
 dainties from her hand. 
 
 It is the penance the two are doing for that 
 Portrait of a Lady. 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 r* 
 
 /ONDER why it is that snow has 
 
 ; 
 
 such a softening influence over every - 
 ' thing? Last night when I retired 
 there was a high wind, an overcast 
 sky, and people were hurried hither 
 and thither whether they would or no. The 
 city looked so dismal that I was glad to lower 
 my curtains and draw my easy-chair still nearer 
 the blazing fire, where my book-rest and a 
 steaming glass stood in readiness on the hearth. 
 The firelight threw most cheerful shadows 
 into the corners of my cosy room, but some- 
 how I knew the whole household was in an ill- 
 humor, knew that the landlady was in the 
 
46 FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 housekeeper's room grumbling over the ad- 
 vanced price of produce ; that her daughter was 
 impatiently dawdling over a book she could not 
 understand; that the three students whose room 
 is just opposite mine, were wrangling over the 
 relative values of angles and triangles ; that 
 cook and housemaid were not on such affec- 
 tionate terms as one might have wished ; and 
 that I, myself, was so nervous and irritable that 
 I started as if shot from the mouth of a cannon 
 every time one of those great blasts came howl- 
 ing down the chimney, and poking its nose 
 into the secret corners of my apartment. 
 
 When I think of last night now, I am aware 
 that my room must have been very cheerful in 
 the warm glow of the wood-fire, with my fav- 
 orite authors looking down so kindly on me 
 from their places on the shelves, and those 
 priceless paintings of Bonheur's and of Land- 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 47 
 
 seer's brightening the whole room with their 
 cheery presence. 
 
 I know now that I, like the other members 
 of this silly household, should learn to exercise 
 more control over my truant nerves than to let 
 the howling of the wind and the blackness of 
 the sky upset me so. 
 
 I dare say if we had all been carried to that 
 windy corner, and had our physical beings up- 
 set in that darksome puddle as our poor washer- 
 woman had, we would have come back to our 
 rooms quite satisfied w r ith books and pictures, 
 pens, music and needle-work ; but although 
 when one is in a cheerful mood he -has so many 
 resources of enjoyment within nimself, I will 
 lay a wager that when the wind rises again we 
 shall all be in quite as bad a humor as we were 
 last night, and yet this morning no living thing 
 could be any brighter or happier than 
 
48 FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 every individual member of this house. Out- 
 doors the snow has transformed all the 
 houses into crystal temples, all the fences into 
 walls of solid pearl, and all the minor objects 
 into the softest, daintiest statuary. In my land- 
 lady's yard the most familiar objects assume 
 the semblance of artistic creations, and the long 
 rows of old pails and tubs long since fallen in- 
 to disuse, their rude outlines softened by this 
 fleecy covering, take on the shapely forms of 
 tiny crystal pyramids and reflect a thousand 
 waves of colored light in the bright sunshine. 
 In the breakfast-room the people are all 
 smiles and pleasantries ; the boys have contrived 
 to untangle the angles, the landlady has 
 evidently some secret cause for encourage- 
 ment, and the housemaid brings in the muffins 
 with more grace than she has used the whole 
 winter. 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 49 
 
 And so I am constrained to think that the 
 Snow brings a host of peaceful influences in 
 her great white mantle, with which she covers 
 all the earth and deals out kindness to both 
 glad and sorry souls in entirely equal propor- 
 tions, and as I gaze abroad at all her wondrous 
 loveliness, it seems to me she is a spirit of the 
 air sent to purify the lives of men. 
 
 I have seldom heard of a murder having 
 been committed out among those pure white 
 drifts, where a drop of blood in the winter 
 sunlight would proclaim the horror of the deed 
 through the entire course of a long day. 
 
 I recall few cases of starvation throughout 
 the country when the snow is on the ground, 
 for this is the season of the year when the 
 wants of the poor are more carefully consider- 
 ed than at any other time. I think statistics 
 will show there are fewer suicides committed 
 
5O FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 through long" white winters than at mid-sum- 
 mer, when the terrible heats drive men as well 
 as dog's to desperate deeds, or in chill dreary 
 November, when life and courage seem to 
 ooze out with the early darkness and the damp 
 wet mornings. 
 
 And so Fair Spirit of the season, sweet 
 emblem of purity and harbinger of peace, all 
 hail to thee ! To me thou art the most wel- 
 come phase of all our many weathers. I can 
 imagine lovers plighting their troth, and moth- 
 ers kissing their children at the first indication 
 of thy coming, so near akin art thou to all 
 that is true and beautiful in life. 
 
 It seems to me that clear snowy weather 
 should be the great festival time of the whole 
 year, and if I were managing the universe, I 
 would set all the married people at roast tur- 
 key and plum-pudding, all the children at 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 5 I 
 
 blind-man's buff and sugar-plums, and all the 
 lovers speeding miles away over the country 
 in that sweet ecstasy of young confession that 
 can never know cold or distance. 
 
 Then I would fill all the theaters with grand 
 opera, and I would open the doors alike to 
 rich and poor. I would call in my pale-faced 
 seamstress who always weeps when she hears 
 sweet sounds, so exquisite an ear has she for 
 melody. I would beckon yonder hard-worked 
 clerk who is trudging so wearily to his scanty 
 home, after his long toilsome day on an office- 
 stool ; I would empty school-houses of hund- 
 reds of weary teachers, whose whole lives are 
 but one sad story of cruel self-repression; I 
 would call together dozens of shabby clergy- 
 men poor souls in those shiny thread-bare 
 coats, that seem to have endured since the be- 
 ginning of time. Here and there I would 
 
52 FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 select a struggling ambitious student or a poor 
 friendless factory girl into whose eyes the tears 
 would spring at the touch of a kindly hand. 
 
 I would not take no for an answer. I would 
 drive them all in at those gilded portals, just 
 as I would drive that flock of lambs I love so 
 much out at my farm, and when I had seen 
 them all comfortably seated I would assume 
 the shape of a good Brownie, that I might 
 hover in those stained windows, and go off 
 into uncontrollable laughter, when I saw the 
 pale faces of these human Lambs all flushed 
 and joyous with the music. 
 
 I would go to the greatest living prima don- 
 na and say, " Madame, at one time you were 
 very heartless. You allowed a poor Italian di- 
 rector to die over here in St. Louis for the mere 
 want of plain food and warm lodgings, and Oh ! 
 for shame, he was your brother! No, I cannot 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 53 
 
 forgive you for that but this is snow-time, 
 carnival-time and now I hope you will sing 
 for love to these poor people as you have never 
 sung for money in all your life !" 
 
 Then, too, I confess I should enjoy a sprink- 
 ling of rich people in my theatres, just enough 
 to give color and tone to all those pale faces 
 and sad eyes of my poor Lambs. I should in- 
 vite a certain queenly woman whom I know, to 
 don all her rich furs, to fasten costly jewels on 
 her shapely arms, and throw a mantle of heavy 
 satin about her form, and then when she came 
 sweeping her rich dress into the place, I would 
 bid her bow and smile to each poor soul who 
 looked at her in silent admiration ; and if any- 
 where in this crowded city I could find a man 
 who I really believed was created in God's 
 image a man who had never wronged the wo- 
 man who loved him, or scoffed at the entreaties 
 
54 . FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 
 
 of a helpless child whose right it was to call 
 him father, I would say, " Come to my temple 
 and be king of all the multitude !" 
 
 And I would call them together, he and 
 she, in some high place which should pass for 
 a throne, and I would say to them, " Lead these 
 poor people to-day, in all gentleness and kind- 
 ness for their own best good," and then I would 
 relapse into a Brownie again and repair to my 
 purple window, there to hold my tiny sides in 
 convulsions of the most elfish mirth ; and when 
 the concert was ended and the poor dear Lambs 
 came out of the theatre all flushed and tremb- 
 ling with new joy, I would go to my king, he 
 who is looking so fondly into the depths of the 
 sweet eyes of that queenly woman whom I hope 
 soon to make his wife, and I would say to him, 
 " Tell them to remember ! Another genuine 
 opera next carnival-time, when the first "snow 
 
FANCIES OF THE SNOW. 55 
 
 falls and the year is wrapped in virgin white!" 
 Thus do I dream away the snow-time, while 
 all unheeded my idle pen lies quietly in my 
 desk., and my foolish brain goes wool-gathering 
 into space. 
 
PICTURES IN THK KIRK-LIGHT. 
 
PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 
 
 HEN all things else fail me; when 
 my books have no more signifi- 
 cance to me than if I were a blind 
 man ; when the bright colorings 
 of my pictures always irritate and 
 annoy me until I am forced to turn their sweet 
 faces to the wall ; when the sound of a piano is 
 to me like the noise of brazen trumpets, and the 
 sight of pen and paper makes me shudder ; 
 when my poor head is throbbing with a thou- 
 sand little sharp pains like the prickings of 
 fine needles then it is that I love to bar my 
 door, inhospitable soul that I am, and draw my 
 
60 PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 
 
 low rocker before the great, open, blazing fire 
 that is my one consolation in time of trouble. 
 
 Out-doors, the dark unfriendly weather may 
 do its best to make me wretched; whole rivers 
 of rain and hail may dash about my window- 
 panes; the printer may be howling for copy, 
 and my poor laundress knocking in vain for 
 the sum I have not yet earned; still the fire- 
 light remains with me, to soothe my poor 
 weary nerves, and in a low monotonous under- 
 tone, to sing me sweet simple songs that I 
 have long since learned to love. 
 
 There is something so weird about the great 
 ruddy shadows on the hearth something so 
 strange in this dumb sense of companionship, 
 that if I were in an analytical mood, I would 
 strive to discover a reason for this state of 
 things, and in so doing would of course de- 
 stroy all the little pleasure this vague sense 
 
PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 6 1 
 
 affords me, for so soon as a thing is reduced to 
 a common-sense basis, just so soon do all its 
 beauties take to themselves wings. 
 
 No, I do not want to know any reasons for 
 anything to-night. Alas ! do I not follow out 
 a course of reasoning through all my dreary, 
 hard-worked days? I will not even allow to 
 myself, that if I sit idly here all this long night, 
 I shall have nothing accomplished by morning, 
 and will consequently be in a worse humor to- 
 morrow. 
 
 I tell you, so perverse a sprite am I, I will 
 not be responsible to-night, and if some mod- 
 ern Atlas gets into trouble, endeavoring to lift 
 the whole world, I cannot help it. I am only 
 a poor weak creature, and certainly not to 
 blame and so I bar them all out, that in com- 
 mon parlance, I may sit and mope, my elbows 
 on my knees, and go over all my little griev- 
 
62 PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 
 
 ances that I have years ago committed to 
 memory, and make savage faces at the mirror 
 for revealing all these ugly wrinkles in my face, 
 and all these Long silver threads in my hair, 
 for Father Time makes no exceptions in my 
 case, nor waits for me an hour. 
 
 Ah! how nervous I am, I will turn the mir- 
 ror to the wall, as I turned my pictures there 
 it is done, and as I resume my chair, a face 
 actually beckons me from the fire ! No, I am 
 not dreaming. Only comfortable, happy peo- 
 ple dream. I I alas! it has ever been my 
 fate in life to be always awake, always on the 
 alert. And yet ah ! it is not only a face, 'tis 
 an entire figure of a girl, a very bud of open- 
 ing womanhood. A little primrose face, with 
 deep violet eyes, a' head of long golden curls, 
 and a slight delicate figure, full of easy grace, 
 such as painters love. 
 
PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 63 
 
 She stretches two tiny hands toward me, I 
 can see her red lips move, and hear above the 
 sobbing of the fire, the sweet word sister, and 
 then a flood ot memories sweep through my 
 heart, and I see again the old farm-house where 
 we lived with our sainted mother. Again, to- 
 ward the close of a winter's day, we have 
 gone out on the ice-pond, and my sister's little 
 feet have broken through a thin place in the 
 ice, and I may God forgive me, have lost a 
 chance of succor by allowing myself to go in- 
 to such a frenzy of fright as to lose my voice, 
 and to be unable to call for help. 
 
 All my life this thing has haunted me ; it 
 has made me old before my time, and paralyzed 
 my energies in the prime of my years, but 
 only see how she smiles at me, how she reaches 
 out her arms as if to fold me to her heart ! I 
 think she must see how lonely and miserable 
 
64 PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 
 
 I am to-night, and the angels must long since 
 have named her Pity, for, she is going sorry 
 indeed am I to spare her, so different she al- 
 ways was from other mortals, and now she has 
 flown back to Spirit-Land, but not until a soft 
 little hand has been laid on my fevered brow, 
 and a sweet voice has bidden me take courage. 
 And so I am alone again, and were it not for 
 the fire-light I know not what would become of 
 me this sorry winter-time of my age ; but see ! 
 there comes another picture. How the flames 
 leap up, as if to give it royal welcome. Thank 
 Heaven ! 'tis the image of my mother. Now 
 by God's grace shall I be preserved for all time 
 from wrong-doing, now shall Right be my 
 watchword and Truth my weapon of earthly 
 warfare. Oh ! can you not see how beautiful 
 it is, that brown wrinkled face with its waves of 
 silvery hair, and its sweet brown eyes gaz- 
 
PICTURES IX THE FIRE-LIGHT. 65 
 
 ing at me in so much wistfulness and love. 
 *' Mother," I cry, " Only come near me once 
 more ! touch my proud, foolish head. Teach 
 me as when I was a little child, lessons of pa- 
 tience and forbearance. Bid my wicked heart 
 be still, show me how I may direct my course 
 of life into usefulness ! " 
 
 Once more as in the old days I feel that hal- 
 lowed touch ; once more I am become as a little 
 child, and feel the wrinkled cheek of that dear 
 saint on mine in one long, lingering caress. Ah ! 
 dear God, cannot you leave me my mother ? I 
 who am so old and worn and tempest-tossed on 
 the rude sea of Life ? You will not take her 
 again, you will leave her to me that I may care 
 for her always, and cross her dear hands on her 
 breast at last, just as I crossed them in that old 
 farrn-house the night her sweet soul went out 
 across the dark river of Eternity. But the low 
 
66 PICTURES IN THE FI RE-LIGHT. 
 
 monotone of the fire only sings, no, poor soul, 
 this may not be so with you ; and presently she 
 is gone, and I must needs bow my head in 
 humble resignation. Yet I cannot but be hap- 
 pier that I have seen these dear faces for the 
 first time in so many years, that they have come 
 back to me from their spirit home, as one crosses 
 a hot, weary desert that he may fetch water to 
 one he loves. 
 
 And thus it seems even in the new life, in the 
 life everlasting, they love me still ; I, who was 
 ever cold and imperious ; I who have caused 
 them so many bitter tears, so many hours of 
 sorrow surely I have much to be thankful for ; 
 I will mend my ways and let the sweet incense 
 of love into my darksome heart. 
 
 But what is this ? The picture of a young 
 man ? A frank, boyish face with soft blue eyes. 
 A man's face to come to me at this late day, 
 
PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 67 
 
 like some old legend or story out of Fairy- 
 land? Let me see ah! yes, I remember now, 
 it is the face of him who was my lover, and 
 but for whose untimely death in the cruel wars, 
 I should have been a happy wife to-night, with 
 little children hanging on my neck, and nest- 
 ling in my heart to keep it warm through all 
 the cold of winter. 
 
 I remember what a poor heart-broken thing 
 I was in those days, when his company came 
 marching home without him, and said he had 
 died of starvation away off there in that cruel 
 Southern prison. Yes, I have missed him 
 very sadly, these twenty long years of our 
 separation, and now r I am old and withered, 
 and he is still as fair and young as he was in 
 the days of our wooing. Ah ! love, you can 
 never know how sweet your face is to me now 
 as I see it there in the fire with all the old-time 
 
68 PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 
 
 love-light in its bright eyes. Can it be you 
 are going too? you, who have come so much 
 farther than all the rest to see me ? you who can 
 understand, as even the spirit of my mother 
 cannot, how weary are my long days of toil, 
 how lonely my sleepless nights, how faint my 
 beacon light of hope? 
 
 Yes, you know all this, but you are going 
 I can see you fade out of the firelight gradually, 
 little by little, just as you faded out of my 
 young life so long ago but you will see my 
 mother, love, and my sister, and you will say 
 to them " She is so much better for your hav- 
 ing come," and you will save me a place in 
 Spirit-land, that I may sit near you all, when 
 my own turn comes, in the sweet after-time 
 
 It is morning again. The cold white rays 
 of the winter sun are streaming into my room. 
 
 I am worn by my long vigil, famished by 
 
PICTURES IN THE FIRE-LIGHT. 69 
 
 the long hours that have passed since I tasted 
 food, but not for all the palaces of the East, 
 not for the wealth of kings, not for the love of 
 rosy children, nor all the fabled gems of song 
 and story, would I give my pictures in the fire- 
 light. 
 
JUNE ROSES. 
 
JUNE ROSES. 
 
