CLOVERNOOK OB RECOLLECTIONS or OUK NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE WEST SECOND SERIES. B r ALICE CAREY. NEW YORK JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 142 TO 150 WORTH STREET PUBLISHER'S PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. IN issuing a new edition of Alice Carey's " Clover- nook ; or, Recollections of cur Home in the West" the publishers have been impressed with the opinion of the poet, Mr. WHITTIER, who, when predicting for these sketches a wide popularity, said that "they bear the true stamp of genius simple, nat- ural, truthful and evince a keen sense of the hu- mor and pathos of the comedy and tragedy of life in the country ; " and further, believing that a new generation of readers will welcome and appreciate "the weird fancy, tenderness, and beauty, the touching descriptions and exquisite rural pictures." February, 1884 2063447 CONTENTS. THE PAST 9 MRS. WETHERBY'S PARTY 18 ZEBULON SANDS 80 LEARNING CONTENT 93 THE TWO VISITS 109 UNCLE WILLIAM'S .146 UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S i71 MY VISIT TO RANDOLPH 197 WHY MOLLY ROOT GOT MARRIED 230 CHARLOTTE RYAN 24* THE SUICIDE 281 THE COLLEGIAN'S MISTAKE 290 THE DIFFERENCE, AND WHAT MADE IT 817 ELSIE'S GHOST STORY 832 WARD HENDERSON.. 3 46 CONCLUSION 861 BECOLLECTIONS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE WEST THE PAST. WE do not suffer our minds to dwell sufficiently on the past. Though now and then there is one who thinks it wise to talk with the hours that are gone, and ask them what report they bore to Heaven, this sort of communion is for the most part imposed as a duty and not felt to be a delight. The sun sets, and our thoughts bathe themselves in the fresh- ness of the morning that is to come, and fancy busies herself : n shaping some great or good thing that is waiting just beyond the night ; and though, time after time, we discover that Fancy is a cheat and lies away our hearts into unsubstantial realms, we trust her anew without question or hesitancy ; and so the last sun sets, too often, ere we look back and seriously consider our ways. I have met with some writer, I think Hazlitt, in his " Table Talk," with whom my estimate of the past harmonizes perfectly : " Am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of it ?" he asks, " or do I not drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth, when I but retrace its footsteps, and its skirts far off 1* 10 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. adore ?" And, in continuation, he says, " It is the past that gives me most delight, and most assurance of reality." For him the great charm of the Confessions, of Rousseau, is their turning so much on this feeling his gathering up the departed moments of his being, like drops of honey-dew, to distil a pre- cious liquor from them his making of alternate pleasures and pains the bead-roll that he tells over and piously worships ; and he ends by inquiring, " Was all that had happened to him, all that he had thought and felt, to be accounted nothing ? Was that long and faded retrospect of years, happy or miserable, a blank that was to make his eyes fail and his heart faint within him in trying to grasp all that had once vanished, because it was not a prospect into futurity ?" Yesterday has been, and is, a bright or dark layer in the time that makes up the ages ; we are certain of it, with its joys or sorrows ; to-morrow we may never see, or if we do, how shall it be better than the days that are gone the times when our feet were stronger for the race, and our hearts fuller of hope when, perchance, our "eyes looked love to eyes that spake again, and all went merry ?" Why should we look forward so eagerly, where the way grows more dusty and weary all the time, and is never smooth till it strikes across the level floor of the grave, when, a little way back, we may gather hands ful of fresh flowers ? Whatever evils are about us, is it not very comforting to have been, blessed, and to sit alone with our hearts and woo back the visions of departed joys? And who of us all has had so barren and isolate a life that it is gladdened by no times and seasons which it pleases us to think eternity cannot make dim nor quite sweep into forgetfulness ? For myself, when I move in the twilight or the hearthlight, thought, in spite of the interest that attaches to uncertainty, travels oftener to the days that have been, than to those that are to come. With the dear playmate who has been asleep so many years, I am walking again, pulling from the decayed logs mosses that make for us brighter carpets than the most inge- nious looms of men may weave ; I am treading on the May grass and breathing its fragrance anew ; I am glad because of a oird's nest in the bush, and feel a tearful joyousness when the THE PAST. 11 cedar pail brims up with warm milk, or the breath of the heifer, sweet as the airs that come creeping over the clover field, is close upon my cheek while I pat her sleek neck, praising her bounty. Then there are such bright plans to plan over ! what though so many of them have failed ? they had not failed then, but seemed very good and beautiful, and it is as easy to go down to the bases of our dreams, as to think of their tottering and falling. True, as I am putting flowers among the locks over which the dust lies now, I must needs sometimes think of the dust, but that I can cover with flowers also, and feel that there is no moaning in the sleep which is beneath them. There is another too, not a playmate, for whom, as the evening star climbs over the western tree-tops, I watch, joyfully, for hope has as yet never been chilled by disappointment. And sure enough, the red twilight has not burned itself out, nor the insects ceased to make their ado, before the music of the fami liar footstep sounds along the hush of a close-listening, and " One single spot is all the world to me." Blow on, oh, wild wind, and stir the woods that are divided from me now by distance and by time, for in your murmurs there is a voice that makes my heart young again ; clouds of the April, travel softly and rain sweetly till the meadows are speckled with lilies, and the swollen streams flow over their banks, for I seem to see on the sprouting grass the sheets of the bridal bed bleaching white. Death came first to the mar- riage feast, and she whose hopes I made mine and with whose eyes I watched, is wrapt daintily in the shroud of snow. And yet, not alone for its beauty, not even for its solemn eloquence, do I look and listen to the past. It makes me feel life's reality ; it makes me know its responsibility, and put down the hasty word that might rankle deeply and long, and hold undropt the pebble that might stir the whole sea of life; it makes me reverent of others, and distrustful of myself. I remem- ber silences where kind words might have been, and what is worse, impetuous and inconsiderate behavior for which I can- not be penitent enough. But aside from its rebuking spirit outside of any good or evil that is in it the past is loved by me, nnd my pleasantest pastime is to take up the threads of the lives If OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. that have crossed mine and weave their histories anew, mingling in the light and shadow of destiny till I lose them in the dis- tance, or find them sinking in the valley where there is " rest to the labor and peace to the pain," MRS. WETHERBE-S QUILTING PARTY. 19 MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. LONGER than I can remember, my father, who is an old man now, has been in the habit of driving every Friday morning from his home, seven miles away, to this goodly city in which I now live. I may well say goodly city, from the view which presents itself as I look out from the window under which I have placed my table for the writing of this history, for my home is in the "hilly country "that overlooks this Western Queen, whose gracious sovereignty I am proud to acknowledge, and within whose fair dominions this hilly country lies. I cannot choose but pause and survey the picture : the Ken- tucky shore is all hidden with mist, so that I try in vain to see the young cities of which the sloping suburbs are washed by the Ohio, river of beauty ! except here and there the gleam of a white wall, or a dense column of smoke that rises through the silver mist from hot furnaces where swart labor drives the thrifty trades, speeding the march to elegance and wealth. I cannot see the blue green nor the golden green of the oat and wheat fields, that lie beyond these infant cities, nor the dark ridge of woods that folds its hem of shadows along their bor- ders, for all day yesterday fell one of those rains that would seem to exhaust the clouds of the deepest skies, and the soaked earth this morning sends up its coal-scented and unwholesome fogs, obscuring the lovely picture that would else present itself. 1 can only guess where the garrison is. I could not hear " The sullen cry of the seutinel," even if the time of challenge were not passed though long before Ou sunrise 1 woke to the music of the reveille, that 14 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. comes morn after morn floating over the waters and through the crimson daybreak, to chase the dream from my pillow. Faintly I discern the observatory crowning the summit of the mount above me, and see more distinctly at its base the red bricks of St. Philomena, and more plainly still the brown iron and glittering brass of its uplifted spire, with the sorrowful beauty of the cross over all ; while midway between me and the white shining of the tower of the cathedral, away toward the evening star, I catch the dark outline of St. Xavier. Beautiful ! As I said, I cannot choose but pause and gaze. And now, the mists are lifting more and more, and the sunshine comes dropping down through their sombre folds to the damp ground. Growing, on the view, into familiar shapes, comes out point after point of the landscape towers and temples, and forest and orchard trees, and meadow-land the marts of traffic and the homes of men ; and among these last there is one, very pretty, and whose inmates, as you guess from the cream-white walls, overrun with clematis and jasmine, and the clambering stalks of roses, are not devoid of some simple refinement of taste from which an inference of their happiness may be drawn for the things we feel are exhibited in the things we do. The white-pebbled walk, leading from the gate to the door- way, is edged with close miniature pyramids of box. and tht smoothly-shaven sward is shadowed by various bushes and flowers, and the gold velvet of the dandelion shines wherever it will, from the fence close beneath the window sending up its bitter fragrance out of dew, while sheaves of green phlox stand here and there, which in their time will be topped with crimson blossoms. The windows are hung with snowy curtains, and in one that fronts the sun, is hung a bird-cage, with an inmate chattering as wildly as though his wings were free. A blue wreath of smoke, pleasantly suggestive, is curling upward just now, and drifting southward from the tall kitchen chimney, and Jenny Mitchel, the young housewife, as I guess, is baking pies. No- thing becomes her chubby hands so well as the moulding of pastry, and her cheerful singing, if we were near enough to MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 15 hear it, would attest that nothing makes her more happy. And well may she sing And be happy, for the rosy-faced baby sita up in his white willow cradle, and crows back to her lullaby ; and by and by the honest husband will come from healthful labor, and her handiwork in flour and fruit and sugar and spice, will be sure of due appreciation and praise. Nowhere among all the suburban gardens of this basin rimmed with hills, peeps from beneath its sheltering trees a cozier home. They are plain and common-sense people who dwell here, vexed with no indistinct yearnings for the far off and the unattained weighed down with no false appreciation, blind to all good that is not best oppressed with no misan- thropic fancies about the world nor yet affected