 HAT a novel study a quaint old 
 farm-house is to a young girl fresh 
 from the busy surroundings of her 
 city home. Her numerous pas- 
 sionate appeals for a visit to the 
 country have finally met with some indulgent 
 relative's approval, and now, one bright June 
 day, she finds herself actually transported to 
 what she has ever dreamed must be pure Ar- 
 cadia the quiet of a remote farm-house. Fancy 
 has long pictured a cottage overgrown with 
 clambering vines and all blooming things of an 
 equally romantic nature. What, then, is her 
 
74 JUNE ROSES. 
 
 surprise at finding a long, low rambling red 
 house, with faded green shutters and small 
 high windows, which look exactly like so many 
 curious peering little eyes turned full upon her 
 as she trips up the broad garden walk, making 
 a half dozen stops ere she reaches the door, to 
 admire and examine the old-fashioned plants 
 that grow so thickly about the edges of those 
 venerable flower beds known as boxes. 
 
 She is charmed with the hearty welcome she 
 receives at the hands of all, and with the ex- 
 treme tidiness and orderliness of all the simple 
 household. She actually devours her supper 
 of snowy, home-made bread, served with the 
 sweetest butter and honey; and though she 
 stares a little when the early preparations for 
 retiring commence, she has soon sunk to rest 
 amid the billowy softness of the old four-poster 
 and is far away upon the wings of those sweet 
 
JUNE ROSES. 75 
 
 dreams known only to healthy, happy girl- 
 hood. 
 
 The wardrobe she has brought with her she 
 considers a marvel of rustic simplicity, but 
 when she bounds into the old dining-room in 
 the morning, clad in some white soft stuff, with 
 a bright ribbon at her waist and a bunch of 
 dewy, freshly gathered roses at her throat, 
 she electrifies the quiet little assembly, which, 
 with one accord, bestows upon her a long, lin- 
 gering look of hearty undisguised admiration. 
 She has resolved to be agreeable to every one, 
 and, indeed, finds it an easy task where every 
 one is so agreeable to her. She praises the 
 country ham and eggs, ecstacizes over the rich 
 cream as it is generously lavished upon her 
 coffee; and, in short, so takes the whole table 
 by storm, that the young farmers, stalwart 
 good-looking fellows too, glance slyly at her 
 
76 JUNE ROSES. 
 
 as they pass on their way across the wide 
 porch to the scene of their daily labor, and 
 wonder if all city girls are such as she. 
 
 Now, there is not so much difference, per- 
 haps, if the truth were told, between the fair 
 daughters of the most populous cities and 
 their very often equally well-favored country 
 cousins. The difference often lies wholly in 
 the surroundings, and a refined country girl is 
 not such a rara avis as some people suppose 
 now-a-days. If, added to her general style and 
 cultured penetration, the city mouse had but 
 an inkling of the country mouse's sweet sim- 
 plicity and substantial intelligence, she might 
 bap; richer birds than she does, and make a 
 
 o 
 
 living, talking ornament for a drawing-room 
 that any good man might be proud to possess. 
 But her simplicity is too often but the silliness 
 of affectation, and her intelligence so superfi- 
 
JUNE ROSES. 77 
 
 cial as to awaken ridicule rather than esteem. 
 The country mouse, on the other hand, is un- 
 fit for battle with the world, from her ingenuous 
 lack of tact and a thorough inaptness at gen- 
 eral style, without which a woman is completely 
 out of Rome in these modern days. 
 
 But to return to the bright little lassie who 
 explores the treasure-trove of an old farm- 
 house for the first time. She flits all over the 
 place from garret to cellar, before the noon of 
 the first day's visit, displaying such an amount 
 of curiosity and asking questions so very vol- 
 ubly as almost to distract the sober house-wife 
 and her decorous maidens, who, wholly unused 
 to butterfly interruptions like these, so far forget 
 themselves several times as to make grave 
 mistakes, like using sugar for salt, and others 
 of a similar nature. At these interesting junct- 
 ures, the little lass, whom we will call Bright 
 
JUNE ROSES. 
 
 Eyes, invariably claps her hands, and, laughing 
 merrily, offers in her wholly incompetent way 
 to repair the mischief she has so thoughtlessly 
 wrought; but the maids like her in spite of the 
 trouble she makes them, and of the pretty 
 coquettish glances she throws across the table 
 at the boys. They carry a little wooden rocker 
 to the dairy, and let her sit there in the cool, stone 
 building, while they fashion the golden butter 
 she loves so well. And then in the evening 
 when the work is done, they harness old Dob- 
 bin with their own strong willing hands, and 
 take Miss Bright Eyes for a drive about the 
 neighborhood. 
 
 In her kindly girlish way she studies every 
 face which meets her view, and smiles so 
 sweetly upon every new rustic as wholly to 
 disarm any prejudice which might have existed 
 against that "city gal." 
 
JUNE ROSES. 79 
 
 She is particularly amused by the great piles 
 of rag carpeting which the house-wife has 
 stored away in the garret, against a time of 
 need, and with the multitudinous gayly-colored 
 calico bed quilts with which every cupboard 
 and closet in the house is literally pressed down 
 and running over. 
 
 She is told that the house was built " forty 
 years ago last winter," and that the furniture 
 stands in the rooms just as it did that happy 
 day when " John brought me home a proud and 
 blushing bride." There is a suspicious mois- 
 ture in the good wife's eyes, as she saunters 
 through the house with this bright young 
 thing, displaying her old and curious house- 
 hold, for, in a remote corner, under a faded 
 chintz curtain, stands a low old-fashioned cra- 
 dle, its once snowy belongings now yellow with 
 the lapse of years; and a little green grave, 
 
8<D JUNE ROSES. 
 
 with its tiny headstone, just outside the house 
 there on the lawn, is all there is left to tell the 
 tale of the joyous young creature, who was 
 born to be the life and light of the sombre old 
 farm. " Dear little thing," the house-wife says, 
 " an' she'd a'been just your age now. Law me, 
 how time does fly!" 
 
 The morning service in the village church is 
 a very novel one to Bright Eyes, who has never 
 heard so much gospel and so few resonant peri- 
 ods in her life before, and who, between the 
 strong doctrine and the funny bonnets which 
 surround her on all sides, is awed into as com- 
 plete an attentiveness as that of the most rev- 
 erent village church-goer. 
 
 Taking it altogether, the city mouse is in- 
 clined to think very kindly of her country 
 cousins, who have given her such a charming 
 week in their midst, and who it is hoped, will 
 
JUNE ROSES. 8 I 
 
 be equally as well pleased when Bright Eyes 
 herself turns hostess, and all the charming pos- 
 sibilities of her city home are brought forth in 
 their behalf. 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 ROM my window I can see the 
 ruins of a quaint little cottage set in 
 the centre of a large garden and 
 guarded by two giant elms. 
 The front garden is filled with unkept shrub- 
 bery, and there are broken bits of brick and 
 stone which mark the place where a long, nar- 
 row walk once wound its way among the 
 greenery to the door. The house is, or has 
 been, an old-fashioned cottage, built after the 
 old style, with two tiny wings and long French 
 windows opening upon a little piazza, where I 
 remember seeing a pair of lovers sit on summer 
 evenings, beneath the shade of a thick vine of 
 
86 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 honeysuckle, which, together, with the other 
 shrubbery, formed to my youthful imagination 
 a scene of pastoral loveliness. 
 
 I remember always dropping my toys when 
 the twilight came on, and repairing to an upper 
 window, from which point I could observe the 
 lovers and the little vine-wreathed house to my 
 heart's content, until darkness settled down over 
 everything and I was obliged to retire only 
 half-satisfied with viewing a picture of which I 
 never wearied. Child as I was, that little habita- 
 tion had more charm for me than all the pomp 
 and glitter of the more splendid country-seats 
 at the other end of the village. 
 
 I loved flowers, and the house being so tiny, 
 I presume had the same significance to me as 
 my doll-house, which I was always placing in 
 the centre of a piece of sward and surrounding 
 with twigs of roses broken from the bushes in 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 8/ 
 
 the door-yard, in direct imitation of what was 
 then known to the villagers as The Honey- 
 suckle Cottage. 
 
 Then, too, I used to arrange Tom and Sue, 
 my pet dolls, after the fashion of a tableau, on 
 the tiny piazza of my doll-house, and between 
 the parted muslin curtains at the window an 
 elderly mother-doll always stood, in exact imi- 
 tation of the lady who was mistress of the cot- 
 tage and the mother of that sweet young thing 
 who sat through all those long summer twilights 
 with the man she loved. 
 
 I used to think nature put the world in order 
 for that twilight hour, the street was always so 
 quiet, and the flowers so sleepy when the 
 young man came. Then too the young girl 
 always wore soft white draperies that used to 
 float on the evening air like the robes of an 
 angel, and it always seemed to me, fair Luna 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 loved to throw long shadows of real gold on 
 the little cottage, whereas the more pretentious 
 mansions had to content themselves with the 
 palest reflections of her majesty. 
 
 Even when it rained, the cottage never seem- 
 ed shrouded in gloom, as was the wont of so 
 many houses on our street. On wet evenings 
 a bright light always shone in the windows, 
 and the rich tones of the young man's deep 
 voice blended with the sweet, silvery ones of 
 the young girl, always rang out, to the music 
 of an old piano, making the sweetest accom- 
 paniment to the patter of the rain-drops. Some- 
 times when the rain ceased, I would see them 
 come out in the doorway for a moment, and 
 laugh at the poor sleepy honeysuckle who had 
 shut her bright eyes at the first approach of 
 the rain-drops. I heard them say they liked 
 the rain, and in fact I think there were few 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 89 
 
 things they disliked, in those brief, blissful "sum- 
 mers of their betrothal. 
 
 I used to run over there in the mornings 
 when the young girl was training the honey- 
 suckle about the lattice, and when the sunlight 
 fell on her golden hair I thought it was heaven's 
 kiss on that fair young head she seemed so 
 much in harmony with all the sweet silent in- 
 fluences of earth and air. I remember she 
 always welcomed me with a smile and a kiss, 
 and fed me with little homely dainties made by 
 her own hands. 
 
 They were all alone in the world, she and 
 the lady, her silver-haired mother, whose aged 
 expressive face told of so many sorrows and 
 happinesses in the past. I believe they were 
 English people, and that some misfortune had 
 brought them all this long way from home, 
 across the great ocean, to the new w r orld. The 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 lady always looked as if she had just stepped 
 out of a picture, in those soft gray silks with 
 the narrow lace ruffles at her throat and wrists, 
 and the young girl was always in those fleecy 
 frocks from early spring until autumn came 
 again. 
 
 I think the young man, who was the young 
 girl's lover, was more to the sweet simple lives 
 of those two dear women, than the heir 
 of a throne can ever be to his princess- 
 consort, or even to the fond, proud heart of 
 his queenly mother. It seemed they had 
 known him a great many years, and although 
 there was no formality between them, even a 
 child might observe a refinement in their in- 
 tercourse, of which Americans know so little. 
 
 I am sure they never met without that grave 
 sweet salutation of hand-shaking, although 
 their lips did not always meet in a warmer 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 9! 
 
 caress, and the young man always asked for 
 the lady, and greeted her in the exact way that 
 he would have met his hostess in a drawing- 
 room. I wonder if people ever reflect upon 
 how far the little refined attentions of social 
 life go to make life worth living? I am sure 
 it never occurred to this simple trio that their 
 manners were in any way superior to those of 
 their bluff, hearty neighbors. The lady's man- 
 ners were simply those that her mother had 
 taught her, and the young girl could never 
 have been otherwise than refined, with such a 
 mother as her's was, and yet there was some- 
 thing so indescribably charming in their society, 
 that I used to sit with them for hours at a time, 
 until my nurse was dispatched to bring me 
 home. These good people loved children, and 
 I think they were the only persons I have ever 
 met, who in any way understood or sympa- 
 
92 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 thized with little folks, especially with fanciful 
 little folks, in all their many real and imaginary 
 pleasures and woes. I was not at all timid with 
 them, in fact they drew out my thoughts so 
 unknowingly, that I never realized I was open- 
 ing my heart to them until long years after- 
 ward, when the lady and the young girl had 
 become to earth only a memory, and when 
 well advanced toward womanhood, I began to 
 cast about me for friends such as they had 
 been, to find not only an entire absence of any- 
 thing in human nature like them, but also a 
 doubly aching void inasmuch as these sweet 
 souls had been, but were not 
 
 I remember feeling an intense jealousy of 
 the young man, invariably running home 
 so soon as he made his appearance, and I must 
 say that while this singular freak would have 
 created merriment in almost any other, the 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 93 
 
 young girl always looked grieved at my foolish 
 pique, and kissed me again and again to assure 
 me of her affection. The young man, too, 
 always tried to conciliate me, but my instincts 
 were too strong; I knew whose heart he filled, 
 and so I soon began to time my visits in . the 
 early morning, leaving the twilights jealously 
 to him. 
 
 When I think of those three sweet summers 
 now, I think their lives might perhaps have 
 gone on in the same untroubled way until to- 
 day, with little difference, except that the 
 young girl would have worn a wedding-ring, 
 and little children, in her own image, would 
 have played about her feet in the shade of the 
 honeysuckle, had it not been that disease so 
 soon fastened his cruel fangs upon her delicate 
 frame, and death with his long bony finger, 
 pointed onward to the grave. 
 
94 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 She was only slightly unwell at first, and 
 always among the flowers in the summer 
 mornings, where I often went to her, to ask 
 her how she had rested through the night, but 
 I soon learned that the twilights on the piazza 
 were given up, and that she lay quietly on the 
 sofa instead, while the lady and the young man 
 sang or read to her for a few brief hours, until 
 she would fall into a lethargy which was not 
 sleep, yet from which they could not rouse her 
 until morning. At first they thought she 
 would soon be well again, and sought to en- 
 courage her by promises of little gifts, and 
 journeys she was to take when she recovered. 
 The young girl always smiled at these promises, 
 and laid her warm flushed cheeks against their 
 palms, in grateful acknowledgment of their 
 love, but I am sure she knew from the begin- 
 ning of her illness that she must leave them 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 95 
 
 soon, and that all their dreams of future bliss 
 could not be realized except in heaven. 
 
 I have seen her great, bright eyes follow the 
 young man and the lady when she knew they 
 were not looking, and I have seen their lovely 
 depths full of grave concern and sorrow, not 
 for herself, but for those she must leave behind. 
 I think she feared things must go ill with them 
 when she had gone, so well she knew how 
 they loved her, and how blank must be their 
 lives without her. This fear for her dear ones 
 was all that seemed to try her in those last 
 weary months of pain and suffering. For her- 
 self she was resigned; so easy is it, for sweet 
 souls like her's, to put off mortality for ever- 
 lasting life. 
 
 She had forsaken the out-door twilights for 
 a long time, and taken to her sofa constantly, 
 before the thought ever flashed across the 
 
96 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 young man's mind that she would soon fade 
 out of his life forever. The cruel truth came 
 upon him very suddenly, and I know his heart 
 broke those long dull days in the autumn of the 
 year, and the winter of her life. 
 
 Summer sped away very early that year; 
 and I have always thought nature sent those 
 sobbing autumn rains that season, out of pure 
 grief for the young thing who had always been 
 her earnest worshipper. And so, while the 
 drizzling rain fell on the piazza, and hung the 
 honeysuckle with glistening tear-drops, the 
 flames leaped high from the great wood fire in 
 the little parlor, and the young girl grew as 
 white as the forced rosebuds they sent her every 
 morning; and on either cheek burned those 
 little hectic spots, which were, alas ! the harb- 
 ingers of her untimely end. 
 
 I believe the lady was not surprised, when 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 97 
 
 the doctor told her the fatal truth. Consump- 
 tion had long been in her family, and though 
 she grew paler and thinner herself as the sor- 
 rowful days went by, I cannot remember ever 
 hearing her murmur at the hardness of fate. 
 She was old, and her time, too, must come soon. 
 
 After all, it was for the young man she sor- 
 rowed most. He it was who must live on 
 through the empty, dreary years ; he, in the 
 pride of his strength, in the glow of his manly 
 beauty ; he already half-way up the ladder that 
 men call fortune broken, bent, aged before his 
 time. They knew too well, how changed he 
 would be in a few short years, for all his life he 
 had loved the young girl, and they knew he 
 would go down to his grave with her name on 
 his lips. 
 
 I used to think the young girl was the 
 greater mourner in these last days, for her 
 
98 THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 lover's mind was already bending beneath its 
 great weight, and it was she who preserved 
 the clearest perception down to the very end. 
 The last night of her life, she begged him to 
 rouse himself from the stupor she saw envelop- 
 ing him, and go out into the world doing good 
 for her sake; but I fear she must have known 
 it was too late, for when they found her sweet, 
 dead face among its pillows, his eyes were 
 fixed in a glassy stare, that was very different 
 from the sweet, calm look the angels had left 
 in her's. 
 
 And so it came about that they buried her 
 yonder in the church-yard, among all those 
 mossy graves, with the long afternoon shadows 
 falling on the stone at her head ; and, somehow, 
 it has always seemed to me, that the sunlight 
 loves to fall on the grave of the young girl; 
 and that when the doves come on their annual 
 
THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 99 
 
 pilgrimage, they hover for hours together, over 
 this pure young thing whose prototypes they 
 are, and when I hear them moaning over her 
 mossy grave, I think of the poor, old senseless 
 creature whom I met in the street yesterday 
 begging for alms, and my tears flow unre- 
 strained, for I know that this is he, who was 
 her lover in those sweet summer twilights of 
 my childhood. 
 