with spasmodic decisions that their great enemy should not wholly baffle them ; 'jo! the great world cares nothing about them, and they as little for the great world, which has no power by its indiffer- ence to wound the heart of either, even for a moment. Helph. Randall, the sturdy blacksmith, whose forge is aglow before the sunrise, and rosy-cheeked Jenny, his blue-eyed wife, though she sometimes remembers the shamrock and sighs, have no such pains concealed. But were they always thus contented ? Did they cross that mysterious river, whose course never yet run smooth, without any trial and tribulation, such as most voyagers on its bosom have encountered since the world began certainly since Jacob served seven years for Rachel and was then put off with Leah, and obliged to serve other seven for his first love? We shall see : and this brings me back to one of those many Fridays I have spoken of. 1 am not sure but I must turn another leaf and begin with Thursday yes, I have the time now, it was a Thursday. It was as bright an afternoon as ever turned the green swaths into gray, or twinkled against the shadows stretch* ing eastward from the thick-rising haycocks. OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. n. IT was early in July, when the bitter of the apples began to grow sweet, and their sunward sides a little russet ; when the chickens ceased from peeping and following the parent hen, and began to scratch hollows in garden beds, and to fly suddenly upon fences or into trees, and to crow and cackle with un- practised throats, as though they were well used to it, and cared not who heard them, for which disagreeable habits their heads were now and then brought to the block. Blackberries were ripening in the hedges, and the soft silk was swaying beneath the tassels of the corn. Such was the season when, one day, just after dinner, Mrs. Wetherbe came to pass the afternoon, and, as she said, to kill two birds with one stone, by securing a passage to the city on the morrow in my father's wagon for many were the old ladies, and young ones too, who availed themselves of a like privilege. Of course it was a pleasure for us to accommodate her, and not the less, perhaps, that it was a favor she had never asked before, and was not likely to ask again. She was a plain old lady, whom to look at was to know good and simple-hearted as a child. She was born and had been bred in the country, and was thoroughly a country woman ; her high heeled and creaking calf-skin shoes had never trodden beyond the grass of her own door-yard more than once or twice, for even a friendly tea-drinking with a neighbor was to her a matter of not more than biennial occurrence. And on the day I speak of she seemed to feel mortified that she should spend two consecutive days like a gad-about in view of which ne- cessity feeling bound in all self-respect to offer apologies. In the first place, she had not for six years been to visit her niece, Mrs. Emeline Randall, who came to her house more or less every summer, and really felt slighted and grieved that her visits were never returned. So Mrs. Randall expressed herself, and so Mrs. Wetherbe thought, honest old lady as she was! and so it seemed now as though she must go and se MRS. WETHERBE'S QTJTLTTNO PARTY. IT Emeline, notwithstanding she would just as soon, she said, put her head in a hornet's nest, any time, as go to town; for she regarded its gayeties and fashions and all city people, in her opinion, were gay and fashionable as leading directly toward the kingdom of the Evil One. Therefore it was, as I conceive quite doubtful, whether for the mere pleasure of visiting her amiable niece, Mrs. Wetherbe would have entered the city limits. She wanted some cap stuff and some home-made linen, if such things were to be procured in these degenerate days, though if she only had the flax she could spin and weave the linen herself, old as she was, and would not be caught running about town to buy it ; for, if she did say it. she was worth more than half the girls now at work; and no one who saw how fast her brown withered fingers flew round the stocking she was knitting, would have doubted it at all. "Nothing is fit for the harvest-field but homespun linen," said Mrs. Wetherbe, "and if Wetherhe don't have il he'll be nigh about sick, and I may jest as well go fust as las-t. for he won't hear to my spinning, sence I am sixty odd ; h* says he don't like the buz of the wheel, but to me there's no nicer music." The last trowsers of her own making were worn out, and along for several days past her good man had then been obliged to wear cloth ones; which fact was real scandalous in the good woman's estimation, and in this view it certainly was time she should bestir herself, as she proposed. Moreover, she had one or two other errands that especially induced her to go to town. A black calico dress she must have, as she had worn the old one five years, and now wanted to cut it up and put it in a quilt, for she always intended it to jine some patchwork she'd had on hand a long time, and now she vas going to do it, and make a quilting party, and have the work all done at once. I, of course, received then and there the earliest invitation. This was years ago, and the fashion of such parties has long ince passed away, but in due time I will tell you about this, 18 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. as you may never have an opportunity of participating in sucL a proceeding. Perhaps you may have seen persons, certainly I have, who seem to feel called on, from some feeling of obligation I do not understand, to offer continual apologies for whatever they do, or propose to do. It was so with good Mrs. Wetherhe, and after the announcement of this prospective frolic, she talked a long chapter of whys and wherefores, after this wise. William Helphenstein Randall, Emeline's oldest son, had been living at her house three or four years, and he had leased, month in and month out, to have a wood-chopping and quilting, some afternoon, and a regular play party in the evening; and he had done so many good turns for her, that it seemed as if a b"dy could hardly get round it without seeming reel disoblee- gin' ; and though she didn't approve much of such worldly carryings on, she thought for once she would humor Helph ; and then, too, they would get wood prepared for winter, and more or less quilting done for " though on pleasure she was bent, she was of frugal mind.'* 1 remarked that I was under an impression that Mr. Randall was a man of property, and asked if Helph was out of college. " Why, bless your heart, no," said Mrs. Wetherbe, " he was never in a college, more'n I be this minute ; his father is as rich as Cresus, but his children got all their larnin' in free schools, pretty much; Helph hasn't been to school this ten years a'most, 1 guess. Let me see : he was in a blacksmith's shop sartainly two or three years before he come to my house, and he isn't but nineteen now, so he must have been tuck from school airly. The long and short on't is," continued the old lady, making her knitting-needles fly again, " Emeline, poor gal, has got a man that is reel clos't, and the last time I was there I most thought he begrudged me my victuals ; but I was keerful to take butter and garden-sass, and so on, enough to pay for all I got." And she dropped her work, she was so ex- asperated, for though economical and saving in all ways, she was not meanly stingy. She had chanced to glide into a com- municative mood, by no means habitual to her, and the per- spiration stood in drops on her forehead and her little black MRS. WETHERBFS QUILTING PARTY 19 eyes winked with great rapidity for a minute, before she added, " And that ain't the worst on't neither, he is often in drink, and sich times he gits the Old Clooty in him as big as a yearlin heifer !" " Ay, I understand," I said, " and that is why Helph happens to live witn you." " Yes," said Mrs. Wetherbe, resuming her knitting, " that's why, and it's the why of a good many other things; 1 don't know as I ought to talk of things that are none of my business, as you may say, but my temper gits riled and a'most biles over the pot, when I think of some things Jinny Mitchel has telled me: she's their adopted darter, you know; but that speaking of the pot reminds me that I broke my little dinner pot last week, and if there will be room for it I want to kerry it along and get a new leg put in. And so you see," she con- cluded, " I have arrants enough to take me to town ;" and she wiped her spectacles, preparatory to going home, saying the glasses were too young for her, and she must get older ones to- morrow, and that was one of the most urgent things, in fact, that took her to the city. Having promised that 1 would ac- company her, to select the new dress, and dine with Mrs. Randall, she took leave, with an assurance of being ready at six o'clock in the morning, so as not to detain us a grain or morsel. Ill WHEN morning began to redden over the eastern stars, our household was astir, and while we partook of an early break- fast, the light wagon, which was drawn by two smart young bays, was brought to the door. Baskets, jugs, and other things, were imbedded among the straw, with which our carriage was plentifully supplied, and a chair was placed behind the one seat, for my accommodation, as Mrs. Wetherbe was to occupy the place beside my father. I have always regarded the occupancy of the chair, on that occasion, as an example of self-sacrifice which I should not like to repeat, however beautiful in theory may be the idea of self-abnegation. But I cannot hope that JO OUR NF.TOTTBORTTOOD. others will appreciate this little benevolence of mine, unless they have ridden eight or more miles, in an open wagon, and on a chair slipping from side to side, and jolting up and down, behind two coltish trotters, and over roads that for a part of the time kept one wheel in the gutter and one in the air. But I must leave to the imagination the ups and downs of this particular epoch of my life. Still one star stood, large and white, above the hills, but the ground of crimson began to be dashed with gold when we set forward. Notwithstanding the " rough, uneven ways, which drew out the miles, and made them wearisome," these goings to the city are among the most delightful recollections of my life. They were to my young vision openings of the brightness of the world ; and after the passage of a few years, with their ex- periences, the new sensations that freshen and widen the at- mosphere of thought are very few and never so bright as I had then. Distinctly fixed in my mind is every house its color and size, and the garden walks and trees with which it was surround- ed, and by which the roadsides between our homestead and that dim speck we called the city, were adorned; and nothing would probably seem to me now so fine as did the white walls, and smooth lawns, and round-headed gate-posts, which then astonished my unpractised eyes. Early as we were, we found Mrs. Wetherbe in waiting at her gate, long before reaching which the fluttering of her scarlet merino shawl, looking like the rising of another morning, ap- prised us of our approach to it. She had been nigh about an hour watching for us, she said, and was just going into the house to take off her things, when she saw the heads of the horses before a great cloud of dust ; and though she couldn't see the color of the wagon, nor a sign of the critters, to tell whether they were black or white, she knew right-a-way that it was our- team, for no body else druv such fine horses. " Here, Mrs. Witherbe, get right in," said my father, who was fond of horses, and felt the compliment as much as if > had been, to hiinself ; and it was owing entirely to this that MR3. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTT. 21 he said Mrs. Witherbe instead of Mrs. Wetherbe, though I am not sufficiently a metaphysician to explain why such cause should have produced such an effect. Helphenstein, who was chopping wood at the door, called out, as we were leaving, " Don't forget to ask Jenny to come to the quilting ;" and Mr. Wetherbe paused from his churning, beneath a cherry-tree, to say, " Good-bye, mother ; be careful, and not lose any money, for it's a hard thing to slip into a pus, and it's easy to slip out." The good woman held up her purse a little linen bag tied at one end with a tow string, and pretty well distended at the other to assure the frugal husband she had not lost it in climbing into the wagon ; and having deposited it for safe keep- ing where old ladies sometimes stow away thread, thimble, beeswax, and the like, she proceeded to give us particular ac- counts of all the moneys, lost or found, of which she ever knew any thing, and at last concluded by saying she had sometimes thought her old rnan a leetle more keerful than there was any need of; but, after all, she didn't know as he was ; and this was just the conclusion any other loving and true-hearted wife would have arrived at in reference to any idiosyncrasy pertain- ing to her "old man," no matter what might, could, would or should be urged on the contrary. One little circumstance of recent occurrence operated greatly in favor of the carefulness of Mr. Wetherbe, in the mind of his very excellent and prudent wife. Helph had lately, in a most mysterious and unaccountable manner, lost two shillings out of his trowsers pocket. " It was the strangest thing ever could have happened," she said : " he was coming home from town Helph was and he said, when he paid toll, he just had two shillings left ; aiid he put it in the left pocket of his trowsers, he said ; he said he knew he had it then, for just as he rode up the bank of the creek, his horse stumbled, and he heard the money jingle, just a? plain as could be ; and when he got home, and went up stairs, and went to hang up his trowsers before he went to go to bed, he just thought he would feel in his pocket, and the money wasn't there ! He said then, he thought he might have been ft OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. mistaken, and so he felt in the other pocket, he said, and behold, it was clean gone ! And such things make a body feel as if they could not be too keerful," observed Mrs. Wetherbe, "for you might as well look for a needle in a haystack, as for a dollar once lost. Helph," she added, " rode back tho next morning as far as the toll-house, and though he kept his eyes bent on the ground, the search wasn't of no use." And she suddenly started, and clapped her hand, not in her pocket, but where she had deposited her own purse, exclaiming, as she did so, " Mercy on us ! I thought at fust it was gone ; and I declare for it, I am just as weak as a cat, now, and I shall not get over my fright this whole blessed day." "You are a very nervous person," said my father, and with him this was equivalent to saying, you are a very foolish wo- man ; for he had little patience with men or women who make inuch-ado-about-nothing ; and, venting his irritation by a sudden use of the whip, the horses started forward, and threw me quite out of my chair ; but the straw prevented me from receiving any injury, and I gained my former position, while the hands of Mrs. Wetherbe were yet in consternation in the air. This feat of mine, and the laughter which rewarded it, brought back more than the first good-humor of my father, and he reined in the horses, saying, "They get over the ground pretty smartly, don't they, Mrs. Wetherbe?" " Gracious sakes !" she replied. " how they do whiz by things; it appears like they fairly fly." The conversation then turned on the march of improvement; for we had come to the turn- pike, and the rattling of the wheels, and the sharp striking of the hoofs on the stones, were reminders of the higher civili- zation we were attaining, as well as serious impediments to any colloquial enjoyment. "A number of buildings have gone up since you were here,'* said my father, addressing the old lady " What has gone up where ?" she answered, bending her ear towards him. But failing to notice that she did not reply cor rectly, he continued : " That is the old place Squire Gates used to own ; it don't look much as it used to, does it ?" MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. t " Yes, la me ! what a nice place it is ! Somewhere near eld Squire Gates's, isn't it?" ' Yes, he was an old man," said my father, " when he owned that place ; and near sixty when he married his last wife, Polly Weaver, that was." " Dear me, neighbor, how we get old and pass away ! but I never heard of the old man's death. What kind of fever did you say he died with?" " He is dead, then, is he ? Well, I believe he was a pretty good sort of man. I have nothing laid up against him. Do you know whether he made a will ?" " Who did he leave it to ?" inquired the lady, still misappre- hending. " Jeems, I believe, was his favorite, though I always thought Danel the best of the two." " Well, I am glad Jeems has fared the best," replied my father ; " he was the likeliest son the old man had." " Yes," she said, vaguely, for she had not heard a word this time. " What did you say ?" asked my father, who liked to have his remarks answered in some sort. The old lady looked puzzled, and said she didn't say any thing ; and after a moment my father resumed : " Well, do you know where the old man died ?" And in a tone that seemed to indicate that she didn't know much of any thing, she inqui- red, "What?" and then continued, in a tone of irritation, "I never saw a wagon make such a terrible rattletebang in my born days." " I asked if you knew where he died ?" repeated my father, speaking very loud. "Oh no, we did hear once that he had separated from his wife, and gone back to the old place ; folks said she wasn't any better than she should he ; I don't pretend to know ; and 1 don't know whether he died there, or where he died. I don't go about much to hear any thing, and I didn't know he was dead till you told me." "Who told you?" asked my father, looking as though she would not repeat the assertion the second time. M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. "I said I didn't know it till you told me," she answered, innocently; "and I was just about to ask where he died." "The devil !" said my father, losing not only all civility, but all patience too; "I never told you any such thing, Mrs. Wetherbe. I have not seen you to talk with you any for a number of years till this morning, when you told me yourself that the old man was dead ; and if 1 had ever told such a story, I should remember it." " Why," she interposed, "you will surely remember, when you think of it. It was just after -we passed Squire Gates's house ; and the fever he died with you mentioned too." " Good heavens ! it was just there you told me ; and I had not heard till that minute of his death. I will leave it to my daughter here," he continued, turning to me, who, laughing at these blunders, was shaken and jolted from side to side, and backward and forward, and up and down, all the time. At this juncture, a smart little chaise, drawn by a high- headed black horse, with a short tail, approached from the opposite direction. Within sat a white-haired old gentleman, wearing gloves and ruffles; and beside him, a more youthful and rather gayly dressed lady. Both looked smiling and happy ; and as they passed, the gentleman bowed low to Mrs. "Wetherbe and my father. "That is Squire Gates and his wife now !" exclaimed both at once; and each continued, "It's strange how you happened to tell me he was dead." " Both are right, and both are wrong," said I, and thereupon I explained their mutual misunderstanding, and the slightly irri- table feelings in which both had indulged subsided, and ended in hearty good-humor. The slant rays of the sun began to struggle through the black smoke that blew against our faces, for the candle and soap factories of the suburbs began to thicken, and the bleating of lambs and calves from the long, low slaughter-houses which ran up the hollows opposite the factories, made the head sick and the heart ache as we entered city limits. Fat and red-faced butchers, carrying long whips, and reining in the gay horses they bestrode, met us, one after anothei, MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 2ft driving back from the market great droves of cattle, that, tired and half maddened, galloped hither and thither, lashing their tails furiously, and now and then sharply striking their horns against each other, till they were forced through narrow pas- sages into the hot and close pens no breath of fresh air, nor a draught of water between them and their doom. Now and then a little market-cart, with empty boxes and barrels that had lately been filled with onions, turnips, or rad- ishes, went briskly by us : the two occupants, who sat on a board across the front of it, having thus early disposed of their cargo, and being now returning home to their gardens. Very- happy they looked, with the proceeds of their sales in the pockets of their white aprons, and not unfrequently also a calf s head or beef sliver, half-a-dozen pigs' feet, or some similar deli- cacy, to be served up with garlics for dinner. Countrymen who had ridden to market on horseback, were likewise already returning to their farms. The basket which had so lately been filled with the yellow rolls of butter, and covered with the green broad leaves of the plantain, was filled now, instead, with tea and sugar, with perhaps some rice and raisins, and possibly a new calico gown for the wife at home. \Vhat a pleasant surprise when the contents of the basket shall be made known ! After all, the independent yeoman, with his simple rusticity and healthful habits, is the happiest man in the world. And as 1 saw these specimens of the class returning home, with joyous faces and full baskets, I could not help saying what all the world should know, if it be true, from its having been pretty frequently repeated, "When ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wis \" 11 What is it, darter?" said Mrs. Wetherbe, bending towards ttie, for her apprehensions were not very quick. " 1 was saying," 1 replied, " that the farmers are the happiest people in the world." " Yes, yes, they are the happiest," her predilections, of course, boing in favor of her own way of living; " it stands to reason that it hardens the heart to live in cities, and makes folks selfish too. Look there, what a dreadful sight !" and she z *9 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. pointed to a cart filled with sheep and lambs, on the top of which *ere thrown two or three calves, with their feet tied together, and reaching upwards, their heads stretched back, and their tongues hanging out. "Really, the law should punish such wicked and useless cruelty," she said ; and I thought t nd still think that Mrs. Wetherbe was not altogether wrong. Men, and the signs of affairs, began to thicken ; blacksmiths were beating iron over their glowing forges, carpenters shov- ing the plane, and the trowel of the mason ringing against the bricks. Men, women, and children hurried to and fro, and all languages were heard, and all costumes were seen, as if after a thousand generations, the races were returning to be again united at Babel. " What a perfect bedlam !" said Mrs. Wetherbe ; " I wish to mercy I was ready to go home. Here, maybe, you had better wait a little," she added, seizing the rein, and pointing in the di- rection of a grocery and variety shop, where some crockery ap- peared at the window, and a strip of red flannel at the door. " Don't you want to go down town ?" said my father, rein- ing up. "Yes," she replied, " but I see some red flannel here, and I want to get a few yards for a petti kit." Having assured her she could get it anywhere else as well, she consented to go on, fixing the place in her mind, so that she could find it again, if necessary ; and we shortly found ourselves at Mr. Randall's door. IV. "Ws will just go in the back way," said Mrs. Wetherbe; " I don't like to ring the bell, and wait an hour ;" and accord- ingly she opened a side door, and we found ourselves in th breakfast-room, where the family were assembled. " Why, if it isn't Aunty Wetherbe !" exclaimed a tall, pale- faced woman, coming forward and shaking hands. " Have you brought me something good ?" she added quickly, at the same time relieving the old lady of the basket of nice butter, the jug of milk, the eggs, and the loaf of home-made bread, which she MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 87 had brought partly from the kindness of her heart, partly to secure her welcome. Thus relieved of her burdens, she went forward to the table for Mr. Randall did not rise and offered her hand. " Lord-a-mighty, woman, I didn't know you," he said, in a blustering way ; but he evidently didn't wish to know her. " Who the devil have you brought with you ?" referring to me, with a nod of the head, and bending a pair of grayish blue eyes on me. This salutation was not particularly calculated to make me feel happy, or at home, for I was young and timid ; but remov- ing myself from the range of his glance, I deliberately surveyed the group, with each of whom I felt myself acquainted, in a moment, as well as I wished to be in my life time. Mr. Randall, having inquired who I was, in the peculiarly civil manner I have stated, remarked to his relation, that half the town was on his shoulders, and he must be off; he supposed also she had enough to do in her little sphere, and would pro- bably have gone home before his return to dinner; so, having wrung her hand, and told her she must come and stay six months at his house some time, he departed, or rather went in to the ad joining room, whence after a rattling of glasses and a deep-drawn breath or two, he returned, wiping his lips, and said to the old lady in a quick, trembling, querulous tone, and as though his heart were really stirred with anxiety, " Satan help us, woman ! 