 As I turn sadly away from the church-yard, 
 I behold this same weary old man approaching 
 the place, with slow and feeble footsteps. He 
 gives me a dull, meaningless look, and goes on 
 by the same well-known path I have just trod 
 to her grave. 
 
 Oh! could he but know how I loved her 
 too, and how my heart was wrung when they 
 carried her out here, to live forever among the 
 doves and the long afternoon shadows. Could 
 
IOO THE HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE. 
 
 he but know how I, like him, have yearned for 
 her all these long years since I have known she 
 can never come back to either of us. 
 
 And yet, I never go into that empty cottage 
 with its broken windows, where the birds have 
 long since built their nests, and where the great 
 spiders, hang their webs like threads of gossa- 
 mer through the open sunshine, that her sweet 
 presence is not with me as it was in the old 
 days. Again we are twining the branches of 
 the honeysuckle, not over the dilapidated win- 
 dows and porches of this poor, broken old 
 house, but over the snowy lattice of what was 
 then, and what will ever be to my memory 
 through all the years, the dearest, loveliest 
 place on earth, sweet Honeysuckle Cottage ! 
 
PLEASANT PEOPLE. 
 
PLEASANT PEOPLE. 
 
 HAT a relief it is to find people 
 gwho are really pleasant! Not 
 selfish, fashionable, conventional 
 people who over-awe you with 
 their superior knowledge, and gaze 
 on you with pity when you attempt a remark ; nor 
 prejudiced people; nor people who talk chiefly 
 upon politics or religion ; nor people of one 
 idea who harp on it continually. O ! dear no, 
 not any of these, but really, pleasant com- 
 panionable people, with whom you may ex- 
 change ideas, in whose houses you feel per- 
 fectly at home; where you may go and sit for 
 
IO6 PLEASANT PEOPLE. 
 
 an hour, and talk about the day's doings or any- 
 thing that interests you, without fear of molesta- 
 tion or adverse criticism ; where your remarks 
 pass for what they are; where you may ex- 
 press your opinions freely, without fear of mis- 
 construction, and where you may glean golden 
 ideas from your thoughtful, intelligent friend, 
 who varies the monotony of your every-day 
 existence by expressions and interpretations 
 which would never occur to your weary brain, 
 did you not receive such valuable hints through 
 the enchanting medium of a little quiet rational 
 conversation. 
 
 You go to your friend weary and care-worn, 
 her quiet tones soothe and calm your spirit, 
 and her ideas put new life into you, and make 
 you forget your weariness and grow enthusias- 
 tic. This desirable effect is something that is 
 rarely experienced in society and seldom in 
 
PLEASANT PEOPLE. IO/ 
 
 the home circle; as people living in the same 
 house travel over each other's minds so often 
 that a frequent exchange of ideas often leads 
 over precisely the same ground that it did yes- 
 terday or the day before. Outside companion- 
 ship, a friend to whom one may fly as a con- 
 versational refuge, at least once a week, is an 
 adjunct to the life of every man and woman, 
 which should be considered as indispensable as 
 the morning paper or mid-day meal. Some- 
 where in your head there are ideas ; they do 
 not come out during your customary interviews 
 with your servants, nor do they often vent 
 themselves upon your husband, who hurries 
 away in the morning and returns at night quite 
 too weary for anything like exhilarating con- 
 versation. You have ideas, find a listener and 
 express them. Don't shut up the best part of 
 yourself like a nautilus does in its shell. Don't 
 
IO8 PLEASANT PEOPLE. 
 
 allow yourself to grow so rusty in expression 
 as not to be able to write a pleasant paragraph. 
 Read, talk, write. Keep your eyes and ears 
 open, for your children's sake, if not your own, 
 and never sink to that miserable mediocrity 
 which encompasses three-fourths of the world's 
 people who are not "pleasant" by any means. 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 r- . . 
 
 r^' 
 
 ; WAY back in the dim recesses of 
 
 my memory there is stored a pic- 
 ty'ture of a white county landscape 
 at Christmas time, with a soft gray 
 sky and little chattering snow-birds 
 giving forth the only sounds that disturb the 
 otherwise perfect stillness ; there are broad 
 smoke wreaths curling from the old red chim- 
 neys, and the faint creak of a saw in the dis- 
 tance, falls upon the ear like the drowsy hum 
 of a bee in summer. 
 
 On such a morning being then a mere child 
 I remember having been driven to Uncle 
 Marley's in one of those old-time vehicles 
 
114 FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 
 
 known in rural districts as bob-sleds, and upon 
 being ejected from the same, and relieved of 
 the extra quantity of snow that enveloped me, 
 I have a faint recollection of waddling up the 
 walk, not without several accidents however, 
 such as falling squarely upon my infantile nose, 
 my heels for some occult reason projecting 
 wildly into space. I remember lying there a 
 few minutes, strengthened by a conceit such as 
 my wife now tells me belongs to all masculine 
 children, and also to those children of a larger 
 growth, that my cousin Faith would come 
 running out of the house, as was her wont, in 
 her pretty blue hood and mittens, her rosy 
 cheeks all aglow with exercise, to pick me out 
 of the snow-drift, and having quieted my 
 screams with kisses, run laughing with me into 
 the house. All this I lay there imagining, 
 hugging the sweet unction to my heart, and 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 1 1 5 
 
 quite content to wait till she should come. 
 But Faith did not hasten to my rescue that 
 morning, and good Aunt Marley finally catch- 
 ing sight of my copper-toed boots sticking so 
 curiously out of the drift, came running to my 
 aid, her cap strings flying in the breeze, and 
 her soft, brown eyes wearing a sad expression 
 I had never seen them wear before. I became 
 contrite at once. 
 
 " I ain't hurt, Aunty," I said. " I tell you a 
 secret, Aunty, I was just lying here waiting for 
 Faith to come and pick me up." Thus reas- 
 sured, as I supposed, Aunt Marley laughed in 
 spite of herself, though her face grew very 
 grave as we entered the old kitchen where the 
 great logs blazed on the hearth, and the long 
 shining rows of tins, arranged on the walls by 
 Faith's willing hands, reflected the firelight 
 and shone like burnished silver; the cat dozed 
 
u6 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 in its place on the hearth, and the tall clock in 
 the corner ticked away the hours slowly and 
 lazily, as only country clocks can do. 
 
 Uncle Marley was in his accustomed place, 
 but strange to say, neither dozing nor reading. 
 His white head was bowed on his hand, and 
 his eyes seemed intent on fathoming some 
 mystery in the fire. He looked up as I entered, 
 but child as I was, I missed the enthusiastic 
 welcome the old man usually gave me, and I 
 was hurt. 
 
 "Where's Faith?" I said, my sensitive little 
 voice beginning to choke with sobs ; the ther- 
 mometer of my intelligence told me there was 
 something wrong with Uncle and Aunt Mar- 
 ley's temperature this morning. I would find 
 Faith and be comforted ! I knew where to find 
 her. When absent from the great kitchen or 
 dining-room as it was more properly called, I 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. I I/ 
 
 knew that Faith was generally in her own room, 
 a cozy little place at the other end of the house 
 which had been sacred to her use since her 
 childhood; but would wonders never cease? 
 Aunt Marley refused to let me go to her! 
 Here was a pretty state of things, indeed. I, 
 Johnny Marley, Faith Marley's favorite among 
 a whole host of ruddy little cousins ; I for 
 whom she had popped corn, and cracked nuts, 
 and made ginger-bread horses, and pulled 
 candy all these six little years of my existence 
 I refused admittance? 'Twas a riddle past 
 my solving, and I sank down on Aunt Marley's 
 lap a little heap of disconsolate misery. 
 
 As I think of that day now, I remember that 
 Uncle and Aunt Marley exchanged no words 
 during the entire forenoon, and when I had 
 been coaxed to run and play with Tray, the 
 house-dog, while Auntie prepared the old- 
 
u8 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 fashioned twelve o'clock dinner, it seemed to 
 me that the very sun would stop shining pres- 
 ently, everything seemed so strange and un- 
 natural about the usually cheerful place. I had 
 lost a baby sister the previous summer, and 
 somehow Uncle Marley's house felt a good 
 deal to-day as ours had done that morning, 
 when baby lay in the dark front parlor, and 
 everybody was so still and sorrowful. 
 
 Tray and I had found a sunny corner near 
 the barn, and I was giving him the benefit of 
 my gloomy cogitations, when Aunt Marley's 
 sweet voice called me to dinner. Of course I 
 hurried in little boys are always hungry, you 
 know and when Auntie had washed my face 
 and brushed my hair, and my spirits were fast 
 reviving, owing to the fragrant effects attribut- 
 able to the odor of baked beans and spicy 
 pumpkin pies, I overheard Uncle telling her 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. . I 1 9 
 
 in the pantry to "go and fetch Faith, he couldn't 
 sit down without the child," and then Auntie 
 trudged away to Faith's room, and though she 
 did not know it, I followed quietly behind. 
 
 The door was tightly closed, and when Aunt 
 Marley lifted the latch, I saw such a poor white 
 creature lying among the pillows of Faith's 
 bed, that my heart began to beat wildly as I 
 wondered if she had not gone to meet baby in 
 heaven. The girl was worn with anxiety and 
 sleeplessness ; there were great dark rings about 
 her bright eyes; she looked like the spirit of 
 herself. 
 
 " Don't come in, mother," she pleaded, "I 
 can't see you just yet," and Aunt Marley went 
 back to the kitchen, crying as if her heart 
 would break. 
 
 After that there was a pretense of eating 
 dinner, though I remember distinctly that the 
 
I2O FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 
 
 two poor souls did not eat a mouthful, and then 
 Uncle Marley said he must go over to the south 
 pasture to see how the men were getting on 
 with the sawing, and he shook hands with me 
 in his hearty bluff fashion, and having given 
 me a gold dollar for Christmas, was away over 
 the meadows to the pasture. 
 
 The next day would be Christmas and as we 
 lived some distance away, my father called for 
 me early in the afternoon that we might reach 
 home in time for the Christmas-eve festivities 
 he always prepared for his children. When he 
 came in ruddy with the cold, and slapping his 
 big hands before the blazing fire to warm them, 
 Aunt Marley only said, "O! Abner " and 
 sent me out with Tray again, that she might 
 unburden her heart to her relative. 
 
 When I saw Faith again she was much as 
 she had always been; a trifle paler, perhaps, 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 121 
 
 and not so merry, but she had taken Faith 
 Marley's place in her father's house once more ; 
 the gentle, trusting, loving daughter, the dis- 
 penser of peace and cheerfulness, the girl whose 
 shadowed life would tend to greater unselfish- 
 ness, to deeper devotion, than even its sweet 
 nature had ever known before. 
 
 It was years before I was old enough to un- 
 derstand, and then upon asking one day why 
 Cousin Faith had never married, they told me 
 of that dark Christmas-time in her life so long 
 ago, when tidings had been received that her 
 betrothed, then absent in a distant city, had 
 proven faithless, and wedded another. At first 
 Faith had defied this statement. How could 
 they speak of him so? He, the embodiment 
 of all that was good and noble, he, the dearest, 
 truest man in all the world! Had she known 
 him all those years but to misjudge him, he 
 
122 FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 
 
 whose sympathies, whose tastes and affections 
 had run so counterpart with hers, that they had 
 long since become part of her own nature; he 
 whose wife she had promised to be with her 
 father's sanction, with all the hallowing influ- 
 ences that go to make pledges inviolate? 
 
 Alas, poor Faith ! only the long desolate 
 years, only the weary, watching, waiting hours 
 might teach you how this could be. Nurtured 
 in the bosom of affection, cultured in all those 
 endearments known to simple, loving family 
 life, what knew you of the ways men have to 
 break women's trusting hearts? Of the long 
 months of silence, the sickening hope deferred, 
 and the cruel end pens cannot paint ! The un- 
 loved, unloving after-years that come to over- 
 balance that first glow of rosy loving trust! 
 The empty, soulless life that stretches away 
 over into the blankness of the grave, even 
 
FAITH MARLEVS CHRISTMAS. 123 
 
 down to the misty shores of eternity ! After 
 a little time she never spoke to any one 
 on the subject, but her mother knew that 
 in her heart she rejected the cruel story, and 
 looked with longing, patient eyes for the time 
 when her lover would return. She always 
 thought of him in the same tender loving way 
 that had been her wont in the days of their 
 betrothal. His gifts hung about her room. 
 His presence was always with her. Her 
 mother often came upon her in the twilight, 
 and saw the sad, sweet eyes looking away 
 so wistfully over the quiet landscape. Had he 
 returned at any hour of the day or night, she 
 would never have been surprised or startled. 
 And when he came, there would be no ques- 
 tioning. Ah ! no, she loved him too well for 
 that! Some cruel thing had only detained 
 him. Men cannot always come to the women 
 
124 FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 
 
 they love just when they like. His long ab- 
 sence would only make their meeting sweeter, 
 would only tinge with deeper bloom their lives, 
 and the lives of their children who would rise 
 up in their grandfather's old age, and call him 
 blessed ! All this she thought, and yet I think she 
 was quite sane on other subjects, and her prac- 
 tical voice more than once righted the affairs 
 of the old farm, for her father was a very old 
 man now, and no son had been born to him in 
 the days of his early manhood. 
 
 And so the seasons came and went. The 
 snow fell in the winter, and she could see him 
 springing up the garden walk just as he used 
 to do ; sometimes he would see her waiting at 
 the window, and then he would kiss his hand 
 to her in the old gallant fashion while she stood 
 blushing to open the door for him. The spring 
 came, and the dried violets on the mantel re- 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 125 
 
 minded her of the May day they had roamed 
 the hills, and gathered them. Summer brought 
 the roses he had loved, and autumn the fruits 
 she had been wont to serve him; all nature re- 
 minded her of him, and the loving, loyal heart 
 never forgot him for a moment. 
 
 All this time Faith did not grow old. Age 
 is reserved for those who despond. Faith 
 hoped. There was something spiritual in this 
 hoping against fate; a sort of uncanny trust in 
 temporal things that made Aunt Marley shud- 
 der as she watched her. Would the scales 
 ever fall from her eyes ? And if they did, what 
 then? This thought sometimes goaded her 
 parents almost to distraction. Poor Aunt Mar- 
 ley! Dearest, most devoted of mothers, how 
 has your heart been wrung at this very tran- 
 quility of Faith's, which you feared would some 
 time be shaken. 
 
126 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 Time went on. I was now grown to young 
 manhood, and during one of my college vaca- 
 tions spent at the home of a classmate in a dis- 
 tant city, I had met George Heathcote, my 
 Cousin Faith's quondam lover. He had been 
 a husband and father for years, but time had 
 not dealt so kindly with him as it had with 
 Faith. His hair was becoming silvered, and 
 the furrows care had made in his face, were 
 deep and prominent. He was a cool, crafty 
 man of the world, this brazen image whom our 
 sweet saint had set up in her heart to worship; 
 a respected citizen, a man prominent in all pub- 
 lic undertakings, a good husband, a devoted 
 father, yet there were wrinkles in his face that 
 told the story of Faith Marley's sorrow. He 
 asked for her; with feeling too, I thought; and 
 when I told him of that sweet, placid life, that 
 deep content which quieted all things in its 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. I2/ 
 
 great calm, he brushed his hand across his eyes 
 that I might not see his tears. How he would 
 have accounted for that strange freak which led 
 to his inconstancy, I knew not then, nor have 
 I ever known. It was too delicate a subject to 
 touch upon, and I had too much regard for 
 Faith, even to broach it in any way. 
 
 The woman's life went on like a poem; so 
 sweet, so subdued, so unlike any other grief- 
 stricken life with all its passionate out-breaks 
 and brooding melancholies. 
 
 It had been Christmas time when Faith's 
 trouble had come upon her. On Christmas 
 eve, the eve of the very day I had spent at 
 Uncle Marley's, fifteen long years ago, Heath- 
 cote was to have come to the farm-house to 
 make arrangements for their bridal. He had not 
 come, but tidings of his inconstancy had ar- 
 rived early, and it was in the first prostration of 
 
128 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 her grief and surprise that I had seen Faith 
 Marley, that long-ago winter's day. After that, 
 Aunt Marley said, Faith had always seemed 
 to regard Christmas eve as a peculiar anniver- 
 sary. At this season of the year she would be- 
 come merry as of old, and with roses blooming 
 in her cheeks, would fly about the old house, 
 brightening it with branches of evergreen and 
 holly; polishing the great brass knockers until 
 they reflected her sweet face; putting a picture 
 here, a ribbon there; airing the quaint old 
 rooms which had not been used since the days 
 of her early girlhood, and which, to any less 
 resolute soul, had been full of ghosts long 
 before. 
 
 There was a room in the house that had been 
 George Heathcote's when he had come to the 
 farm for the holidays or the Sabbath ; for Uncle 
 Marley had been the boy's guardian through 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 129 
 
 all the years of his early orphanage, and this 
 long-unused room Faith used to put in. order 
 every Christmas. The week following my 
 visit at Heathcote's, I arrived at Uncle Marley's 
 just as Faith was putting the finishing touches 
 to this room. It was in perfect order, from the 
 snowy counterpane to the spotless Swiss cur- 
 tains at the window. 
 
 "Isn't it pretty, Cousin Johnnie?" she said. 
 No one ever grew any older in Faith's way of 
 thinking; if her life stood still so must every- 
 body else's. 
 
 "One gets just drowsy enough to sleep well 
 here, from the dripping of the eaves; and I 
 have fed the snow-birds all winter under this 
 window, so they will come and waken George 
 with their cherry voices in the morning!" 
 
 I had never heard my Cousin Faith mention 
 that name before, and a shiver thrilled through 
 
I3O FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 
 
 me as I looked at the slender figure with its 
 burden of thirty-five years, and the now un- 
 naturally bright eyes looking out so longingly 
 over the hills. Aunt Marley said she had 
 spoken to her in the same way too, to-day; 
 there was something strange in all this. Was 
 the end approaching? Surely the hallucina- 
 tion could not last always. The physicians 
 said Faith must eventually awaken to reality, 
 or else lose her reason entirely. These, then, 
 were the cruel alternatives that sweet soul must 
 choose between ; this the price her love had 
 cost her, the pitiless reward for all those years 
 of constancy. And yet when I look back over 
 this sad story, it seems to me that Faith was 
 mercifully spared much suffering, which must 
 have been hers, had her senses been keen 
 
 enough to realize her true situation. Very 
 
 t 
 possibly, too, her character had not been the 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 131 
 
 lovely one that it was, had the intense pain 
 realism would have brought, entered her heart 
 to corrode and tarnish its pure trust. Always 
 unselfish, she had been doubly so since her be- 
 reavement, and though her heart was far away 
 with the man she had loved, her hands were 
 never idle in preparing comforts for her aged 
 parents. 
 
 Uncle Marley had become very childish these 
 last few years, and the more feeble he became 
 the more he and Faith seemed to understand 
 each other. I have seen her brush his hair and 
 arrange his toilet, singing softly to him as she 
 did so, until the old gray head bowed itself in 
 sleep upon her shoulder. At these times she 
 never moved lest she should disturb him, but sat 
 quietly in her chair, with that dreamy look in 
 her soft eyes, always looking, looking into 
 space. On such occasions I have often im- 
 
132 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 agined that Faith fancied her father to be her 
 child ; a fancy strengthened by a gentle rocking 
 motion she always used in soothing him to 
 sleep, and by the cradle songs she always sang 
 him. All these phases and imageries had be- 
 come as familiar to Aunt Marley as the oldest 
 household word. She was a woman of quick 
 perceptions, and Faith had been her study for 
 years. Dear Aunt Marley! As I look up 
 from my writing to-day, and behold you seated 
 at my fireside, my little son established on your 
 knee, there is a sorrow in your wrinkled face 
 that passeth all understanding. How few of 
 us go down to our graves fully realizing how 
 our mothers have suffered for us ! The very 
 poetry of nature was herein typified. Faith's 
 sorrow was more to Aunt Marley than it was 
 to Faith herself! The mother knew every 
 changing expression of the girl's face, and 
 
FAITH MARLEYS CHRISTMAS. 133 
 
 sorrowed over it in her secret soul. But 
 to return to that Christmas eve. I had 
 early decided to remain at Uncle Marley's over 
 night, as I knew my presence would in some 
 degree reassure Aunt Marley, and might also 
 have some effect on Faith, who never left her 
 seat by the window after the first approach of 
 night. In vain I tried to engage her in conver- 
 sation, faint smiles were her only replies; 
 although once she laid her hand on my head, 
 and apologized to me for not having been able 
 to see me in the morning. At first I did not 
 catch her meaning, but when I saw Aunt Mar- 
 ley start and shudder as if an adder had stung 
 her, I knew that Faith's mind had gone back 
 to that day fifteen years before, when I had 
 seen her in the first paroxysm of her grief. 
 
 "All that is over now, Johnnie," she said 
 presently. " He is coming soon. No, mother, 
 
134 FAITH 'MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 don't drop the curtains; I can't see if you do 
 that!" And so Aunt Marley tied the curtains 
 back again, with the fresh blue ribbon Faith 
 had put there in the morning, that the poor 
 soul might look up and down the long white 
 road, and imagine she heard the sound of 
 wheels. 
 
 The place was very still ; there was nothing 
 save the nervous click, click of Aunt Marley's 
 knitting-needles, and the ticking of the old 
 clock to disturb the stillness, and when I 
 glanced over at the pale figure crouched at the 
 window, with the clasped hands, and earnest, 
 eager eyes, there was a ghastliness about the 
 scene and the silence which I can never forget. 
 Who knows, mused I, how this night will end 
 for Faith, for with all her hoping she had 
 never been so intent on Heathcote's coming as 
 she was to-night. Would her warm imagina- 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 135 
 
 tion drive him to these gates? Would fancy 
 waft him to this loving heart to which he had 
 so long been a stranger? Mayhap sleep would 
 come and with her rosy wings brush out these 
 cob-web fancies. Pray heaven it might. Thus 
 I mused while Aunt Marley's shining needles 
 clicked on, and the tall clock in the corner 
 truck the dragging hours. 
 
 The features of the snowy landscape reflect- 
 ed by the bright rays of the moon, streamed 
 in through the parted curtains and lay so many 
 ghastly shadows on the floor. Instinctively 
 I began to grow nervous, and having risen to 
 mend the fire, approached the window oppo- 
 site Faith. Was I dreaming? No. I rubbed 
 my eyes. I was here in the flesh. I, John 
 Marley, home from college on a vacation, 
 spending the night at Uncle Marley's that I 
 might bear my poor Aunt company in her 
 
136 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 anxiety for Faith. All this I experienced in an 
 instant, but not until I had seen a sleigh dash 
 up to the gate, and my Cousin Faith open the 
 door, and fly down the walk like a spirit, her 
 fair hair coming unbound as she ran, making 
 her look in her light^ robes like something 
 supernatural. Still, half-doubting the evidence 
 of our senses, Aunt Marley and I followed 
 speedily in Faith's footsteps. Two men were 
 lifting a man's body from- the sleigh, and Faith 
 was chafing its cold hands, and moaning over 
 it, as she had never moaned in all the years of 
 her desolation. 
 
 They carried him to the house, Faith leading 
 the way to the little room she had arranged in 
 the morning, and when the candles were 
 brought in I knew that the man who lay be- 
 fore us was George Heathcote. Driving a 
 spirited horse through that part of the country 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 137 
 
 on a mission of business, he had become 
 paralyzed with the cold, and the animal had 
 plunged forward into a ravine, throwing him 
 upon a bed of sharp rocks, and inflicting seri- 
 ous wounds from which he would never re- 
 cover. 
 
 As we stood there in the dim light of the 
 candles, after the physician had dressed the 
 wounds, I wondered if Faith, who never left 
 his side, recognized the changes time had made 
 in the man she had loved with such singular 
 constancy. I do not believe that a single feature 
 of his face had changed to her, nor that she 
 took any heed of the long heavy beard he had 
 grown, or of the furrows in the brow she had 
 known smooth as a child's. 
 
 Once only she left him, and then I heard her 
 awakening her father to tell him that George 
 had come, and she feared he was seriously hurt. 
 
138 FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 She was quite rational on the subject of Heath- 
 cote's great danger. She refused to let any- 
 one else care for him, and took the doctor's 
 directions quite as lucidly as would the ablest, 
 most experienced nurse. 
 
 The man had been thrown into a heavy stu- 
 por, from which he only roused once before he 
 died. Faith had been giving him a cordial, 
 and we gazed at her with swimming eyes as she 
 lifted his heavy head to her shoulder, and laid 
 her warm soft cheek against the one already 
 stiffening in death. 
 
 Was it divine, or was it but an illustration of 
 the doctrine of compensation ? who shall say, 
 that faint gleam of consciousness which came 
 to George Heathcote in the last hours of his 
 life ? For an instant his eyes opened ; he saw 
 her ; knew that it was she, the love of his boy- 
 hood. His pale lips murmured,"Faith, forgive." 
 
FAITH MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS. 139 
 
 One moment he pressed her to his heart, and 
 this was the end. The man sank back upon 
 his pillow, dead ; and when we went to him we 
 found that Faith had fainted. 
 
 And thus, while kindly hands performed the 
 last sad offices for the man w r ho had so sud- 
 denly gone out of life, the sombre King of 
 Shadows hovered about our own sweet angel, 
 and when another sunset came, our hearts were 
 breaking with a new anguish, for the sweet soul 
 of Faith Marley had gone out to meet her 
 lover's, on that long last journey from whence 
 no traveler returns. 
 
SUNDAY MORNINGS. 
 
SUNDAY MORNINGS. 
 
 HAT a hallowed quiet seems to 
 pervade the atmosphere Sunday 
 mornings. Tired Nature seems to 
 have arrayed herself for the occa- 
 sion, and if you have pitched your 
 tent anywhere outside a mining camp, the dis- 
 tinctive characteristics of the day will impress 
 themselves upon you more earnestly perhaps, 
 than anything else has done during the whole 
 of the past week. You deliberately leave your 
 bed at no very early hour, and stealthily draw- 
 ing your curtains aside, look dreamily into the 
 street below your windows, investing each 
 passer-by with an interest entirely foreign to 
 
144 SUNDAY MORNINGS. 
 
 that which you feel in him ordinarily. Some- 
 how the street seems cleaner than usual; the 
 milkman does not come so early to-day, and 
 the numerous squads of small boys and girls 
 who troop by to the Sabbath schools, are cer- 
 tainly better cleansed and clothed than they 
 were yesterday, when you saw them bound for 
 the park, with those immense long-tailed kites 
 in their hands. 
 
 Your Catholic neighbors, good souls, are 
 earlier in their devotions than other church- 
 goers, and are always distinguishable by the 
 bright colors in their dress, and, often among 
 the younger ones, by their clear pink com- 
 plexions and deep violet eyes, for young Irish 
 beauty is like a mountain flower just kissed by 
 the dawn, so fresh and sweet and simple is it, 
 so wholly unspotted by affectation or a knowl- 
 edge of the world. Sometimes the priest -makes 
 
SUNDAY MORNINGS. 145 
 
 one of this little group, and it not uncommonly 
 occurs to my lady behind the blinds, that he 
 is an exceptionally handsome fellow, and that 
 the admiring glances of the young women fall 
 more than once upon the strong limbs and 
 massive shoulders of him who is set over them 
 as spiritual adviser and teacher. 
 
 The other church people will not sally forth 
 for two hours yet, and as the street scene 
 grows less interesting, you involuntarily turn 
 your attention inside, begin to wonder vaguely 
 if breakfast is nearly ready, and set about pre- 
 paring your toilet in a deliciously lazy manner 
 you would never think of using on a week day. 
 
 The household is comparatively at rest this 
 morning, at least there is none of that hurry 
 and bustle, together with scraping of brooms 
 and rolling of chairs and tables, which your 
 landlady sees fit to inaugurate ordinarily. 
 
146 SUNDAY MORNINGS. 
 
 Sunday rest and relaxation have come over 
 everybody and everything, and it is a blessed 
 feature in the economy of nature that it is so. 
 Everyday life is such a battle with adverse cir- 
 cumstances that our physical organisms, if 
 nothing else, demand Sunday respite, and so 
 strong is the habit or custom, so necessary the 
 relief to exhausted faculties, that Sunday morn- 
 ing brings with it a measure of hushed tran- 
 quility, which is the very essence of perfect 
 peace. 
 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 
 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 
 
 N 
 
 has been deemed best that the old 
 home should be given up, and that its 
 aged master and mistress, now unfit 
 for cares and responsibilities of any 
 kind, should retire to a life of ease 
 and comfort within the family of a near and dear 
 relative, whose pleasure it will be to make the 
 remainder of their days happy and comfortable. 
 Nothing could be kinder than the relative's in- 
 tentions, nothing pleasanter than her spacious 
 home; and yet grandpa's heart aches bitterly 
 as he goes about over his broad lands, and re- 
 alizes that they are henceforth to pass into the 
 hands of strangers, to whom they can have but 
 a moneyed value at best, and who will dispose 
 
152 THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 
 
 of them again, as soon as they can do so advan- 
 tageously. 
 
 'Tis forty long years since grandpa's energy 
 and industry first came to bear upon what was 
 then wild, rugged soil. Little by little he saw 
 vegetation rise where rude desolation once 
 greeted his friendly eyes; day after day he 
 made one improvement after another a fence 
 here, a field there, in another place a broad 
 pasture for his stock, and just back of the 
 house he planted with his own hands that no- 
 ble grove, which has so long since proven such 
 a kindly shelter from summer's heat and win- 
 ter's cold. 
 
 It is a warm spring afternoon, and grandpa 
 is making his last round before leaving the old 
 home for his new quarters in the city, which 
 he is not at all sure he will like, or ever be able 
 to regard as home. He leans heavily on his 
 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 153 
 
 staff, for he has not entirely withstood the ene- 
 mies of old age, and his lameness is very hard 
 to bear at times, though he never complains, 
 and always proudly scorns any offer of sym- 
 pathy. Long years of toil and labor have bent 
 his form, but his noble old head, with its silver}' 
 hair, is still proudly erect, and his keen blue 
 eyes and long white beard would delight the 
 heart of an artist, by furnishing him a type 
 which he had long sought. He goes slowly 
 about the place, looking at everything so 
 quietly and wistfully, much as a mother looks 
 at her stalwart sons who are about to leave her. 
 He approaches the low, rambling, weather- 
 beaten old barn, and his mind goes back to the 
 day when the antiquated structure was 
 " raised." How strong and young he and his 
 friends were then! How broken and bent now 
 with the snows of many winters. 
 
154 THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 
 
 The old place has a charm for grandpa that 
 none other ever can have. It's perfect beauty 
 is the work of his hands. He fashioned it in 
 its infancy; to his untiring efforts all this luxu- 
 rious verdure, all this complete arrangement is 
 due. He has the same pride in it that an au- 
 thor has in his book, or a painter in his picture. 
 Here among these peaceful scenes he spent the 
 days of his early manhood; here he brought 
 his young wife home, when her cheeks were as 
 rosy and her eyes as bright as any young las- 
 sie's in the land to-day. From this home, 
 those who have learned to call him by the lov- 
 ing name of father, have gone out to their vari- 
 ous battles with the world. No, it is not 
 strange he should not like to go, nor that he 
 should linger so long upon the old threshold to 
 which for so many years he has bade his friends 
 welcome. His body will depart from the old 
 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 155 
 
 haunts; the places that knew him so well will 
 know him no more on earth; but his soul will 
 hover about the old homestead until the angels 
 call his lonely spirit to its eternal rest. 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 r<~* 
 
 F you will come and sit with me for 
 
 an hour, we will go about the world in 
 
 a show-box. 
 
 You will have to be very patient, of 
 
 course, for even though fancy's pic- 
 tures are thrown in by the brush of memory, 
 they are yet of that dreamy indistinct nature 
 that brooks no haste, and the leaves of my 
 sketch-book must be turned as slowly and 
 musingly as if they were fabled pages of some 
 book of elf-land. 
 
 Then, too, I may as occasion requires, con- 
 jure up by the aid of my wand, which to you 
 is simply a black lead pencil, such very old 
 
l6o MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 scenes and places that the pictures will be lost 
 in gloom for a little time, and you will conse- 
 quently see nothing but darkness. 
 
 Out of this chaos I will undertake however, 
 to evolve something that may please you this 
 warm May night, as you are resting from the 
 labors of the day, your children on your knees. 
 
 Speaking of children, the first picture in the 
 book is that of a child, for surely children are 
 the beginning of everything that is pure and 
 beautiful in life. This picture is of a wan little 
 face with great sad eyes which seem always 
 filled with tears. They are those of a baby 
 who is laid to rest on a pillow, while a fond 
 mother just in the prime of life bends over the 
 dainty thing to soothe and encourage it with 
 loving mother-words. The baby is sick, but 
 the picture is nevertheless a very pretty one, 
 so filled it is with the essence of all that goes 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. l6l 
 
 to make life worth living; for I think a 
 mother's love is the theme the angels sing most 
 'round the great white throne. 
 
 Turning slowly on, we come to a page where 
 an old white farm-house is set in the midst of 
 thick green shade; masses of purple and scar- 
 let flowers are nodding sleepily in the warm 
 sunshine, and from the open door is heard the 
 sweet low song of the housewife as she goes 
 about her tasks. 
 