1 almost forgot to ask about my son how is Helph ? how is my son, Helph?" His paternal feelings were soon quieted, and turning to his wife, who had resumed her seat at the table, with hair in papers, and dressed in a petticoat and short-gown, he said, "Emeline, don't hurry up the cakes too fast ; I don't want dinner a minute before three o'clock," and this time he really left the house. Besides Mrs. Randall, there were at the table two little boys, of ten and eight, perhaps ; two big boys of about fourteen and sixteen : and a girl of fifteen, or thereabouts. " Oh," said one of the larger boys, as if now first aware of the presence of his aunt, and speaking with his mouth full of food, " Oh, Miss Ma- linda Ilo'j-the-corn, how do you do? I didn't see you before." 88 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Of course the good woman was disconcerted, and blushed, as perhaps she had not done since her worthy husband asked her if she had any liking for his name more years ago than she could now remember. Observing this, the rude fellow continued, " Beg pa-don : I thought it was Malinda Hoe-the-corn, but it's my sweetheart, Dolly Anne Matilda Steerhorn, and she's blushing, head and ears, to see me." And approaching the astonished and bewil- dered woman, he began to unpin her shawl, which was of an old fashion, saying, as he attempted to pass his arm around her waist, " Get up, my love, and let's have a waltz ; come, take off your hoss-blanket." But she held her shawl tightly with one hand, thrusting the impudent fellow away with the other, as she exclaimed, "Get along with you, you sassy scrub !" " That is right, Aunty Wetherbe," said the mother, " he is a great lubbersides, and that is just what he is;" but she laughed heartily, and all the group, with the exception of the little girl, seemed to think he was behaving very funnily ; and in his own estimation he was evidently displaying some very brilliant qualities, and had quite confounded a simple-minded old woman with his abundant humor, and unembarrassed man- ners. " Well," he continued, no whit disconcerted by the dis- pleasure of his aunt, "I am a business man, and must leave you, my dear, but I'll bring my wedding coat and the parson to- night, and an orange flower for you." There was now an opportunity for the older brother to ex- hibit some of his accomplishments, and the occasion was not to be slighted; so, after having inquired what news was in the country, how the crops were, &c., he said, "I am sorry, aunt, that I have such a complication of affairs on hand that I can't stay and entertain you, but so it is: you must come round to my house and see my wife before you return home." " Mercy sakes !" she cried, adjusting her spectacles to survey the youth, " you can't be married ?" " Why, yes," he replied, "haven't you heard of it? and I have a boy six munts old !" " Well, I'd never have thought it ; but you have grown all MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. n out of my knowledge, and I can hardly tell whiVh one you he; in fact, I would not hnve known you if 1 had inet you any place else; and yet I can see Emeline's looks in you." "That is what everybody says," replied the youth; %t I look just like my mammy ;" for, fancying it would seem boyish to say mother, he addressed her in a half mock, half serious way, as *' mammy." "And so you have to go away to your work, do you ?" re- sumed the credulous woman : " what kind of business are you doing here ?" " I am a chicken fancier," he replied : " Got any Polands or Shanghais out your way ?" " I don't know," answered Aunt Wetherbe, unobservant of the tittering about the table. " I'd like to get some white bantams for my wife and baby ;'' and the facetious nephew closed one eye and fixed the other on me. " What do you call the baby f ' " My wife wants to call him for me, but I don't like my own name, and think of calling him Jim Crow." "Now just get along with you," the mother said, "and no more of your nonsense." He then began teasing his mammy, as he called her. for some money to buy white kid gloves, saying he wanted to take his girl to a ball. " Then you have just been imposing upon me," said Mrs. Wetherbe ; to which the scapegrace replied, that he hadn't been doing nothing shorter ; and, approaching the girl, who was quietly eating her breakfast, he continued, taking her ear between his thumb and finger, and turning her head to one side, " I want you to iron my ruffled shirt fust rate *rd particular, do you hear that, nigger waiter?" After these feats he visited the sideboard, after the example of his father, and having asked his mother if she knew where in thunder the old man kept the dimes, adjusted a jaunty cap of shining leather to one side and left the house. "I am glad you are gone," said the girl, looking after him and speaking for the first time. " Come*come, you just tend to your own affairs, Miss Jenny M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. and finish your breakfast some time before noon." said Mrs, Randall, putting on a severe look. "I had to wait on the children all the time you were eating," she replied, rising from the table with glowing cheeks. ' Oh, you had to wait on great things !" the woman said, tartly : " big eaters always want some excuse." Not till the two little boys had demolished the last remnants of what seemed to have been but a "spare feast" in the first place, was the bell rung for Aunt Kitty, the colored woman who presided over the kitchen. She was one of those dear old creatures whom you feel like petting and calling "mammy" at once. She was quiet, and a good heart shone out over her yellow face, and a cheerful piety pervaded her conversation. She retained still the softness of manner and cordial warmth of feeling peculiar to the South ; and added to this was the patient submission that never thought of opposition. She had lived nearly fifty years, and most of them had been passed in hard labor ; but notwithstanding incessant toil, it seemed to me that she was still pretty. True, she possessed few of the attributes which, in the popular estimation, makeup beauty ; neither symmetry of proportions, fairness of complex- ion, nor that crowning grace of womanhood, long, heavy, and silken tresses. No, her face was of a bright olive, and her hair was concealed by a gorgeous turban, and I suspect more beau- tiful thus concealed, but her teeth were sound, and of sparkling whiteness, and her eyes black as night, and large, but instead of an arrowy, of a kind of tearful and reproachful expression ; indeed, in all her face there was that which would have seemed reproachful, but for the sweetly-subduing smile that played over it. She was short and thick-set, and as for her dress, I can only say it was cleanly, for in other respects it was like that of the celebrated priest who figures in the nursery rhyme, "all tattered and torn." As for her slippers, they h*ad evi- dently never been made for her, and in all probability were worn out before they came into her possession ; but her feet were generally concealed by the long skirt of her dress, a morning wrapper of thin white muslin, past the uses of her mistress, who, be it known, gave nothing away which by any MRS. WETHERBE-S QUILTING PARTY. II possibility could be of service to herself. To adapt it to her work, Aunt Kitty had shortened the sleeves and tucked up the skirt with pins; but the thinness of the fabric revealed the bright red and blue plaids of the worsted petticoat, making her appearance somewhat fantastic. Courtesying to us gracefully as she entered the breakfast-room, sht proceeded to remove the dishes. " Why don't you take a bite first yourself?" asked Mrs. Eandall. " No matter about me," she said ; " I want to guv these la- dies a cup of coffee they are come away from the country, and must feel holler-like thank de Lord, we can 'suscitate 'em ;" and with a monument of dishes in her hands she was leaving the room, when Mrs. Randall asked, in no very mild tones, if she considered herself mistress of the house ; and if not, di- rected her to wait till she had directions before she went to wasting things by preparing a breakfast that nobody wanted ; when turning to us, she said, a little more mildly, but in a way that precluded our acceptance, "You breakfasted at home, I suppose ?" Poor Aunt Kitty was sadly disappointed, but consoled herself with the hope that we should return to dinner. Mrs. Eandall, however, said nothing about it. Jenny, a pretty rosy-faced Irish girl, Mrs. Eandall told us was her adopted daughter ; and certainly we should never have guessed it, had she failed of this intimation. " I do by her just as I would by my own child," said the lady ; " and for her encouragement, I give her three shillings in money every week to buy what she likes." " You can well afford it, she must be a great deal of help to you," Mrs. VVetherbe said. But Mrs. Eandall affirmed that she was little assistance f her, though she admitted that Jenny did all the sewing for the family, the chamber-work, tending at the door, and errands. From my own observation, in a single hour, I felt assured that the girl's situation was any thing but desirable : called on constantly by all the members of the family to do this thing or that, for having no set tasks, it was thought she should do 3 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. every thing, and be responsible for all the accidents of all the departments. " Here, Jenny," called one of the little boys, who ^ere no less accomplished in their way than the older brothers, ' black my shoes, and do it quick, too," at the same time throw- ing a pair of coarse brogans roughly against her. " I haven't time," she answered " you must do it yourself." " That's a great big lie," said the boy : and prostrating him- self on the floor, he caught her skirts and held her fast, while he informed us that her father was nobody but an old drunkard, and her mother was a washerwoman, and that Jenny had better look at home before she got too proud to black shoes. " Let me go," said she ; " if my father is a drunkard, yours is no better," and she vainly tried to pull her dress away from him, her face burning with shame and anger for the exposure. " Jenny !" called Mrs. Eandall from the head of the stairs, **Come along with you and do your chamber- work." " Franklin is holding me, and won't let me come," she an- swered ; but the woman repeated her order, saying she