 Back of the house lie great golden fields of 
 grain, and the click, click of the reaper is the 
 only sound that disturbs the perfect stillness of 
 the landscape. Dotted here and there across 
 the yellow field stand the harvesters, men of 
 brawn and muscle, whose dark sun-burned 
 arms would pass well as studies for a bronze 
 model ; as noon approaches, a little figure with 
 a sweet primrose face peeping demurely forth 
 
1 62 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 from a white sun-bonnet, comes tripping over 
 the field with a willow basket on her arm, and 
 one there is- a great sturdy blue-eyed young 
 fellow who hastens on to meet her and relieve 
 her of her load. Let us hope that he will lift 
 life's burdens for her as willingly as he lifts the 
 basket to-day, and that the light will shine 
 quite as brightly over their future, as it does 
 over the yellow grain fields ripening there in 
 the summer sun. 
 
 The next picture we come upon is that of a 
 mountain pass ; ten thousand feet above the sea 
 man's ingenuity has carried us, and here we 
 are bowling along among the clouds, with the 
 everlasting purple hills on every side, and the 
 sun just sinking to rest over there in his crim- 
 son bed. 
 
 The silence is so great up here, that one can 
 think of nothing save the unfathomed mysteries 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 163 
 
 of life and death. Left thus alone with crea- 
 tion we realize more than ever our insignifi- 
 cance, yet are forced to contemplate the intense 
 power of feeling we have within. 
 
 Our party alights and stands gazing about 
 the boundless landscape. Ah ! how difficult it 
 is to breathe. How infinitely larger the world 
 is away up here among the clouds. We are 
 traversing a narrow track of railroad, and it 
 seems nature must have provided just this 
 much space for it to occupy, as there is not 
 room enough left to allow the passage of a 
 wheelbarrow ; but there are chasms bottom- 
 less chasms it seems to us and great rocky 
 precipices whose wooded sides are sloping 
 down so beautifully to death in the vast rocks 
 and rushing streams below ; there are hills and 
 hills, rocks and rocks ; trees as green as emer- 
 alds, and that great boundless stretch of crim- 
 
164 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 son sunset over the whole. Oh ! vastness ! thou 
 art here, these are thy tents and tabernacles ; 
 this silence the language of thy great bursting 
 heart! Surely in these dim aisles man's nature 
 may expand, and truly I think such is the case, 
 for here are two brothers separated for thirty 
 years by cruel distance and more cruel mis- 
 understanding, pressing each other's hands, 
 and smiling into each other's eyes the long ago 
 smiles of their boyhood. 
 
 The train has reached a little station it 
 seems there are stations in the clouds as well as 
 on the earth and the station-master, a little 
 old uncouth figure in mountain attire, comes 
 limping out of his wooden dwelling to hoist an 
 old red flag, as is his wont, and presently it 
 seems the poor old cripple is transformed, for the 
 portly well dressed stranger who alights from 
 the train to grasp his hand, is no other than his 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 165 
 
 rich twin brother, who has come all the long 
 way from England to see him. 
 
 Smile on, poor little crippled station-master! 
 Don for a time the garments of civilization, 
 and descend into the pleasant valleys, there to 
 mingle a brief day with the fellow-creatures 
 whose faces and manners you have so nearly 
 forgotten; revel for an hour in music, in drama, 
 in books, in pictures; drink your soul's fill of 
 all that men call good in crowded cities, but 
 forget not to return to your cloud-land home, 
 where every breeze that blows is fraught with 
 purity, and where nature's everlasting silence is 
 the solemn benediction of creation. 
 
 Turning another page, we have soon de- 
 scended into a mine, apparently as far within 
 the bowels of the earth as we have just been 
 into the clouds. Down, down, down, we are 
 lowered by a powerful rope, our vehicle being 
 
1 66 MY SKETCH 'BOOK. 
 
 a mighty bucket of oak and iron, our only 
 light a sickly candle held in the hand. 
 
 The further we go the darker it becomes, 
 and the cavernous walls through which we are 
 passing, seem damp with the slime of ages ; at 
 times the darkness becomes impenetrable, but 
 we finally arrive at something we imagine to 
 be the bottom, where men are working with 
 picks at the cavernous walls. More sickly 
 candles stuck everywhere like pale eruptions 
 on the sides of a dark volcano more men 
 hurrying hither and thither, leading damp, un- 
 healthy, wretched lives, their faces gleaming 
 through the darkness like those of pale weary 
 ghosts. Few words pass between them, as in 
 this way much of the noisome air is excluded 
 from the lungs. 
 
 Little cars loaded with ores are coming and 
 going all the time, drawn by patient mules 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. I 67 
 
 over narrow tram-ways; one man is firing a 
 blast, and presently we hear the tremendous 
 report, when it seems to us that all the powers 
 of the lower depths are let loose for the de- 
 struction of the world. There is nothing pleas- 
 ant in this subterranean cavern or in that which 
 is at once the abode of what is both the gold- 
 en curse and blessing of the world; through 
 it all there is a strong suggestion of the horri- 
 ble struggles men must always undergo who 
 work for money. Dark unhealthy place, abode 
 of disease, of severe labor and often of temp- 
 tation, crime and death, we leave you, and seek 
 once more the upper air. Ah ! never has that 
 intangible ether seemed so .sweet, never have 
 heaven's rays smiled down upon us half so 
 fondly. 
 
 If you want to appreciate a sunshiny day, 
 pass an hour among the sickly horrors of a mine. 
 
1 68 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Turn over the page. Why, what have we 
 here? An African desert over which the sum- 
 mer heats are pouring with such a degree of 
 fierceness, that it would seem king Sol had 
 some idea of annihilating the swarthy Arabian 
 soldiers who are squatting about in the sand, 
 half naked, although armed to the teeth. 
 Tents there are in long white rows ; and sand, 
 sand, nothing but hot, white sand as far as the 
 eye can reach. 
 
 It is the eve of a great battle, but it cannot 
 be said that the thought of war lias many ter- 
 rors for these fierce men, who squat about the 
 tents in strange fantastic attire. War is to 
 them the breath of life. Long immured to 
 battle, they, and their noble steeds tethered 
 there, at the rear of the tents, think no more 
 of a hot engagement than they do of a break- 
 fast on their native house-tops. 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 169 
 
 A glance at them shows you they are born 
 cut-throats; noble figures they are, too, there 
 in the strange contrast of the white burning 
 sand, and the vast background of snowy tents. 
 The Arabic commander, a tall man in a 
 European costume, paces back and forth, time 
 after time, through the length of his spacious 
 tent, and wishes, from the bottom of his heart, 
 for sunset, and an abatement of the heat; the 
 greater part of his life he has spent in Europe, 
 and he dares not expose his body to the fierce 
 rays of the sun, as his more hardened country- 
 men can do. He is nervous to-night, too; 
 you see there is an English prisoner in the 
 Arabic camp, who is to be shot dead for some 
 trivial offense, to-morrow at day-break, and 
 although the commander is obliged to see that 
 the deed is done, his heart, hard as it may be, 
 is bitterly against it, and cries "reprieve," 
 
I/O MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 against all his better military judgment 
 They have met before, these two men, at 
 Oxford, where they were both students, and 
 once in a tour through Italy. " It is hard," 
 muses the commander, " to shoot down a man 
 whom one knows, like a dog," but he knows 
 there is no escape, knows what rigid penalty 
 a man must pay for commanding a heathen 
 army; and so his weary walk goes on, and he 
 does not pause until a shadow r falls in the door- 
 way, and his name is pronounced in thrilling 
 pleading accents. 
 
 A girl, small and dark and lovely a girl 
 with a piquant face, and great burning black 
 eyes, her slight form clad in some scarlet thing 
 that is floating at her saddle, flings the reins of 
 her horse, who is streaked with foam and dust, 
 to a soldier, and throws herself, half-fainting, 
 into the commander's arms. The horse sinks 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 down there in the sand and closes his eyes. 
 The zouaves say he cannot live till morning. 
 She has ridden the noble animal to death. 
 
 The officer lays the girl on his own soft 
 couch, bids an attendant bathe her face and 
 give her cooling drink, and calls a slave to care 
 for the dying horse. The girl is Cosette, the 
 brave French child, whom they have long 
 since made the daughter of their army; the 
 girl who has ridden at the head of long lines 
 of troops through all the hottest engagements 
 of the war ; the girl whose voice has long been 
 heard among the swarthy hosts, and whose 
 military tactics and great presence of mind, 
 are equal to those of any commander in Africa. 
 
 The officer is deeply touched to see her in so 
 weak a condition. What can bring her here, 
 on this mad ride of life and death? Has she 
 been pursued by the enemy ? 
 
1/2 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 "No," she gasps out, she can talk now, 
 thanks to the iced wine and the great fans that 
 are always moving in the tent. " It is about 
 about the English prisoner, she has come to 
 speak." She has known him many years. He 
 is a good man. He did not mean that trivial 
 insult he had accidentally given the African 
 army. Oh! no; she knew it was not in the 
 commander's power to revoke the sentence, 
 but there was always a clause in those savage 
 death sentences of the desert which read: 
 " Unless another will die in the prisoner's stead." 
 Here her eyes kindled : " I have come to die 
 for the young Englishman," she says, as quietly 
 as one might say, " I am come to dine." 
 
 " Because you love him ? " the officer asks. 
 
 " Because I love him," Cosette replies. And 
 thus it is that when the morning breaks over 
 the tents, and the burning sand reflects a 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 thousand dusky shadows in its white deeps, 
 the girl with the piquant face is brought for- 
 ward, and shot dead through the heart, in the 
 face of the assembled army. 
 
 Dead with all the sins of her loose immoral 
 life upon her pretty head; dead before the 
 sands of time had yet doled out one pitiful 
 score of years; dead 'ere she had known good 
 from evil ; dead for the man she loved. 
 
 And I think if there is a heaven, she is there, 
 for to me she is the noblest picture in all my 
 sketch-book, and far away as are the time and 
 place, across the long lapse of years, away off 
 there in that white African desert, I can feel 
 the pressure of those little dark hot hands, and 
 catch a glimpse of that sweet unselfish face, 
 which to me is lovelier than that of any saint. 
 What a vivid picture it is, that sketch of the 
 great army beneath the burning sun, and that 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 poor child come as a deliverer to her lover! 
 But let us turn the page. The next sketch 
 is>a scene in the black forests of Louisiana. It 
 is night; owls are hooting in the branches of 
 great trees ; poisonous vines and thick under- 
 brush crawl along the ground; there is not 
 even a path through the forest, so dense are 
 the noisome creepers. There is no moon, and 
 a young traveler misled by the delusive ignus 
 fatuus, has lost his way, and sunk to his waist 
 in a treacherous marsh there among the trees. 
 He is terrified beyond expression. The 
 bright eyes of wild beasts glare at him from all 
 parts of the forest; anon he hears the deep 
 coarse sound of their voices, and he shudders 
 and moans, and cries aloud for help. Rattle- 
 snakes go by with that dread whirring sound 
 which in so many cases means instant death; 
 great frightful birds flap their wings in the 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 black sky; it is a time of horror and despair. 
 As the night advances, he manages to extri- 
 cate himself from the marsh, but is unable to 
 make his way out of the forest, and so spends 
 a most wretched night there under the trees. 
 He is wrought up to a highly nervous state, 
 and during the long night, evil spirits, long 
 since banished to these swamps, come to him, 
 and seek to drag him far away to darker 
 haunts. It is one of them you see there in the 
 picture, that shadowy being there, in a sable 
 garment. These are the spirits of murderers, 
 of thieves, of defrauders, of assassins; of vil- 
 lains whose crimes were so intangible as to 
 avoid the clutches of the law, but whose spirits 
 are now the blackest of them all. 
 
 Oh ! what a horrible night. How the owls 
 hoot, how the wild eyes glare, and how those 
 stealthy spirits steal back and forth through 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the poisonous foliage. The traveler imagines 
 his dark locks to be turning white with terror, 
 and instinctively puts up his hand to his head 
 just then the blessed rays of morning break 
 over the forest; the beasts retire to their lairs 
 and the owls to their accustomed hiding-places 
 in the trees. Of a sudden, the spirits of evil 
 stalk no longer amid the woody aisles, and an 
 ebony teamster, driving a pair of homely oxen, 
 comes riding into view on the traveled road, 
 which the youth now sees so distinctly, and 
 which to him has been so near and yet so far 
 all the long night. 
 
 Oh! joy, the negro is singing. His rich 
 voice rings out in a plantation melody, and 
 quite puts to rout all the darksome influences 
 of the sombre shadowy place. The boy 
 springs to his feet, shouts with all his might, 
 glad to use his lungs again. The negro hears 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 177 
 
 him, and calls " whoa," to the oxen, in a tone 
 they never fail to understand; rolls the whites 
 of his eyes, in a manner expressive of how 
 fearful a night in that lonely place would be to 
 him, and, hospitably making room for the be- 
 nighted traveler, drives quickly away from the 
 sombre scene. 
 
 And so the young man and the negro travel 
 on together, and I am sure if the traveler lives 
 to be a very old man, he can never forget the 
 horrors of that night in the black forest. 
 
 Turning another page, we come suddenly 
 upon a gorgeous sunset, and the rippling water 
 of a great bay. Many sails dot the dimpled 
 water; on the decks, bands of wandering 
 musicians awake sweet notes from instruments 
 which, judging by their appearance, have seen 
 the sun and storm of every civilized country in 
 the world ; swarthy Italians these vagrants are, 
 
1 78 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 dirty, uncouth, lazy, sprawling about the deck, 
 their dark figures set off by gaudy fringes and 
 fantastic rags. What a strange group they are ! 
 How ragged, self-satisfied and happy. 
 
 The little boat is taking a sunset sail to 
 Staten Island, where the great steep banks are 
 so green and mossy, and the queer little streets 
 so sleepy and quiet. One can almost imagine 
 himself as he walks along, to be the sole per- 
 son in the place. Presently you approach a 
 tiny pie-shop; the door is open, but there is no 
 one within; rows of sleepy sodden pies are 
 ranged along the dusty shelves, and a dozen 
 bottles of sweet cider complete the stock of this 
 not very enterprising establishment. You ring 
 a cracked bell, and after an interval of some 
 five minutes, a little old woman appears in 
 snowy cap and silver spectacles, looking at you 
 wonderingly over the tops of them, as if to 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 179 
 
 say, "can you possibly want pie?" and all the 
 time she is handing one down from the shelves 
 and wrapping it up with an old woman's nicety, 
 her expression is plainly one of protest, that 
 you should have disturbed her from that fra- 
 grant cup of tea she was engaged in sipping 
 in the parlor back of the shop. 
 
 As you leave the place, you hear the old 
 lady trotting briskly back to her evening re- 
 freshment, and you go and throw yourself on 
 the pier, where the Italians, comfort-loving 
 fellows, are sprawling before you, and you gaze 
 out over the bay and watch the reflection of 
 the sunset colors in the clear water, and throw 
 bits of pie you have just purchased to the 
 greedy fishes, who are, by far, the most ener- 
 getic beings about the island; and, as the twi- 
 light deepens, you take your place leisurely in 
 the returning ferry, and give yourself up to 
 
ISO MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 reverie, as you steam back to the city, and the 
 faint sound of music over the water lulls your 
 senses to quiet repose. 
 
 Turning another page, a country school- 
 house bursts upon our view; here the old 
 desks, cut with a hundred names and dates; 
 the cracked black-board, and the teacher's 
 rickety chair, all serve to remind you of the 
 days that are gone. How you languished 
 when a child, seated on those high stiff 
 benches, all the long hot afternoons. How 
 the sun used to beat in at those 'curtainless 
 windows, and the schoolma'am's ferule used to 
 descend upon your small brown hand. How 
 much you used to wish you were a man, that 
 you might escape these tortures, and live in 
 the green fields. 
 
 Well, have you found consolation in the 
 green fields of life ? Have you found aught to 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. l8l 
 
 console you for the loss of your sweet dreamy 
 youth, for the crash of the idols that fell all too 
 soon? 
 
 Let us turn on. Why, what is this? A 
 marble palace; one apartment in azure, one in 
 amethyst, one in dark variegated gems, and one 
 in the exact colors of that South American 
 lapis lazuli you admire so much. Marble halls, 
 marble stairways, marble mantels, marble 
 floors, and broad marble steps like those lead- 
 ing up out of the water to the Venetian palaces. 
 Such a wealth of magnificent marbles! Such 
 a profusion of it, as if it might be had for the 
 asking, or as if the builder had the gold of 
 kings at his command. 
 
 Is it an enchanted palace? No; it is only 
 the city hall at Baltimore; but it is grand and 
 spacious enough for the abode of royalty. Is 
 there any woe, want or suffering in the land, 
 
1 82 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 that might be wholly relieved with one-tenth 
 of the price of those costly marbles that go to 
 make up this proud edifice? Perhaps so, but 
 could you find it in your heart to destroy this 
 temple of beauty, this priceless thing of stone 
 and marble that will endure for centuries, a 
 monument to American taste and enterprise? 
 As an easy way of answering a difficult ques- 
 tion, let us turn another page, whereon the pic- 
 ture is that of a shining river on a June day, 
 with two little steamers plying up and down. 
 The day is as brilliant as sun and summer- 
 time can make it; the green banks on either 
 side, remind one of the land of the shamrock ; 
 away off there among clusters of green trees, 
 white cottages are half hidden in the shade, 
 and an occasional gleam of vivid scarlet, tells 
 of the flowers that spring so naturally from 
 this luxuriant soil. 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 183 
 
 Then, too, there are vast stone mansions set 
 in deep parks of living green, with massive 
 stone gates to which huge lions are guarding 
 the entrance; here and there a comfortable 
 family carriage rolls slowly up a long avenue, 
 and the sw.eet melody of children's voices rings 
 out in the clear air. 
 