would hear no such stories. " It's pretty much so !" called out Mrs. Wetherbe, " it's pretty much so, Emeline." But as she descended, the boy loosened his hold, and of course received no blame, and the poor girl had a slap on the ear with on admonition to see now if she could do her work. *' Sissy," said Aunt Kitty, putting her head in the door, " can't you just run, honey, and get me a cent's worth of yeast?" Meantime Mrs. Wetherbe had asked Jenny to pass a week at her house, assist in preparations for the quilting party and en- joy it; but she feared to ask liberty, and the kind old woman broke the matter to Mrs. Randall, and 1 seconded the appeal. " She has no dress to wear," urged the mistress. " Then she ought to have," responded the old lady, with spirit. " I have money enough to get one," said Jenny, bashfully ; " can't I go with these ladies and get it ?" But Mrs. Randall said she had been idling away too much time to ask for more, and she enumerated a dozen things that should be done. However, Mrs. Wetherbe and 1 combated the decision, and volunteered our assistance, so that reluctant per* MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. S mission to go out with us was granted. Gratitude opened Jen- ny's heart, and as we hastened our work she confided to me many of her trials and sorrows, and I soon perceived that the three shillings per week made all her compensation, with the ex- ception of now and then an old pair of gloves or a faded ribbon, cast off by her mistress. It was true her father was a drunkard, and her mother, a poor weakly woman, had six children to pro- vide for. Jenny gave almost all her own earnings for their sup- port. " They have pretended to adopt me as a child," she said, " that they may seem liberal to me ; but I am, as you see, an underling and a drudge." My heart was pained for her as I saw the hardness and hope- lessness of her fate ; and when at last she was ready to go with us, the poor attempt she made to look smart really had the ef- fect of rendering her less presentable than before ; but between her palm and her torn glove she had slipped two dollars in small change, and she was quite happy. Then, too, the new dress should be made in womanly fashion, for she was in her fifteenth year. We were just about setting out when, with more exultation than regret in her tone, Mrs. Randall called Jenny to come back, for that her little brother wanted to see her. " Oh dear !" she said, turning away with tears in her eyes; and in that exclamation there was the death of all her hopes. We soon saw how it was: the miserable little wretch was come for money, and without a word, Jenny removed the glove and gave him all. " Don't wait to blubber," said the mistress ; " you have lost time enough for one day ;" and the girl retired to exchange her best dress and renew her work. Both Mr. and Mrs. Randall had belonged to the poorest class of people, and the possession of wealth had increased or given fecope to their natural meanness, without in the least diminishing their vulgarity. If there be anj condition with whom I really dislike to come in contact, it is the constitutionally mean and base-mannered who, accidentally/)!- by miserly plodding, become rich. You need but a glimpse of such persons, or of their homes, to know them. No 14 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. expenditures in laces, siks, jewelry, costly carpets, or rara woods, can remove them one hand's breadth from their proper position ; and the proper position of the Randalls was that of the menials over whom their money alone gave them supremacy. We were a long time in getting through our many errands, for Mrs. Wetherbe was detained not a little in surprise or ad- miration at this or that novelty. When a funeral passed, she could not think who could be dead, and essayed all her powers to get a glimpse of the coffin, that she might know whether it were a child or an adult ; or if a horseman cantered past, she gazed after him, wondering if he was not going for the doctor, and if he was, who in the world could be sick ; and then, she selected little samples of goods she wished to purchase, and carried them up to Emeline's, to determine whether they would wash well ; but notwithstanding her frugality and cautiousness, she was not mean ; and she lightened her purse on Jenny's behalf to the amount of the stuff for a pretty new dress. But she could not be spared for a week, and it was agreed that Ilelph should be sent to bring her on the day of the quilting; and so, between smiles and tears, we left her. Alas for Aunt Kitty ! nothing could alleviate her disappoint- ment: she had prepared dinner with special reference to us, and we had not been there to partake of it, or to praise her. "Poor souls ! de Lord help you," she said ; you will be starved a'most !" Mrs. Randall was sorry dinner was over, but she never thought of getting hungry when she was busy. It was long after nightfall when, having left our friend and her various luggage at her own home, we arrived at ours ; and we had earned excellent appetites for the supper that waited us. V. THAT going to town by Mrs. Wetherbe, as I have intimated, was chiefly with a view to purchases in preparation for the pro- posed quilting party and wood-chopping. Not only did we select calico for the border of the qui.t, with cotton batting and spool thread, but we also procured sundry niceties for the supper, MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. U among which I remember a jug of Orleans molasses, half * pound of ground ginger, five pounds of cheese, and as many pounds of raisins. Mrs. Wetherbe had never made a " frolic" before, she said, and now she wouldn't have the name of being near about it, let it cost what it would. And great excitement ran through all the neighborhood so soon as it was known what she had been about, and rumor speedily exaggerated the gallon of molasses into a dozen gallons, the raisins into a keg, and so on. Many thought it was not very creditable in a "professor" to have such carryings on ; some wondered where she would find any body in Clovernook good enough to ask ; others supposed she would have all her company from the city ; and all agreed that if she was going to have her " big-bug" relations, and do her " great gaul," she might, for all of them. The wonder was that she didn't make a party of " whole cloth," and not stick her quilt in at all. There was a great deal of surmising and debating likewise as to the quilt itself; and some hoped it was a little nicer than any patchwork they had seen of Mrs. Wetherbe's making. But this unamiable disposition gradually gave way when it was known that the frolic would embrace a wood-chopping as well as a quilt- ing "for surely," said they, "she don't expect chaps from town to cut wood !" The speculation concerning the quilt began to decline ; what matter whether it were to be composed of stars or stripes, " ris- ing suns," or " crescents ?" Mrs. Wetherbe knew her own busi- ness of course, and those who had at first hoped they would n< t be invited, because they were sure they would not go if they were, wavered visibly in their stout resolves. From one or two families in which the greatest curios:' y reigned, were sent little girls and boys, whose ostensible objects were the borrowing of a darning-needle or a peck measure from the harmless family who had become the centre of interest, but their real errands were to see what they could see. So the feeling of asperity was gradually mollified, as reports thus ob- tained circulation favoring the neighborly and democratic char- acter hitherto borne by the Wetherbes. At one time the good old lady was found with her sleeves rolled b&'-k, mixing bread, 86 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. as she used to do ; and invariably she inquired of the little spies how affairs were going forward at their homes. After all, the neighbors began to think the quilting was not going to be any such great things more than other quiltings. For myself, I understood the whole subject pretty well from the beginning. One morning as I looked up from the window where I sat, I saw Helphenstein Randall approaching, and at once divined his errand. He was mounted on Mr. Wetherbe's old roan mare, and riding a side-saddle; and he was in excellent spirits too, aa J judged from his having the ragged rim of his hat turned up jauntily in front, and from his goading the beast with heels and bridle-rein; but not a whit cared the ancient mare; with youth she had lost her ambition, and now she moved in slow and grace- less way, her neck bent downward, and her nose greatly in ad- vance of her ears. Half an hour afterwards 1 was on the way to assist in preparations for the approaching festivities. But I was only a kind of secondary maid of honor, for foremost on all oc- casions of this kind was Ellen Blake, and in this present in- stance she had preceded me, and with hair in papers, and sleeves and skirt tucked up, she came forth in an at-hoine-attire, mis- tress-of-the-house fashion, to welcome me a privilege she al- ways assumed toward every guest on such occasions. In truth, Ellen really had a genius for managing the affairs of other people, and for the time being she felt almost always the same interest in whatever was being done as though it were al- together an affair of her own. She was also thought, in her neighborhood, which was a sort of suburb of Clovernook, a full quarter of the way to the city, to be very good company, and it is no wonder that her services were much in demand. Very ambitious about her work was Ellen, and few persons could get through with more in a day than she ; in fact there are few more faultless in nearly every respect ; nevertheless, there was one ob- jection which some of the most old-fashiored people urged against her she was dressy, and it was rumored just now that she had got a new " flat," trimmed as full as it could stick of blue ribbons and red artificial flowers, and also a white dress, flounced half way up to the skirt. MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 87 Already the quilt was in the frames and laid out, as the mark- ing was called, the chamber was ready fur the guests, and Ellen said she thought she had been pretty smart if she did say it herself. '* I wanted to take the bed out of my front room and have the quilting there," Mrs. Wetherbe observed, " but this head- strong piece (pointing to Ellen) wouldn't hear of it." " No, indeed," replied the girl; "it would have been the greatest piece of presumption in the world ; la, me ! if we young folks cut up as we do sometimes, we'd have that nice carpet in doll-rags, and then the work of taking down and putting up the bedstead all for nothing, as you may say." I fully agreed that Ellen had made the wisest arrangement. The chamber was large, covering an area occupied by three rooms on the ground floor; and being next to the roof, the quilt could be con-veniently attached to the ratters by ropes, and thus drawn up out of the way in case it were not finished before nightfall. The ceilings were unplastered, and on either side sloped within a few feet of the floor, but the gable windows admitted a suf- ficiency of light, and there was neither carpet nor furniture in the way, except, indeed, the furnishing which Ellen had contrived for the occasion, consisting chiefly of divans, formed of boards and blocks, which were cushioned with quilts and the like. Besides these, there were two or three barrels covered over with table- cloths and designed to serve as hat-stands. There was no other furniture, unless the draperies, formed of petticoats and trow- sers, here and there suspended from pegs, might be regarded as entitled to be so distinguished. The rafters were variously garnished, with bags of seeds, bunches of dried herbs, and hanks of yarn, with some fine spe- cimens of extra large corn, having the husks turned back from the yellow ears and twisted into braids, by which it was hung for preservation and exhibition. One more touch our combined ingenuity gave the place, on the morning of the day guests were expected, and this consisted of festoons, of green boughs and of flowers. While we were busy with preparations in the kitchen, the day following my arrival, Mrs. Randall suddenly made her appear- *S OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. ance, wearing a faded dress, an old straw bonnet, and bearing in one hand a satchel, and in the other an empty basket. " Hi ho ! what brought you, mother?" exclaimed Helph, wno ras watching our progress in beating eggs, weighing sugar, crushing spices, &c. ; and this question was followed with " Where is Jenny ?" and " How did you come?" We soon learned that she had arrived in a market wagon, for the sake of economy ; that her basket was to carry home eggs, butter, apples, and whatever she could get ; and that, though she proposed to assist us, she would in fact disconcert our ar- rangements, and mar our happiness. Jenny was left at home to attend the house, while she herself recruited and enjoyed a little pleasuring. No sooner had she tied on one of Mrs. Wetherbe's checked aprons and turned back her sleeves, than our troubles began ; of course she knew better than we how to manage every thing, and the supper would not do at all, unless prepared under her direc- tion. We were glad when Mrs. Wetherbe said, " Too many cooks spoil the broth, and I guess the girls better have it their own way." But Mrs. Randall was not to be dissuaded ; she had come to help', and she was sure she would rather be doing a little than not. She gave accounts of all the balls, dinners, and suppers, at which she had been, and tried to impress us with the necessity of having our country quilting as much in the style of them as we could. " We must graduate our ginger-cakes," she said, "and so form a pyramid for the central ornament of the table ; the butter must be in the shape of pineapples, and we must either have no meats, or else call it a dinner, and after it was eaten, serve round coffee, on little salvers, for which purpose we should have pretty china cups." I knew right well how ludicrous it would be to attempt the twisting of Aunt Wetherbe's quilting and wood-chopping into a fashionable party, but 1 had little eloquence or argument at com- mand with which to combat the city dame's positive assertions and impertinent suggestions. " Have you sent your notes of invitation yet?" she asked. *' No, uor I don't mean to send no notes nor nothing," said MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 99 the aunt, a little indignant; " it ain't like as if the queen was going to make a quilting, I reckon." But without heeding this pretty decisive answer Mrs. Randall proceeded to remark that she had brought out some gilt-edged paper and several specimen cards, among which she thought perhaps the most elegant would be, " Mr. and Mrs. Wetherbe at home," specifying the time, and addressed to whoever should be invite d. But in vain this point was urged ; the old-fashioned aunt said she would have no such mess written ; that Helph might get on his horse and ride through the neighborhood and ask the young people to come to the quilting and wood-chopping, and that was enough. There was but one thing more to vex us, while anticipating the result of our efforts a rumor that Mrs. Wetherbe had hired a " nigger waiter" for a week. Many did not and could not be- lieve it, but others testified to the fact of having seen the said waiter with their own eyes. With all our combined forces, preparations went actively forward, and before the appointed day every thing was in readi- ness coffee ground, tea ready for steeping, chickens prepared for broiling, cakes and puddings baked, and all'the extra saucers filled with custards or preserves. Ellen stoutly maintained her office as mistress of the ceremo- nies ; and Mrs. Randall took her place as assistant, so that mine became quite a subordinate position, for which I was not sorry, as I did not feel competent to grace the elevated position at first assigned me. Helph had once or twice been warned by his mother that Jenny would not come, and that he need not trouble himself to go for her ; but he persisted in a determination to bring her ; in fact his heart was set on it ; and the aunt seconded his decision in the matter, as it was chiefly for Helph and Jenny she had de- signed the merry-making, and she could not and would not be cheated of her darling purpose. " Well, have your own way and live the longer," said the mo- ther; to which the son answered that such was his intention; and accordingly, having procured the best buggy the neighbor- hood ifforded, and brushed his coat and hat with extra care, he 40 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. set out for the city, before sunrise, on the long anticipated day Dinner was served earlier than usual, and at one o'clock we were all prepared Mrs. VVetherbe in the black silk she had had for twenty years, and Ellen in her white flounced dress, with a comb of enormous size, and a wreath of flowers above her curls; but when "Emeline" made her appearance, neither our surprise nor a feeling of indignant disappointment could be concealed : she had appropriated to her own use Jenny's new dress, which Mrs. Wetherbe had bought expressly for this occasion. " Now you need n't scold, Aunt Wetherbe," she s=aid ; " it was really too pretty a thing for that child ; and besides, I in- tend to get her another before long." "Humph!" said the old lady, "every bit and grain of my comfort 's gone," and removing her spectacles she continued si- lently rubbing them with her apron, till Ellen, who was stand- ing at the window, on tip toe, announced that Jane Stillrnan was coming " with her changeable silk on." And Jane Stillrnan had scarcely taken offher things when Polly Harris was announced. She wore a thin white muslin, and a broad-rimmed Leghorn hat, set off with a profusion of gay rib- bons and flowers, though she had ridden on horseback ; but in those days riding-dresses were not much in vogue, at least in the neighborhood of Clovern'ook. Amid jesting and laughter we took our places at the quilt, while Ellen kept watch at the window and brought up the new comers sometimes two or three at once. Mrs. Wetherbe had not been at all exclusive, and her invi- tations included all, rich and poor, maid and mistress, as far as she was acquainted. So, while some came in calico gowns, with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, walking across the fields, oth- ers were attired in silks and satins, and rode on horseback, or were brought in market wagons by their fathers or brothers. Along the yard fence hung rows of side-saddles, and old work horses and sleek fillies were here and there tied to the branches of the trees, to enjoy the shade, and nibble the grass, while the iong-legged colts responded to calls of their dams, capering s they would. Nimbly ran fingers up and down and across the quilt, and MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 41 tongues moved no less nimbly ; and though now and then glances strayed away from the work to the fields, and suppressed titters broke into loud laughter, as, one after another, the young men were seen with axes over their shoulders wending towards the woods, the work went on bravely, and Polly Harris soon called out, clapping her hands in triumph, " Our side is ready to ' roll.' " Ellen was very busy and very happy, now overseeing the rolling of the quilt, now examining the stitching of some young quilter, and now serving round cakes and cider, and .giving to every one kind words and smiles. " Oh, Ellen," called a young mischief-loving girl, " please let me and Susan Milford go out and play ;" and forthwith they ran down stairs, and it was not till they were presently seen skipping across the field with a basket of cakes and a j>g of cider, that their motive was suspected, and then, for the first time that day, gossip found a vent. " 1 'd be sorry," said Mehitable Worthington, a tall, oldisk girl, " to be seen running after the boys, as some do." " La, me, Mehitable," answered Ellen, who always had a gwx:! word for everybody, ' it ain't every one who is exemplary ) jce you, but they are just in fun, you know ; young wild girls, j )u know." " 1 don't know how young they be," answered the spins. ,-r, tartly, not much relishing any allusion to age, "but 'birds of a feather flock together,' and them that likes the boys can ttlk in favor of others that likes them." " Why, don't you like them ?" asked Hetty Martin, looking up archly. " Yes, I lik them out of my sight," answered Mehitable, stitching fast. Upon hearing this, the dimples deepened in Hetty's cheeks, and the smile was as visible in her black eyes as on her lips. " I suppose you wish you had gone along," said Mehitable maliciously, " but I can tell you the young doctor is not there ; he was called away to the country about twelve o'clock, to a man that took sick yesterday." Hetty's face crimsoned a little, but otherwise she manifested no annoyance, and she replied, laughingly, that she hoped he would get back before night. 42 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Mehit&ble was not thus to be baffled, however ; her heart was overflowing with bitterness, for he whom she called the young doctor was, in her estimation, old enough to be a more fitting mate for herself than for Hetty, her successful rival ; and no sooner was she foiled in one direction than she turned in an- other, revolving still in her mind such sweet and bitter fancies. *' 1 guess he is no such great things of a doctor after all," she said ; and elevating her voice and addressing a maiden on the opposite side of the quilt, she continued, " Did you hear, Eliza- beth, about his going to visit Mrs. Mercer, and supposing her at- tacked with cholera, when in a day or two the disease fell in her arms ?" This effervescence was followed by a general laughter, during which Hetty went to the window, apparently to disentangle her thread ; but Ellen speedily relieved her by inviting her to go with her below and see about the supper. " I should think," said Elizabeth, who cordially sympathized with her friend, " the little upstart would be glad to get out of sight ;" and then came a long account of the miserable way in which Hetty's family lived ; " every one knows," they said, " her father drinks up every thing, and for all she looks so fine in her white dress, most likely her mother has earned it by washing or sewing : they say she wants to marry off her young beauty, but I guess it will be hard to do." VV T hen Hetty returned to the garret, her eyes were not so bright as they had been, but her subdued manner made her only the prettier, and all, save the two ancient maidens alluded to, were ready to say or do something for her pleasure. Those un- comfortable persons, however, were not yet satisfied, and tip- ping their tongues with the unkindest venom of all, they began to talk of a wealthy and accomplished young lady, somewhere, whom it was rumored the doctor was shortly to marry, in spite of little flirtations at home, that some ~ople thought meant something. Very coolly they talked of the mysterious belle's superior position and advantages, as though no humble and lov- ing heart shook under their words as under a storm of arrows. The young girls came back from the woods, and hearing their reports of the number of choppers, and how many trees were MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 41 felled, and cut and corded, the interrupted mirthfulness was re- stored, though Hetty laughed less joyously, and her elderly ri vals maintained a dignified reserve. Aside from this little episode, all went merry, and from the west window a golden streak of sunshine stretched further and further, till it began to climb the opposite wall, when the quilt was rolled to so narrow a width that but few could work on it to advantage, and Ellen, selecting the most expeditious to com- plete the task, took with her the rest to assist in preparing the supper, which was done to the music of vigorous strokes echo- ing and re-echoing from the adjacent woods. VI. BENEATH the glimmer of more candles than Mrs. Wetherbe had previously burned at once, the supper was spread, and it was very nice and plentiful ; for, more mindful of the wood chopper's appetites than of Mrs. Randall's notions of propriety, there were at least a dozen broiled chickens, besides other sub stantial dishes, on the table. I need not attempt a full enumera- tion of the preserves, cakes, pies, puddings, and other such luxuries, displayed on Mrs. Wetherbe's table, and which it is usual for country housewifes to provide with liberal hands on occasions of this sort. Ellen was very proud, as she took the last survey before sounding the horn for the men-folks; and well she might be so, for it was chiefly through her ingenuity and active agency that every thing was so tastefully and successfully prepared. Mrs. Randall still made herself officious, but with less assu- rance than at first. Ellen was in nowise inclined to yield her authority, and indeed almost the entire responsibility rested on her, tor poor Mrs. Wetherbe was sadly out of spirits in conse- quence of the non-appearance of Helph and Jenny. All possi- ble chances of evil were exaggerated by her, and in her simple apprehension there were a thousand dangers which did not in reality exist. In spite of the festivities about her, she some- times found it impossible to restrain her tears. Likely enough. 