 All this we see as we lounge about the deck 
 of the little steamer, which goes paddling 
 swiftly along through the bright water. The 
 captain is a cheery Yankee, with a brown face 
 and a brisk air, and smiles so pleasantly when 
 he lifts his blue cap, that we are forced to like 
 him from that time on, and doubtless succeed 
 in making ourselves felt in the number of ques- 
 tions we propound, if nothing else. 
 
 Who are these, we ask, as a half dozen stal- 
 wart fellows in a uniform of coarse blue and 
 white bed-ticking, appear on the deck with 
 
184 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 pails and brushes, and begin to scour the little 
 craft from bow to stern. 
 
 "What, you don't know?" the captain says 
 in surprise. " Don't you know you are on a 
 prison boat, and that every servant and official 
 in the whole crew, except myself, are reformed 
 convicts, serving out a probationary term on 
 board?" 
 
 In spite of ourselves, we connot help shud- 
 dering a little at this, the day is so bright, and 
 crime, with her attendant punishments, seems 
 so far away. We knew, of course, when we 
 took passage for Blackwell, that we were on 
 the way to explore a colony of criminals, but a 
 steamer stocked with convicts that was 
 almost beyond our comprehension. 
 
 " Come down stairs," the captain says pleas- 
 antly. "See the kitchens and the cooks." 
 
 We follow him down a narrow stairway and 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 185 
 
 descend into the whitest and brightest of 
 kitchens, where a plain, savoury dinner is 
 roasting, boiling and sputtering on a shining 
 range, and two women in clean bed-tick dresses, 
 with hair neatly combed, and narrow white 
 collars about their necks, are superintending all 
 the roasting, boiling and sputtering of the long 
 range. 
 
 The women make us little jerky polite bows. 
 Poor souls! I think their dark, pinched faces 
 show more ignorance than guilt, and the cap- 
 tain tells us as we go up-stairs, that they as 
 well as the entire crew are docile as lambs. 
 
 Everywhere we go, men and boys in this 
 same garb, are employed in some capacity 
 about the steamer; the cooks, the engineers, 
 the deck hands, the porters, all wear the same 
 badge of degradation and servitude, and yet 
 methinks their faces are not unhappy, so great 
 
1 86 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 a power for good are discipline and right living. 
 These poor things, in all likelihood, never had 
 so excellent a home, as this poor shabby little 
 floating prison; never had such kind, firm 
 words as they have from this sun-burned cap- 
 tain; never had such appetizing food as they 
 have from th ose generous kettles in that white 
 kitchen, and so, reflecting on all this, sad that 
 crime exists, yet bowing before the sage wisdom 
 of our glorious government, which provides 
 cleanly homes and healthy food for these poor 
 creatures, we dream away the June hours on 
 that little prison steamer, while the blue smil- 
 ing heavens bend above us, and the green 
 banks keep receding in the distance. 
 
 There is so much sadness here, in spite of all 
 the air of cheeriness and order, that we have 
 little to say to each other, but remain sunk in 
 reverie until Randall Island is reached, and 
 
MY SKETCH BOOK. 187 
 
 fifty convicts are brought on board and em- 
 barked for the Blackwell prison. 
 
 One, two, three. The captain gives the sig- 
 nal, and the poor wretches of all ages, colors 
 and sexes, come clanking their chains over the 
 gang-way, keeping as perfect time as a regiment 
 of soldiers. How sullen they are. Great bur- 
 ley fellows for the most part, with arms and 
 limbs that have defied bolt and bar for man}' a 
 long year; large muscular hands theirs are, 
 that have picked many a lock, and some have 
 doubtless been stained with blood. 
 
 Truly this is a pitiful sight, and there is a 
 hush like that of death over the boat, as they 
 silently enter, and are conducted to their places 
 in the lower part of the boat. 
 
 But while their chains are clanking, the sun 
 in heaven is shining, and when at the next 
 island, a rude box containing the dead body of 
 
1 88 MY SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 a child, is lowered into the boat by means of 
 ropes, those dark savage fellows, cut-throats, 
 thieves, assassins, pause in their long strides to 
 lift their caps one and all, with military pre- 
 cision, in the presence of the common enemy. 
 
 And as I gaze on the poor wretches, and 
 think of the little weary soul there in the box, 
 who will never know pain nor want, nor mis- 
 ery, it seems to me that the blue sky is send- 
 ing a smile of love down into the hard faces of 
 the convicts, while the little box is lowered into 
 a cool place in the steamer. 
 
 Two hours later, there is a tiny green grave 
 in a shady nook at Blackwell, which marks 
 the resting place of the little stranger. 
 
AN AUGUST VISION. 
 
AN AUGUST VISION. 
 
 ' 
 
 FORLORN cabin situated with- 
 in one of those dry, treeless stretch - 
 ? es of country known in the central 
 western states as " barrens," a man 
 with a grizzly beard, alternately 
 smoking and dozing just outside the door on 
 a rude wooden bench ; a child playing in the 
 yellow sand which surrounds the curb-stone; 
 over all, the fierce rays of the pitiless August 
 sun, whose steady glare, unbroken .by the 
 slightest foliage of any kind, descends in fiery 
 wrath upon the luckless men and beasts who 
 populate this unfertile section. A little drouth 
 
194 AN AUGUST VISION. 
 
 acts as a famine here and reduces the inhabi- 
 tants to the most pitiful conditions of disease 
 and want. The terrible heat throws a fearful 
 torpor over everything. Dogs go mad, and 
 men not infrequently commit acts of despera- 
 tion and violence, after a long dry season, when 
 their efforts have availed them nothing, and 
 with winter fast approaching, they find they 
 have no means of subsistence or support. 
 
 The man moans and murmurs in his sleep, 
 and the child, alarmed by the strange sounds, 
 drops her handful of sand, and sets up a long, 
 low wail, digging her little bare toes into the 
 hot dry soil, and wiping away the tears with 
 the hem of her coarse, soiled, little dress, which 
 is the only one she has in the world. 
 
 Within the house naught is heard save the 
 buzzing 'of the rapacious flies, which blacken 
 every thing with their obnoxious presence. 
 
AN AUGUST VISION. 195 
 
 Wholly unmindful of the wretched disturb- 
 ances these annoying insects create, as well as 
 of the pitiful cries of the child, a pale, fragile 
 woman crouches silently in a dirty corner of 
 the room, her hands clasped and her eyes fixed 
 on vacancy, with that dull, hopeless look 
 which trouble always, sorrow never brings. 
 Her apathy is perfect. She is as wholly un- 
 conscious of her surroundings as if she were a 
 thousand miles from that cursed spot, which 
 has thrown a blight upon her life from which 
 she can never hope to recover. 
 
 Honor, pride in well-doing, has been this 
 woman's motto through life. Her face is deli- 
 cate and sensitive, even in its advanced age 
 and in all its wretched setting of squalid mis- 
 ery. From her youth up she has abhorred 
 wrong actions, and kept them at bay, as men 
 do their mortal enemies. And now, this burn- 
 
196 AN AUGUST VISION. 
 
 ing, sickening day, in the midst of these terri- 
 ble heats, there is wafted to her a hot and 
 poisonous breeze which tells her that she is 
 the mother of a convicted thief! 
 
 This is the message which has traveled 
 across the almost desert sands of the country 
 she hates with such bitter intensity ; this is the 
 recompense for all the long years of care and 
 pain, which only mothers know and suffer. A 
 steely hardness has entered her heart. In her 
 stern judgment she finds no palliation, no ex- 
 piating circumstances, no lingering tenderness 
 for the guilty wretch who, after all, is the child 
 of her young love the living pledge of all 
 her life of constancy and devotion. 
 
 The man rouses himself from his stupor, 
 enters the doorway, and gazes at her with a 
 strange mixture of half savage tenderness and 
 pity; but she never moves a muscle or un- 
 
AX AUGUST VISION. 197 
 
 clasps her frail, thin hands from the position 
 she has held them in since morning. 
 
 " Marthy, wife," he says, brokenly, "won't ye 
 speak to me; won't ye say he's not altogether 
 to blame? Its hard to go hungry, Marthy, 
 and and ." 
 
 There is a sound of hoofs on the road out- 
 side, and the woman, though she does not re- 
 ply, looks wearily out at the narrow doorway, 
 but turns coldly away as she beholds a mes- 
 senger, covered with dust and foam from his 
 long hot ride. She crosses the room without 
 speaking to him, but he follows her, and 
 whispers hoarsely in her ear, "There was a 
 suicide in our town to-day your daughter." 
 
 Her apathy is broken, there is a faint shriek, 
 a cry to heaven for mercy, and the much-tried 
 woman moans and struggles in her last sharp 
 agony. 
 
AN AUGUST VISION. 
 
 The country side is rife with dreadful gossip; 
 the sunset sky seems red with blood; the fear- 
 ful heat like unto that of hades. There is a 
 sharp ring at the door bell, and I awake from 
 my horrible afternoon nap to find that the 
 servant has fastened both sets of blinds so 
 closely that the atmosphere is suffocating to 
 oppression, and my brain is in a whirl of 
 fevered heat. I dash a glass of ice-water over 
 my face, and advance to meet my guest, my 
 nerves still thrilling with pity for the poor 
 wretches who, thank heaven, existed only in 
 the extravagant fancy of my vision. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 
 
 IsS? 
 
 " 'REAKFAST, a meal that quite puts 
 (Sto shame a fashionable luncheon, is 
 
 had before daylight, and by nine 
 > 
 
 o'clock on a snowy winter morning 
 ( the house has been put in order, the 
 milk taken care of, and the good wife and 
 daughters, with smoothed hair and fresh calico 
 aprons, have settled quietly down to the sew- 
 ing or patch work, with which the family bas- 
 ket is always full and running over, for idle 
 hands have no place in the economy of farm 
 life. Gorgeous bed quilts are always on the 
 way, and she who has not a store of them is 
 considered a shiftless, worthless sort of girl, 
 
2C-4 COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 
 
 who has no reason to expect a husband, and 
 indeed, is not thought deserving of one. 
 Grandmother always knits, as her eyesight is 
 failing, and her practiced hands can almost 
 "heel and toe" a stocking in the dark; and 
 then there are always three or four calico 
 dresses in process of making, for these women 
 are their own dressmakers, and the little low- 
 ceiled bedrooms are always hung full of first, 
 second and third-best calicos, which are don- 
 ned with as great a respect for occasion as a 
 city belle shows when she dresses for a dinner, 
 a reception, or an evening party. 
 
 The women have not been settled around 
 the big wood-fire long, when they are joined 
 by the men, who have done the "feeding," 
 which is about the sum total of their day's 
 labor, when the weather is very cold. They 
 come in stamping like a regiment of soldiers, 
 
COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 2O5 
 
 and while one of them draws up the heavy 
 well-sweep for mother, another one lights a 
 candle and repairs to the cellar, from which he 
 presently ascends with a pitcher of sparkling 
 cider, almost as good as champagne, and an- 
 swering just the same purpose for these sim- 
 ple folk, many of whom have not as much as 
 heard of the former beverage. 
 
 If the stage got in over the bad roads yes- 
 terday, Goodman Farmer has his weekly pa- 
 pers to-day, and does not have to give hurried 
 glances over them, while he scalds his mouth 
 with blue-milk coffee, getting just about half 
 the coffee and the paper swallowed, when he 
 is obliged to drop them both to catch the early 
 car to the city. No indeed, eating in the 
 country is too serious a business to slight in 
 that way, and besides, there is plenty of time 
 for everything. Who ever thought of hurry- 
 
2O6 COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 
 
 ing? The idea has certainly never occurred to 
 him; and only a fire, which is a rare occurrence 
 in these rural solitudes, could induce him to so 
 rash an action. He reads the paper long and 
 thoroughly, not an advertisement escapes him, 
 and when he has finished, his quiet wife stretches 
 out her hand for it, and eagerly hunts the story 
 column in a manner that would go straight to 
 the heart of the struggling young author who 
 wrote it, could he see the avidity with which it is 
 seized upon. If the editor has seen fit to 
 crowd out the story this week, her counte- 
 nance falls, and her pleasure for the day is 
 spoiled. 
 
 There is not a book store for ten miles 
 around, and when they do go "to town," John 
 Thomas says kindly, " I wouldn't spend money 
 for books, Maria ; buy yourself a gown or a 
 pair of shoes." 
 
COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 2O/ 
 
 And so the winter days go by. The store- 
 house contains a barrel of nuts, and another of 
 pop-corn, and if it is baking day, the men hud- 
 dle about the stove, and complacently test the 
 fragrant cakes and pies as they come out of 
 the oven deliciously brown and appetizing. 
 
 If the weather is not too cold for the horses, 
 they decide upon a visit to a friend some miles 
 distant, and when all are packed up in shawls 
 and blankets, the big bob-sled, surmounted by 
 the wagon-box, draws up before the house, and 
 the party clamber in promiscuously, and settle 
 down upon the soft fragrant hay which makes 
 as soft a cushion as one could wish for. O! 
 there is nothing so charming as this jolly way 
 of sleigh-riding, which is a thousand times 
 more smooth and satisfactory than bumping 
 along in a modern high-backed cutter. If you 
 are cold, just bury your head in " mother's lap " 
 
2O8 COUNTRY LIFE IN WINTER. 
 
 and your feet in the section of hay-stack under 
 you, and you won't be so long. 
 
 The horses feel good because they have 
 nothing to do at this season of the year, and 
 they skim along over the broad smooth roads 
 in a way that would exhilarate a mummy. 
 There is no fear of crushing velvets or satins, 
 and you can walk over the lap-robes half a day 
 if you like without some one shouting, "Be 
 careful, you're on the robe," or, " You'll spoil 
 all that embroidery I did for John." John 
 Thomas has never heard of an embroidered lap- 
 robe, and I dare say he is just as happy as if 
 he had. He is king of the soil, and, if he only 
 knew it, has more leisure and more down-right 
 independence than half the struggling business 
 men in yonder haughty city, to whose streets, 
 like unto those of want and care, he is an abso- 
 lute and utter stranger. 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 <-* 
 T was sunset in the San Luis valley. 
 
 He desires no description of these 
 mountain sunsets who has witnessed 
 the divine portrayal on the skies. The 
 heavens become a canvas whose length 
 and breadth is immeasurable, whose delicate 
 tints must put to shame the touch of the 
 greatest masters of the world. 
 
 To all fanciful natures there is an indefinite 
 charm in solitude, and 'Chita felt it too in her 
 own mute, untaught way. Poor little 'Chita! 
 the sun-browned, dark-eyed daughter of the 
 mountains; the child of old Manuel, the 
 ranchero; the prettiest girl in the settlement, 
 
214 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 the Americanos said, when the first train had 
 bounded over Veta Pass to Alamosa, and the 
 train-men had caught sight of the girl hanging 
 carelessly to a cluster of shrubbery half-way 
 up the mountain side; a picture of slender 
 grace and native ease. 'Chita had been spell- 
 bound when she had first seen that train career- 
 ing fairly into space over the dizzy heights. 
 It had been a hot night, and when the train 
 stopped on the pass, she had seen numbers of 
 God-like creatures all Americanos, old Man- 
 uel had told her, many of them as blue-eyed 
 and fair-haired, she thought, as the gaudy 
 blonde angels in her mother's old Catholic 
 bible. And they had all seen her that slen- 
 der, willowy figure with the little bare brown 
 feet and the soiled toggery of her kind, perched 
 away up there in such quaint relief among the 
 rocks. 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 215 
 
 All this had happened three years ago; a 
 very great while ago, 'Chita thought. She had 
 been a child then, she was a woman now; and 
 Manuel had brought her a pair of shoes from 
 Alamosa, and she had learned to comb out 
 her long thick hair, and plait it neatly 
 taught by a lady tourist who had come to the 
 valley to sketch. She had learned to read 
 through the same agency, and 'Chita, now six- 
 teen, and beautiful as a star, was beginning to 
 show signs of restlessness which her parents 
 liked ill indeed. " It was all the shoes' doings," 
 old Manuel said; "she would have them after 
 the Americanos came through with the train," 
 "that abomination of satan," he called it. But 
 old Lisa, her mother, shook her head wisely, 
 affirming that it was more likely to have been 
 the hair-plaiting, as the latter occasioned more 
 peeps in the little cracked mirror over the 
 
2l6 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 chimney-piece than the former could possibly 
 have done. 
 