44 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. she said, the dear boy had got into the canal, or the river, and was drownded, or his critter might have become frightened there were so many skeerry things in town and so run away with him, and broke every thing to pieces. Once or twice she walked to the neighboring hill, in the hope of seeing him in the distance, but in vain he did not come ; the supper could be delayed no longer, and, sitting by the win- dow that overlooked the highway, she continued her anxious watching. Not so the mother ; she gave herself little trouble as to whether any accident had befallen her son ; perhaps she guessed the cause of his delay, but, so or not, none were gayer than she. Her beauty had once been of a showy order ; she was not yet very much faded ; and on this occasion, though her gown was of calico, her hair was tastefully arranged, and she was really the best dressed woman in the assembly. Of this she seemed aware, and she glided into flirtations with the country beaux, in a free and easy way which greatly surprised some of us unsophisticated girls ; in fact, one or two elderly bachelors were sorely disappointed, as well as amazed, when they under- stood that the lady from town was none other than Helph's mother! 1 cannot remember a time when my spirits had much of the careless buoyancy which makes youth so blessed, and at this time I was little more than a passive observer, for which reason, perhaps, I remember more correctly the incidents of the evening. The table was spread among the trees in the door-yard, which was illuminated with tallow candles, in very simple paper lan- terns ; the snowy linen waved in the breeze, and the fragrance of tea and coffee was, for the time, pleasanter than that of flowers ; but flowers were in requisition, and such as were in bloom, large or small bright or pale, were gathered to adorn tresses of every hue, curled and braided with the most elabo- rate care. At a later hour, some of them were transferred to the buttonholes of favored admirers. What an outbreak of merriment there was, when, at twilight, down the hill that sloped against the woods, came the gay bano of choppers, with coats swung on their arms, and axes gleam- MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 41 in over their shoulders. Every thing became irresistibly pro- vocative of enjoyment, and from every window and every nook that could be occupied by the quilters, went mingled jests and laughter. The quilt was finished, but Mehitable and Elizabeth remained close within the rhamber, whether to contemplate the completed work, or to regale themselves with each other's accumulations of scandal, I shall not attempt to guess. A large tin lantern was placed on the top of the pump, and beside it was a wash-tub filled with water, which was intended as a general resort for the ablutions of the young men. Besides tne usual roller-towel, which hung by the kitchen door, there were two or three extra ones attached to the boughs of the apple-tree, by the well ; and the bar of yellow soap, procured for the occasion, lay on a shingle, conveniently near, while a paper comb-case dangled from a bough betwixt the towels. These toilet facilities were deemed by some of the. party altogether superfluous, and their wooden pocket-combs and handkerchiefs were modestly preferred. During the fixing up the general gayety found vent in a liberal plashing and dashing of water on each other, as also in wrestling bouts, and contests of mere words, at the conclusion of which the more aristo- cratic of the gentlemen resumed their coats, while others, dis- daining ceremony, remained, not only at the supper but during thi' entire evening, in their shirt sleeves, and with silk handker- chiefs bound around their waists, as is the custom with reapers. " Come, boys !'' called Ellen, who assumed a sort of motherly tone and manner toward all the company, "whatcfoes make . you stay away so ?" The laughter among the girls subsided, as they arranged themselves in a demure row along one side of the table, and the jests fell at once to a murmur as the boys found their places opposite. " Now, don't all speak at once," said Ellen : " how will you have your coffee, Quincy ?" Mr. Quincy Adams Claverel said he was not particular : he would take a little sugar and a little cream if she had them handy, if not, it made no difference. * Tea or coffee, Mehitable i" she said next; but the young M OTJR NEIGHBORHOOD. woman addressed did not drink either coffee made her drowsy like, and if she should drink a cup of tea, she should not slee| a wink all night. Elizabeth said, Mehitt was just like herself she drank a great deal, and strong. The jesting caused much laughter, ?nd indeed the mirth was quite irrepressible on the part of th girls, because of the joyous occasion, and their greater excita- bility, and on that of the young men, because of the green and yellow twisted bottles that had glistened that afternoon in the ivy which grew along the woods : even more for this, per- naps, than for the bright eyes before them. One said she drank her tea " naked ;" another, that Ellen might give her half a cup first rate she would rather have a little and have it good, than have a great deal and not have it good. And in this she meant not the slightest offence or insinuation. "I hope," said Mr. Wetherbe, speaking in a diffident voice, and pushing back his thin gray hair, " 1 hope you will none ot you think hard of my woman for not coming to sarve you her self she is in the shadder of trouble, but she as well as my- self thanks you all for the good turn you have done us, and wishes you to make yourselves at home, and frolic as long aa you are a mind to;" and the good man retired to the house to give his wife such comfort as he could. The shadow of their sorrow did not rest long on the group at the table, and the laughter, for its temporary suppression, was louder than before. There were one or two exceptions, However, among the gay company. Poor Hetty Martin, as her eyes ran along the line of smiling faces and failed of the object of their search, felt them droop heavily, and her smiies and words were alike forced. Between her and all the pleas- ures of the night stood the vision of a fair lady, coniured by the evil words of Mehitable and Elizabeth, and scarcely would the tears stay back any longer, when her light-hearted neighbors rallied her as to the cause of her dejection. At the sound of a hoofstroke on the highway, her quick and deep attention be- trayed the interest she felt in the absent doctor. " Why hast thou no music on thy tongue, fair maiden '?" asked a pale, slender young man, sitting near by ; and looking MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 47 up, her eyeu encountered the blue and melancholy ones of a young cooper, who had lately neglected the adze for the pen, in the use of which he was not likely to obtain much facility. His flaxen hair hung in curls down his shoulders; he wore his collar reversed, and a sprig of cedar in the buttonhole of his vest, which was of red and yellow colors ; otherwise his dress was not fantastical, though he presented the appearance of one whose inclinations outstripped his means, perhaps. A gold chain attached to a silver watch, and a bracelet of hair on the left wrist, fastened with a small tinsel clasp, evinced that his tastes had not been cultivated with much care, though his face attested some natural refinement. He had recently published in the " Ladies' Garland," two poems, entitled and opening in this way : "ALONE. " For evsry one on earth but me There is some sweet, sweet low tone; Deatli and the grave are all I see, 1 am alone, alone, alone !" "OX THE DEATH OF AN INFANT. "A little while the lovely flower To cheer our earthly home was given, But oh, it withered in an hour, And death transplanted it to heaven." These very original and ingenious verses he took from his pocket and submitted to the critical acumen of Hetty, saying he should really take it as a great favor if she would tell him frankly what her opinion was of the repetitions in the last line of the first stanza, as also what she thought of the idea of com- paring a child to a flower, and of Death's transplanting it from earth to heaven. Hetty knew nothing of poetry, but she possessed an in stinctive sense of politeness, and something of tact, as indeed most women do, and shaped her answer to conceal her igno- rance, and at the same time flatter her auditor. This so inflated his vanity, that he informed her confidentially that he was just then busily engaged in the collection of his old letters, for no body knew, he said, what publicity they might come lo, f. om bis distinguished position as a literary man. 43 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Jn his apprehensions and cautious endeavors the lady con curred, and he resolved at once to put in the " Ladies' Gar land " an advertisement, requesting all persons who might have any letters or other writings of his, to return them to the ad- dress of P. Joel Springer, forthwith. High above the praises of his simple listener, he heard sounding the blessed 'award of the future time, and the echoes of his unrequited sorrows went moaning through the farther parts of the world. Who of us are much wiser ? for on bases as unsubstantial have we not at one time or another rested some gorgeous fabric whose turrets were to darken among the stars. Time soon enough strips the future of its fantastic beauty, drives aside the softening mists, and reveals to us the hard and sharp reali- ties of things. But the guests were generally merry, and they did ample justice to the viands before them, partly because they had ex- cellent appetites, and partly in answer to the urgent entreaties of Ellen, though she constantly depreciated her culinary skill, and reiterated again and again that she had nothing very invit- ing. But her praises were on every tongue, and her hands were more than busy with the much service required of them, which nevertheless added to her happiness ; and as she glided up and down the long table, dispensing the tea and coffee, snuff- ing the candles, or urging the most bashful to be served with a little of this or that, just to please her, she was the very per- sonification of old-fashioned country hospitality. Every one liked Ellen, for she was one of those who always forget themselves when there is any thing to remember for others. At length, one of the young men who had been in communi- cation with the bottles, mentioned as lying cool among the ivy during the afternoon, protested that he would bring a rail to serve as a pry, unless his companions desisted from further eat- ing of their own free will. " That is right, Bill," called out one kindred in bluntness and noarseness, " here is a fellow wants choking off." " I own up to that," said another, " I have eaten about nushel, I