 However all this may have been, certain it 
 was that 'Chita was growing restless in her 
 mountain home, where there was nothing for 
 her to do except tend the garden, which throve 
 quite as well without tending in that warm 
 southern climate. There was the house, of 
 course if Manuel's shanty might carry so 
 dignified a name but any sort of care in that 
 direction old Lisa regarded as pure desecration, 
 and the preparation of the chili-colorado and 
 mutton, was far too serious a task to be en- 
 trusted to a child like 'Chita. Her four 
 brothers were out hunting and fishing most of 
 the time, only returning in time to take their 
 share from the unfailing mess in the kettle, and 
 then to curl themselves up in their dingy blan- 
 kets and sleep perhaps until noon the next day. 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 2 I'J 
 
 Old Manuel tilled a small field, sowing it 
 with his hands, plowing it, as his father had 
 done before him, with the forked limb of a 
 tree, and reaping it with an old scythe that 
 hung just outside the door all the year round. 
 
 Why had he not machines to do these 
 things, 'Chita asked. The Americanos said 
 they had them in the north. Could he not find 
 them if he traveled far enough, and so do his 
 work better and more easily. 
 
 Manuel answered angrily. What was the 
 matter with 'Chita? Would she turn Ameri- 
 cano too, and leave him in his old age, as some 
 of the daughters of the colony had left their 
 parents last year. 
 
 " No, she would never do that," she said. 
 She always obeyed her parents implicitly, as 
 much perhaps through superstition as anything 
 else ; but she had an instinctive repugnance for 
 
2l8 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 her surroundings, notwithstanding her appar- 
 ent submission, and she felt to-night, as she 
 mused before the opened door, looking for the 
 coming train and studying the sunset, that her 
 life was very empty and her duties pitifully 
 few. As a newly awakened nature always 
 gropes its way to something better, so in her 
 blind way groped little 'Chita, whose silent 
 yearnings were wholly unintelligible to her 
 people, and not always quite clear to herself. 
 Away in Denver, thousands of miles away she 
 supposed it to be, the Americanos had told 
 her there was a Catholic school for girls, where 
 they were taught all the pretty accomplishments 
 and the exercise of the charities, and where 
 they might become " Sisters" if they liked, and 
 devote their lives to the mission of healing. 
 'Chita thought of this night and day, but she 
 would never leave her parents while they lived. 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 2IQ 
 
 When she had thought out all this she would 
 have been less than human if she had not been 
 unhappy. A little knowledge is always such a 
 drop of bitterness in the cup of an ambitious girl, 
 and 'Chita had drank just far enough to taste 
 her helplessness. 
 
 Pretty soon the train came sweeping round 
 a great curve, and 'Chita forgot her unhappi- 
 ness in the joy she always experienced in be- 
 holding its symmetry and speed. 
 
 "How like a thing of life!" she thought, 
 and it seemed to her a fitting messenger of all 
 the busy, pushing world that lay away below 
 her native hills. There were Dan, the con- 
 ductor, and Jack, the brakeman, with a half 
 dozen more officials whose faces she had learn- 
 ed to know, hanging about the rear platform, 
 and all nodding and smiling pleasantly at the 
 nut-brown maid whom they were so accus- 
 
22O SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 tomed to seeing, and who seemed to them the 
 sweetest spirit of all that rugged solitude. 
 'Chita responded to their salutations with ap- 
 parent diffidence. Pray, was not Manuel for- 
 ever warning her against these treacherous 
 Americans ? Nevertheless, a fair-complexioned 
 man was a great curiosity to this girl, who had 
 only seen black Jose, the young Mexican who 
 tilled the field adjoining her father's, and her 
 great dark brothers with their swarthy skins 
 and saucy eyes, in all her life before. No 
 wonder, then, that she stole furtive glances at 
 Dan when she thought he was not looking, nor 
 that the warm color leaped into her bright face 
 as he hastily stopped the train, sprang lightly 
 to the ground, and with hat in hand, approach- 
 ed her with as much respect as if she had been 
 the greatest lady in the land. 
 
 '"Chita," he said he had spoken to her 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 221 
 
 several times in the last three years " I have 
 a lady on the train who is too sick to go on to 
 Alamosa. I want you to take her to your 
 father's house and care for her until she is bet- 
 ter. Will you?" 
 
 Would she ? The indignation she felt at the 
 question flamed into her face, and made her 
 cheeks warmer than ever. Of course she 
 would, she said, for 'Chita spoke a little 
 English with the prettiest accent in the world. 
 Her diffidence was gone now. She was all 
 interest, and followed Dan to the train ere she 
 was bidden. Two men lifted the sick woman 
 from the car ; such a pale, fragile creature she 
 was, with masses of yellow hair, and great 
 dark circles under her violet eyes. A boy fol- 
 lowed carrying a pair of satchels, and how 
 'Chita's eyes blazed with delight! a lovely 
 child some four years of age, whose little rosy 
 
222 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 face, full of health, made such a pitiful con- 
 trast to the pale, delicate one of the invalid who 
 was his mother. 
 
 Dan left what he termed a big escort to help 
 'Chita to the house with the mother and child, 
 and the little Mexican's life-work began that 
 midnight, when the invalid's troubled spirit 
 winged its last long flight from earth, but not 
 until she had exacted a promise from 'Chita to 
 care for little Carl always. He had no friends, 
 she said, unless, unknown to her, his father 
 lived. A dreadful calamity had separated them 
 soon after the child's birth, in the happy father- 
 land. She had come to the mountains, think- 
 ing to strengthen her poor worn-out lungs for 
 the child's sake, but she had come too late. 
 She was going home to God now. Would 
 'Chita keep the child? Would she promise? 
 
 And 'Chita promised, there in the weird 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 223 
 
 moonlight, while the mountain breezes played 
 about the bed of straw, and the girl, devout 
 always, half thought she could hear the voices 
 of the angels as they came to free the suffering 
 spirit. 
 
 In the morning old Manuel and his sons 
 made a lone grave in a secluded sjDot, over 
 which 'Chita trained sweet wild roses, and 
 where she took the boy often, and taught him 
 to implore Our Lady's blessing for his dead. 
 Strangely enough, old Manuel and Lisa said 
 nothing against 'Chita's keeping the child. 
 She would never marry Jose any way, they said. 
 He would soon go home to Old Mexico with 
 a broken heart, and their foolish girl's face in 
 his memory forever perhaps, in spite of his 
 long, patient wooing. Let her keep the child ; 
 the mutton pot was always boiling, and 'Chita 
 should make clothes for little Carl from the 
 
224 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 sheep's wool, which she spun with her own 
 pretty brown hands. 
 
 Three long happy years had soon passed 
 away. 'Chita's brothers, long since grown 
 weary of their mountain home, had gone to 
 seek their fortunes in the great world, and one 
 scorching summer a mountain pestilence came 
 along, and took away poor old Manuel and his 
 faithful wife. After this 'Chita's course was 
 plain. There was a purse of gold among the 
 quaint frocks and petticoats of Carl's mother. 
 He had grown a fine boy now, and loved 'Chita 
 as he would never love any one else. She 
 made herself and him as decent as she could, 
 then took the purse of gold, and boarding 
 Dan's swift train, was away to the northward 
 and her long-dreamed of Denver, where, after 
 she had placed Carl at school, as she knew his 
 mother had desired, she joined that army of 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 225 
 
 angelic women, the very name of whose order 
 is a benediction to sufferers, and became to the 
 world, "Sister Pachita." 
 
 Never in her life had she been so happy as 
 now. Healing seemed her mission on earth ; 
 ambition tempted her no further. The old 
 restlessness was gone; in ministry she had 
 found peace. She was no longer the timid bird 
 of the mountains. Perhaps the care of the 
 child had developed her character more than 
 anything else would have done, for Sister 
 Pachita was a mature woman at an age when 
 most girls are only children. 
 
 When Carl was ten years old, and still at 
 school, there was borne one day into the hos- 
 pital, a tall, strong man, with every indication 
 of good birth and fortune upon him, from his 
 broad, fair brow to his small delicate hands. 
 He was suffering with fever, was a stranger in 
 
226 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 the city, and had been consigned to the hos- 
 pital by wary hotel people who feared incon- 
 veniences. He was just ill enough to be 
 peevish, and from the day he entered the place, 
 refused to take aught from the hands of any 
 one save 'Chita, who, if she had been a kindly 
 child, was a thousand times more kindly now, as 
 she sat by his bedside in her lovely ripening 
 womanhood, pacifying him as best she might, 
 for she saw his malady was of mind, and not of 
 body. There was something vaguely familiar 
 in that broad smooth brow, and the full frank 
 face of the gentleman who was now her con- 
 stant care. When he spoke, it seemed to her 
 she had heard that voice every day for years, 
 and yet she could trace the likeness to no one. 
 Whom had she known all her life save her 
 swarthy countrymen? 
 
 One day Carl came into the hospital on a 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 22/ 
 
 hurried mission to " Mamma 'Chita," and as he 
 stood by the bedside of her patient, the better 
 to gain her private ear, a sharp pang shot 
 through her heart, as she saw them, man and 
 boy, together. A swift revelation, which she 
 said afterward, must have come from God, 
 came over her with as much vividness, as if it 
 had been written on the skies in letters of fire. 
 " He is Carl's father! " she said to herself, for 
 the boy was the image of the man; and 
 then her heart sank within her, as she thought 
 of the probable parting and sacrifice. One 
 day when her patient had been unusually rest- 
 less, she had told him the story of her boy, 
 thinking to amuse him, and now as the twain 
 gazed at each other, she saw the glad light of 
 recognition in the father's eyes saw him 
 stretch out his arms for the boy, take him to 
 his heart, and hold him there, but with what a 
 
228 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 pang of wounded mother-love! what a fear- 
 ful renunciation of all that was dear to her in 
 life ! " Come with you ? You my papa? " the 
 boy cries in bewilderment. " Perhaps I will 
 come, if you will take Mamma 'Chita too?" 
 
 The man smiles and puts the child from him, 
 while he reaches out his hand to the lovely 
 woman who sits in her plain black garb with 
 bowed head, her bright eyes filled with shining 
 tears. 
 
 "Sister Pachita," he says, "Will you be my 
 wife and Carl's mother always?" 
 
 But the little hand he seeks does not respond; 
 the head remains bowed, a convulsive sob is 
 her only answer; an answer which he under- 
 stands only too well, and with a deep groan 
 turns his face from the light to hide his anguish, 
 for this is the love of his mature years, the deep 
 tender passion a man feels for a woman who 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 22Q 
 
 has befriended him and his in time of trouble. 
 This was no summer love like that other boy- 
 ish romance, enacted so long since across the 
 silver sea. Were 'Chita to allow it, she would 
 become the crowning glory of a good man's 
 life, but he knows she is inexorable. See ! she 
 fingers her cross, and counts her beads. She 
 implores divine assistance to aid her in resist- 
 ing the sweetest temptation that ever comes to 
 woman, be she saint or no. Must she give up 
 Carl ? Dare she renounce her religion ? These 
 questions meet and wage fierce combat in her 
 loyal heart. The old superstition is strong 
 upon her. She tries to throw it off, for Sister 
 Pachita is an intelligent woman as well as a 
 devout one, but it will not down at her bid- 
 ding. In the sight of God and man she has 
 pledged herself to the holy church, and no 
 saint of olden time was ever truer to those 
 
23O SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 vows which now lay upon her like so many 
 iron chains. All the peace she has gained in 
 ministry is gone. After all she is but a woman. 
 Her breath comes hard and fast. O ! why does 
 the room grow so dark? It seems to her that 
 the very sun in heaven has become extinct 
 the long rows of white beds take on the sem- 
 blance of graves, so ghastly they grow in the 
 shadows that enthrall her soul. She sees Carl 
 in his father's arms. It seems to her she is 
 forgotten, forgotten! Already she sees herself 
 an aged woman, bent and broken with years, 
 but still wearing the garb of a "sister," still 
 passionately longing for the child, which is as 
 her own flesh, yet from whom destiny has sepa- 
 rated her forever. 
 
 And that other separation ? That tall strong 
 man who would have gathered her to his heart, 
 and there shielded her from all the storms of 
 
SISTER PACHITA. 23! 
 
 time so long as they both should live Holy 
 Mother, it is indeed hard that thy tenets are so 
 stubborn, thy vows so binding, that they con- 
 geal young life blood, render women childless 
 and loveless, and turn rivers of love into 
 streams of black despair; yet such has been 
 their mission since the beginning of creeds 
 such the destruction they have always wrought. 
 Apparently Sister Pachita never swerved or 
 faltered; though her face and lips were the 
 color of ashes, she rose quietly from her seat 
 and threw back the long black veil now made 
 hateful to her for all time. For an instant she 
 let her hand rest within that of the man who 
 might have been her husband; the man who 
 loved her as perhaps not even the angels in 
 heaven would love her in the next world. 
 Darkness was coming upon her again, and after 
 hastily snatching Carl to her bosom, and im- 
 
232 SISTER PACHITA. 
 
 pressing a burning kiss upon his wondering 
 face, she lowered her veil again, and left the 
 hospital to return to it no more. 
 
 Many months they sought her that strick- 
 en man and boy, in the picturesque solitudes 
 of the far West; in that older civilization of 
 the Atlantic sea-board in the far North, even 
 across the great water, into the old world. 
 Her spirit seemed ever with them. Could it 
 be she had wilfully forsaken them ? Ah ! how 
 little they dreamed that away off there in her 
 native valley where the heavens are an immor- 
 tal canvas, and the mountainous solitudes the 
 eternal silences of God, she had wandered back 
 among her people who had buried her on the 
 hillside beside that other unmarked grave, away 
 off there in the South-land when another sun- 
 set was upon San Luis Valley. 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 g 
 
 JO one will be so busy to-day but he 
 will stop to laugh with a friend over 
 the valentine he has received or is 
 about to dispatch through the mail, 
 as a mark of his affection or an 
 expression of some happy vein of humor. If 
 he is an old man who occupies a prominent 
 position, he will be all the more likely to re- 
 ceive some good-natured comic thing, that will 
 make him shake his fat sides with mirth. If he 
 is a young man he will be sure to receive an 
 indescribable hand-painted something from his 
 lady-love that will make his heart sing for joy 
 all day long. But to the lovely debutante a 
 
238 ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 valentine means more than it does to any one 
 else. Coming as it does in the very heart of 
 the gray Lenten season, this messenger of love 
 and prophecy is perhaps more welcome than a 
 ball dress or a bank note would be. It has 
 such a delicious air of mystery, and her own 
 room seems such a haven of refuge for its peru- 
 sal! If she knows the hand- writing on the 
 envelope, her future she thinks, is assured. If 
 the valentine breathes of devotion and con- 
 stancy, she has no idea that pain or woe can 
 ever betide her. She accepts the faintest inti- 
 mations on faith, and her existence becomes 
 wholly rose-colored for a period of at least two 
 weeks following the eventful day. She dis- 
 plays her treasure only to her most intimate 
 friend, with strict injunctions, "never to tell 
 anybody." Towards evening she comes down 
 stairs flushed and happy, and so absorbed in 
 
ST. VALENTINES DAY. 239 
 
 her own pleasant thoughts that she scarcely 
 notices the smile which papa exchanges with 
 mamma, as he passes up his cup the second 
 time. Mamma has her own thoughts too, to- 
 night. It has not been such a very long time, 
 it seems to her, since she received a valentine, 
 and when she glances at the beautiful girl by 
 her side, she can scarcely account for the flight 
 of years. 
 
 The Roman girl will sell her Parma violets 
 for fabulous sums to-day; the dark eyes of the 
 little senorita will sparkle with unusual anima- 
 tion, and the great seething mass of humanity 
 will think less of its cares and troubles, be- 
 cause of the innocent merriment of this happy 
 day. 
 
APRIL RAINS. 
 
APRIL RAINS. 
 
 HAT a vague, undefined kind of 
 season April weather brings; a 
 season when the exciting pleas- 
 ures of winter are over, when sum- 
 mer is yet a thing of the future, 
 and the half warm, half chill grey days hang 
 over humanity a soft, grey curtain of forget- 
 fulness and rest. These calm, queer days are 
 not usually glorified with colorings of hope; 
 they are too misty and uncertain for that. 
 Buoyancy springs principally from warm, clear 
 skies, from opening buds and singing birds. 
 April weather brings no such awakenings. 
 Nor yet is it a time of saddening retrospections. 
 
244 APRIL RAINS. 
 
 No one thinks of accomplishing great ends 
 when the heavens are full of weepings, and the 
 sun shines gloriously one hour only to cover 
 himself with frowns and tears the next 
 
 Households are more quiet on these calm, 
 uncertain days; business places are not so 
 thronged ; places of amusement are often half 
 deserted. The average American accomplishes 
 little in the rainy season, and if you seek him 
 in his study, his office or his home, you will 
 find him a thousand times more agreeable than 
 you have during the long months of the busy 
 season he has just passed through. 
 
 The day is just damp enough to make a 
 sojourn in the house more comfortable than 
 anything else, and you think your friend un- 
 usually cordial as you enter his room, which, 
 on account of the rain, is probably not in such 
 painfully good order as you generally find it. 
 
APRIL RAINS. 245 
 
 Very likely he has just finished a prowl among 
 old letters and papers, for there is a suspicious 
 untidiness about his escretoire there in the 
 corner, and he luxuriates in the delightful neg- 
 lige of dressing gown and slippers. You feel 
 at home from the moment you enter the place. 
 The formality which always attends a good 
 weather visit does not exist, and you may ele- 
 vate your muddy shoes to any height you may 
 see fit, and smoke in perfect bliss. 
 
 There is a charm about April dampness, a 
 profound calm that summer rains never bring. 
 Unceasing effort rests her weary wings for a 
 brief while, and mortals are left one little space 
 of time to commune with their souls. Worldly 
 cares are quite put to rout, amidst all the grave 
 and quiet serenity which settles down upon 
 everything. Sleep comes unsought. Evil 
 thoughts take to themselves wings. Spring 
 
246 APRIL RAINS. 
 
 rains are the harbingers of mental peace; the 
 exponents of that dozy somnolent phase of 
 existence, a taste of which comes often in the 
 light of salvation to those who toil early and 
 late for daily sustenance. 
 
MY VALENTINE. 
 
MY VALENTINE. 
 
 % 
 
 AM an old maid now, with gray 
 hair and wrinkled, care-worn face, 
 which certainly is not beautiful, but 
 which was not wholly unattractive, I 
 believe, twenty years ago. My par- 
 ents died when I was a child, and I was left to 
 the tender mercies of my aunt, who made me 
 work like a little slave, and never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of telling me how much she was doing 
 for me, and how ill she could afford it. She 
 lived in a small village near St. Louis, and I 
 used to lie awake nights planning how I could 
 elude my dragon-like relative by a flight to 
 that famous city, which I fancied was one bril- 
 liant mass of riches and happiness. I had only 
 
252 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 one friend in the village, and he the son of the 
 wealthiest and most popular resident, was so 
 far removed from me, in a social way, that I 
 seldom saw him, and when I did, he had to 
 steal into our garden at twilight with the new 
 book or the cake he had generously set apart 
 from his store for his wretched little friend. 
 
 He was fourteen years old, as I first remem- 
 ber him ; a frank, open-faced, fair-complexioned 
 boy, with roses in his cheeks and happiness in 
 his sparkling blue eyes, and a quick, light step, 
 which often turned into a leap when he wanted 
 to clear any obstacle or when he had reason to 
 make extra haste. We had met at a school 
 picnic once before my mother died, when I 
 had worn a little, clean muslin frock with blue 
 ribbons, and had had my thick, dark hair 
 combed out and curled properly, perhaps the 
 only time during the whole course of my child- 
 
MY VALENTINE. 253 
 
 hood. The picnic was a May party, and Frank 
 Fairfield, that was his name, had insisted upon 
 crowning me queen of the fete, though the 
 other girls did not like it, and hung their heads 
 not a little when Frank twisted the apple blos- 
 soms in my hair, and proclaimed me sovereign 
 from the top of an infirm old stump, which 
 barely bore our weight until the speech was 
 finished. After that he was always my sworn 
 champion, and stood up for my rights in such 
 a way that I couldn't help loving him. He 
 came to see me when mother died, and stayed 
 so long, mingling his tears with mine, that they 
 sent a servant for him, and then I thought they 
 kept him away, because I didn't see him for 
 months. after I went to Aunt Jerusha's. One 
 day, I had been helping with the washing, and 
 my little hands were all bruised and sore, when, 
 happening to go to the door for something, I 
 
254 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 saw Frank Fairfield across the street, and heard 
 the well known whistle with which he always 
 called me. The tune was "Take Your Time, 
 Miss Lucy," and I will never forget it to my 
 dying day. I threw on my bonnet and flew 
 across the road, where he stood under an old 
 tree waiting for me. 
 
 "I'm afraid you're not well treated, Janey," 
 he said, taking my little red hands in his own 
 soft palms, and looking at them pityingly. 
 "Never mind, I'm going away to school next 
 week, and when I come back I'll be grown a 
 big man. We'll be married then, and I'll take 
 care of you." 
 
 A big lump rose in my throat. If Frank 
 went away how could I endure my wretched 
 life? How bear the kicks and cuffs which I 
 daily received, and know I had no friend to aid 
 or sympathise ? 
 
MY VALENTINE. 255 
 
 "Don't go, Frank," I sobbed; "please don't 
 go and leave me here alone with Aunt Jerusha." 
 
 I can never forget, no, not if I live to be a 
 hundred years old, the manly way in which he 
 sought to comfort me, and to reconcile me to 
 the hardness of my lot until we should be 
 grown, and able to go out into the great world 
 together. 
 
 " I shall be a great lawyer, Janey," he said, 
 " and you'll ride in your own carriage and wear 
 silks and satins one of these days." 
 
 But this promised splendor was small con- 
 solation, and I cried myself sick the day I 
 knew Frank was to go away to school. After 
 that it seemed to me my aunt grew more 
 abusive every day, and had it not been for the 
 memory of Frank, I believe I would have 
 swallowed poison and ended my poor wretched 
 existence before it had gone any further. As it 
 
256 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 was, I could not do that, and the old plan of 
 flying to the city began to revolve itself in my 
 mind over and over again. 
 
 Frank was not allowed to write to any one 
 outside of his family, or his good counsel 
 would probably have put that notion out of my 
 head effectually. I had only my own sad heart 
 to commune with, and the life I led was killing 
 me by inches. One night when my aunt had 
 gone to a neighbor's, and the children were 
 fast asleep, I made my small belongings into a 
 bundle and crept stealthily from the house, out 
 into the clear star-lit night. I took my way 
 across the fields to the station, and, as luck 
 would have it, met no one, and as it was early 
 autumn, slept warmly and unmolestedly be- 
 neath a hay-stack, and the next day pursued 
 my way to the city, guided by the friendly 
 sign-boards, with which the country road is 
 
MY VALENTINE. 257 
 
 thickly dotted. The distance was not great, 
 and I reached the city the second day at noon, 
 so foot-sore, faint and weary that I can never 
 look upon the poorest tramp without a feeling 
 of the sincerest pity. I will not weary you 
 with a description of that horrible time. I beg- 
 ged, but never stole, and the people who 
 finally befriended me were honest, simple souls, 
 who, if they were not extravagantly generous, 
 were at least possessed of the milk of human 
 kindness, and when I found a home with them 
 I knew I was safe. 
 
 Years rolled on, and from my quiet place as 
 household domestic, I drifted into bonnet- 
 making, for which I had much natural taste 
 and became quite an artist in my way. Occa- 
 sionally I heard from a play-mate in my native 
 village, that Frank had never been home for 
 vacations, that he traveled during the inter- 
 
258 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 vals of study, and that he was fast becoming a 
 man and a scholar. At such times my heart 
 beat high, and yet when I realized the differ- 
 ence in our positions in life, a sudden nameless 
 fear took possession of me, for I had not lived all 
 those years in a great city not to have observed 
 the changes which come into men's hearts 
 sometimes. I knew that Frank did not know 
 where I was, and it had always been my desire 
 that he should not know. Once indeed I had 
 endeavored to write to him, but the letter pre- 
 sented such an awkward and blundering ap- 
 pearance that I was glad to throw the tear- 
 stained thing in the fire and go on with my 
 bonnets, those dear mute things which some- 
 how had more sympathy for me than any living 
 thing I encountered in those days. Bonnets 
 were the expressions of my life. If I felt blithe 
 and cheery, the work of my hands came out 
 
MY VALENTINE. 259 
 
 in bright warm colors, with plenty of spring 
 roses and an air of gayety and elegance pleas- 
 ant to behold; if my thoughts dwelt on dismal 
 childhood, I made mourning head-gear, the 
 blackest and most sombre. This occupation 
 was balm to me then, just as it is to-day, for 
 although I have my own room now, my cat on 
 the hearth and my bird in the window, as all 
 old maids have, I believe, I will take to bon- 
 nets as naturally as a duck does to water. 
 
 Well, one bright morning in late winter, St. 
 Valentine's day in fact, as I was nearing my 
 sixteenth birthday, my mistress gave me a holi- 
 day, and having gone out, left me to dispose of 
 it as best I could. The bonnets had been care- 
 fully locked up for the day, and as my solace 
 in that direction was thus cut off, I decided to 
 spend the morning in walking about the city, 
 as the weather was bright and sunny a fore- 
 
26O MY VALENTINE. 
 
 runner of those immense spring thaws with 
 which St. Louis people are so well acquainted. 
 As I tied on my sober bonnet more leisurely 
 than usual, I was half startled to see how tall 
 and womanly I had grown, and how my little, 
 pinched childish face had grown round and 
 rosy, and my big eyes full of contentment if 
 not of happiness. Even to myself I was not 
 an unpleasant picture, and I remember experi- 
 encing a feeling of exhilaration as I locked the 
 door of the little bonnet shop, and took my 
 way down one of the principal avenues. I re- 
 member meeting ever so many groups of 
 young girls on the streets that 'morning, many 
 of them chattering and laughing over bits of 
 gilded and tinseled paper, which I knew must 
 be valentines. Wandering on in a kind of 
 dreamy mood, I surprised myself greatly by 
 bringing up at the postoffice, where I had been 
 
MY VALENTINE. 26 1 
 
 some few times for my mistress, and had soon 
 taken my place in the eager expectant row, 
 which blocked the way to the general delivery. 
 My turn came at last ! Not in the least ex- 
 pecting an affirmative answer, I yet summoned 
 up courage to pronounce my name, and, in so 
 doing, felt perhaps more than I had ever done 
 before that I had at least something in com- 
 mon with other human beings. I waited with 
 a peculiar feeling at my heart, while the clerk 
 drew forth a large lavender envelope which 
 actually contained my name on the back. I 
 had never received a letter before, and I flew 
 home breathless and excited to examine its 
 precious contents. It was an elaborate valen- 
 tine, and closely entwined with the usual true- 
 lover's knot were the words, "Janey and 
 Frank," written in a clear, manly hand, and 
 over a knot in another corner he had written 
 
262 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 " Hope," in a manner too plain to be mistaken. 
 A little motto, containing the words, "Just one 
 year from to-day," fell from the envelope to 
 the floor, and all the rest of the day I sat in a 
 kind of ecstasy of surprise, for I was a very 
 matter-of-fact girl, and not fanciful enough to 
 have built air-castles of any kind. 
 
 The next year passed away peacefully, and 
 having had so much hope added to my life, I 
 had grown rosier and taller each day. When 
 the eventful morning of the I4th arrived, I put 
 aside my bonnets, and went early to the post- 
 office, this time to be badly disappointed by 
 receiving nothing. 
 
 Slowly turning my foot-steps homeward, I 
 was shocked to perceive a funeral procession 
 moving towards a church which lay in my way, 
 and for some reason I never could explain, I 
 entered and took a seat the sexton gave me by 
 
MY VALENTINE. 263 
 
 the door. There was something strangely 
 familiar in the haughty carriages of the elderly 
 couple and the two young ladies who formed 
 the procession. They were in the deepest 
 grief, and seemed to possess the perfect sym- 
 pathy of the congregation, which I knew was 
 an aristocratic one of the Episcopal persuasion. 
 I seemed riveted to the spot, and sat through 
 'the long service, scarcely taking my eyes off 
 the mourners, whom I was sure I had seen be- 
 fore. When the congregation, according to 
 the old style, were invited to pass through the 
 aisles and look at the corpse, I found myself 
 transported to the spot by the same uncanny 
 influence I had felt upon entering the church. 
 The instant my eyes fell upon the proud, young 
 face, now cold in death, I recognized it, knew it 
 was all that remained to earth of my youthful 
 playmate, my early love, my valentine. With 
 
264 MY VALENTINE. 
 
 a sharp, low cry I fell prostrate upon the steps 
 of the altar, and when I awoke to consciousness 
 a week later, I was in my own little room, 
 while a kind nurse bent over me and begged 
 me not to distress myself by asking questions. 
 As time wore on I grew stronger, and was 
 able to resume my work, and few ever knew of 
 my terrible experience that valentine's day. 
 Grief seldom kills, and though I am a lone 
 woman and a saddened one, I think I can hum- 
 bly say that I have performed many duties 
 during the course of my long life, and that the 
 world has been rendered some little service by 
 my having lived. 
 
THE LADY'S DREAM. 
 
THE LADY'S DREAM. 
 
 is alone in the moon-light. Her 
 head is dropped upon her hand. A 
 book lies on her lap, but she is not 
 reading. 
 
 There are times when even our fa- 
 vorite authors fail to amuse, when their elo- 
 quent language seems tame, and their inspired 
 pages forced and unnatural ; when we cannot 
 smile at the drollest conceptions, or weep over 
 incidents the most pathetic. These are the 
 hours of retrospection, and surely they are not 
 without their use. 
 
 Oh ! Memory, thou art often a green spot in 
 the desert-lands of Existence. Who shall scoff 
 
2/o THE LADY'S DREAM. 
 
 when thy cooling zephyrs are wafted across the 
 fevered brain, to which alone thou canst bring 
 succor ? Is there not a ten-fold zest added to the 
 pleasures of memory? Think you any mortal 
 state could have been half as joyous as your 
 poor heart, so worn and weary, now pictures it 
 by contrast across the lapse of years ? To you, 
 or to the elderly lady, half dozing there by the 
 fire-light, her open book wholly unnoticed on 
 her knee, the march of time is but a vision or 
 a parable. 
 
 The wrinkles of age are in her face to-night. 
 The bands of her hair are of a silvery hue; her 
 infirmities increase so rapidly she does not even 
 hear you as you cross the threshold, and take 
 the empty chair there by the fire. Do you 
 know what life she is living to-night ? Can you 
 imagine whence that old tender heart is roam- 
 ing while the fire burns fitfully, and the moon 
 
THE LADYS DREAM. 2/1 
 
 light is streaming in like a golden flood ? Tis 
 a winter's eve, but not so in the lady's dream. 
 She thinks of a time when queenly Summer 
 was abroad over the earth, when every leaf and 
 bud and flower were full of warm, happy, 
 healthy life a day in early June, a cloudless 
 sky, masses of rich crimson berries, and two 
 pairs of hands working among them with so 
 much seeming industry. Ah! those hands, 
 two of them so strong and brown, and two of 
 them can it be these old shrivelled hands are 
 the same fair dimpled ones she stained with 
 strawberries that day? Bending fondly over 
 her, she sees the fairest, frankest face! How 
 the well-remembered tones thrill into her heart, 
 as she imagines she hears him speak ! Surely 
 this is no vision. She is a girl once more, all 
 the long, lonely years, all the bitter doubts and 
 cruel bars are swept away. They are together 
 
2/2 THE LADYS DREAM. 
 
 once more, in the summer of the year and the 
 spring of their lives, while heaven smiles down 
 upon their pure young love, and all the forest 
 birds sing triumphant anthems of glorious 
 praise. Shone ever the sun so brightly before? 
 Sang ever the birds outside of Eden as they 
 sang that happy, long-ago day ? Ah ! poor 
 dear lady, was it the intense beauty of your 
 spring, perhaps, that has made your winter so 
 cold, and drear, and desolate ? 
 
 The hours go on, but she does not move or 
 seem to realize the flight of time. They leave 
 the old garden now, hand in hand, side by side, 
 heart throbbing to heart, but not until they 
 have turned about to take a last farewell of all 
 the smiling verdure in that old south garden. 
 He bends his handsome head to touch her lips, 
 and murmur a wish that this day may be em- 
 blematic of their lives. O ! gentle lady, would 
 
THE LADYS DREAM. 2/3 
 
 to God it had been so for your sweet sake. 
 Hand in hand they go out at the old garden 
 gate, up the steep and rugged hill of Life. The 
 path-way is full of stones and briers, but as often 
 as she cries out with pain, just so often does he 
 take her to his bosom, and comfort her. They 
 travel on and on, and after a time God is good 
 to them, and lovely children are sent to them, 
 that their hearts may be for ever cemented in 
 the love that passeth all understanding. Little 
 laughing voices are their's, little tender feet run- 
 ning on before in the journey up the Mountain; 
 little forms gathering new strength and beauty 
 every day; little hearts wherein the parents have 
 new thrones, and are crowned again, just as 
 they crowned each other among the scarlet ber- 
 ries, that never-to-be-forgotten day in the glad 
 long-ago. This is the blessed fruition of a life 
 of love, and now one child has been transformed 
 
2/4 THE LADYS DREAM. 
 
 into an angel, and a little eager voice cries 
 "Mother, come!" . Hark! Did you not hear 
 the echo of that little voice ? Can you say that 
 the little dream-child did not call, and that the 
 poor soul there by the fire, who, until to-night 
 has ne'er known aught of love since that sum- 
 mer day, does not respond with a wealth of 
 mother-love, which real mothers never know ? 
 Ah ! she is waking. The poor weary head 
 lifts itself heavily from the withered hand ; the 
 soft eyes wander aimlessly about the room. 
 She sees the reflection of her haggard face there 
 in the mirror, by the ghastly moonlight. A 
 shudder thrills through her, as she compares 
 its pallor with the roses of the bright young 
 face in the old south garden, and yet it is as 
 though a flood of rich melody had been poured 
 into her sombre room, and all night long she 
 sees the beautiful face of the lovely dream- 
 
THE LADYS DREAM. 
 
 275 
 
 child, it is the same frank, fond face that bent 
 over her among the scarlet berries in the sum- 
 mer of the year and the spring of her life. 
 
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