guess." MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 49 " If I had a dollar for every mouthful you have eaten," said one, " I wouldn't thank nobody for being kin to me." " Well," answered the person thus addressed, " if I have busted a couple of buttons off my vest, I don't think you are a fellow that will be likely to let much bread mould." " La, how you young men do run on," interposed Ellen, neither surprised nor offended at the coarse freedom of the jests; and amid obstreperous laughter the party arose, and many of the young men resorted again to the whiskey bottles, for the sake of keeping up their spirits, as they said, after which, with lighted cigars in their mouths, they locked arms with the ladies, and talked sentiment in the moonlight as they strolled, in separate pairs, preparatory to assembling in the gar- ret for the usual order of exercises prescribed for such occasions. Meantime the candles were mostly carried thither by cer- tain forlorn maidens, who declared themselves afraid of the night air, and from the open windows rung out old hymns, which, if not altogether in keeping with the general feeling and conduct of the occasion, constituted the only musical resources of the party, and afforded as much enjoyment perhaps as the rarest songs to beauties flecked with diamonds, when met for gayety or for display in marble halls. Hidden by shadows, and sitting with folded arms on a top- most fence-rail, P. Joel Springer listened alone to the dirge- like sighing of the wind, and the dismal hootings of the owl. And our good hostess, the while, could be prevailed on neither to eat nor sleep, even though her excellent spouse assured her that Helph was safe enough, and that she knew right well how often he had spent the night from home in his young days, without meeting any accident or misfortune; but the dear old lady refused to be comforted ; and every unusual noise, to her fancy, was somebody bringing Helph home dead. Mr. Weth- erbe had, the previous autumn, " missed a land " in the sowing of his wheat field, and that, she had always heard say, was a sure sign of death. In couples, already engaged for the first play, the strollers Cftme in at last, and there was a tempest of laughter and froiic, which fairly shook the house. The customs which prevailed, 3 M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. vfin a dozen years ago, in Clovernook and other rural neighbor- hoods of the west, are now obsolete ; but I do not in any de- gree overdraw the manners of the period in which this quilting occurred at Mrs. Wetherbe's. Some embarrassment followed the assembling in the garret under the blaze of so many can- dies, but when it was whispered that Jo Allen, the most genial and true-hearted of them all, had just been taken home on horseback, and that Abner Gibbs, for his better security, had ridden behind him, there were renewed peals of laughter, and no one seemed to doubt that such indulgence and misfortune were a legitimate subject of merriment. Others, it was more privately suggested, had also taken a drop too much, and would not be in condition to see the girls " safe home " that night. "Come," said Ellen, as she entered the room, last of all, hav- ing been detained after the fulfilment of her other duties by kindly endeavoring to induce Jo Allen to drink some new milk, as an antidote to the Monongahela, "come, why don't some of you start a play ?" But all protested they didn't know a sin- gle thing, and insisted that Ellen should herself lead the amusements. Hunting the Key being proposed, the whole party was formed into a circle, with hands joined to hands, and directed to move rapidly round and round, during which process, a key was at tached to the coat of some unsuspecting individual, who waa then selected to find it, being informed that it was in the keep- ing of one of the party. The circle resumed its gyrations, and the search commenced by examining pockets and forcing apart interlocked hands, a procedure relished infinitely all except the inquirer after the key well knowing where it might be found. Soon all diffidence vanished, and " O, sister Phoebe, how merry were we, The night we sat under the juniper-tree," rung across the meadows, and was followed by other rude rhymes, sung as accompaniments to the playing. " Uncle Johnny's sick a-bed For his blisses, send him, misses, Three good wishes, three good kisses, And a loaf of gingerbread," was received with every evidence of admiration an exchange MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 51 of kisses being required, of course. Then came the Selling of fawns, and the Paying of Penalties, with requisitions no lesi agieeable to all parties. "My love and I will go, And my love and I will go, And we'll settle on the banks Of the pleasant O-hi-6," was enacted by each beau's choosing a partner, and promenad- ing " to the tune of a slight flirtation." And Blind Man's Buff, and Hold Fast all I Give, You, and half a dozen other winter evening's entertainments, then regarded as not undeserving the best skill of country gentlemen and ladies, though now for the most part resigned everywhere to the younger boys and girls, were played with the most genuine enjoyment. The night wore on to the largest hours, and for a concluding sport was proposed Love and War. In the centre of the room, two chairs were placed, some three feet apart, over which a quilt was carefully spread, so as seemingly to form a divan, and when a lady was seated on each chair, the gentlemen withdrew to the lower apartments, to be separately suffered to enter again when all should be in order. A rap on the door announced an applicant for admission, who was immediately conducted by the master of ceremonies to the treacherous divan, and pre- sented to the ladies, being asked at the same time whether he preferred love or war ? and, no matter which was his choice, he was requested to sit between the two, when they rose, and by so doing, caused their innocent admirer to be precipitated to the floor a denouement which was sure to be followed by the most boisterous applause. "I guess," said Mehitable, whispering in a congratulatory way to Elizabeth, " that Hetty will have to get home the best way she can : I haven't seen anybody ask her for her company." But just then there was a little bustle at the door, and a mur. mur of congratulations and regrets, over which was heard the exclamation, "Just in time to see the cat die!" Mehitable raised herself on tiptoe, and discovered that the doctor had at length arrived. A moment afterwards he stood beside Hetty, who was blushing and smiling with the most unfeigned satis*- M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. faction ; but in answer to some whispered words of his she shook her head, a little sadly, as it seemed, and the doctor's brow darkened with a frown. Of this, Mr. P. Joel Springer was not unobservant, and coming forward, reluctantly, as he said, relinquished the pleasure he had expected concluding his poetical and gallant speech with, " Adieu, fair maiden, alone I take my solitary way, communing with the stars." Hetty and the doctor were the next to go, and then came a general breaking up ; horses were saddled, and sleepy colts, leaving the places they had warmed in the grass, followed slowly the gallants, who walked beside the ladies as they rode. There were some, too, who took their way across the fields, and others through the dusty highway, all mated as pleased them, except Mehitable and Elizabeth, who were both mounted on one horse, comforting each other with assurances that the young men were very great fools. And so, in separate pairs, they wended their ways homeward, each gentlemen witn the slippers of his lady-love in his pocket, and her mammoth comb in his hat. VII. WE will now return to Helphenstein, and give some particu lars of the night as it passed with him. It was near noon when" he drew the reins before the house of his father, with a heart full of happy anticipations for the afternoon and evening ; but his bright dream was destined quickly to darken away to the soberest reality of his life. His father met him in the hall with a flushed face, and taking his hand with some pretence of cordiality, said in an irritable tone, as though he had not the slightest idea of the nature of his errand, " Why, my son, what in the devil's name has brought you home ?" He then gave a doleful narrative of the discomforts and pri- vations he had endured in the few days of the absence of Mrs. Randall, for whom he either felt, or affected to feel, the greatest love and admiration, whenever she was separated from him ; though his manner towards her, except during these spasmodic flections, was extremely neglectful and harsh. MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. s a man to do, my son Helph ?" he sa poor father has n't had a meal of victuals fit for a dog to eat, since your mother went into the country : how is she, poor woman ? I think I'll just get into your buggy, and run out and bring your mother home ; things will all go to ruin in two days more old black Kitty aint worth a cuss, and Jenny aint worth fiRother." And this last hit he seemed to regard as most especially happy, in its bearing upon Helph, whose opinions of Jenny by no means coincided with his own ; but his coarse allusion to her, so far from warping his judgment against the poor girl, made him for the time oblivious of every thing else, and he hastened in search of her. " Lord, honey, I is glad to see you !" exclaimed Aunt Kitty, looking up from her work in the kitchen : for she was kneading bread, with the tray in her lap, in consequence of rheumatic pains which prevented her from standing much on her feet. " What in the world is the matter ?" asked Helph, anxiously, as he saw her disability. " Noffin much," she said, smiling; "my feet are like to bust wid the inflammations rheumatis dat's all. But 1 's a poor sinful critter," she continued, "and de flesh pulls mighty hard on de sperrit, sometimes, when I ought to be thinkin' ob de mornin' ober Jordan." And having assured him that she would move her old bonea as fast as she could, and prepare the dinner, she directed him where to find Jenny, saying, "Go 'long wid you, and you '11 find her a seamsterin' up stairs, and never mind de 'stress of an old darkie like me." As he obeyed, he heard her calling on the Lord to bless him, for that he was the best young master of them all. Poor kind-hearted creature ! she did not then or ever, as others heard, ask any blessing for herself. In one end of the long low garret, unplastered, and comfort less, from the heat in summer and the cold in winter, there was a cot bed, a dilapidated old trunk, a broken work-stand, a small cracked looking-glass, and a strip of faded carpet. By courtesy, this was called Jenny's room ; and here, seated on a chair with 54 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. out any back, sat the maiden, stitching shirts for her adopted brothers, when the one who, from some cause or other, never called her sister, appeared suddenly before her. Smiling, she ran forward to meet him, but suddenly checking herself, she blushed deeply, and the exclamation, "Dear Helph !" that rose to her lips, was subdued and formalized to simple " Helphen- stein." The cheek that was smooth when she saw him last, was darkened into manhood now, and her arm remained pas- sive, that had always been thrown lovingly about his neck ; but in this new timidity she appeared only the more beautiful, in the eyes of her admirer, and if she declined the old expressions of fondness, he did not. The first feeling of pleasure and surprise quickly subsided, on her part, into one of pain and embarrassment, when she remem- bered her torn and faded dress, and the disappointment that awaited him. " Well, Jenny," he said, when the first greeting was over, " I have come for you and you must get ready as soon as possible." Poor child ! she turned away her face to hide the tears that would not be kept down, as she answered, " I cannot go I have nothing to get ready." And then inquiries were made about the new dress of which he had been informed, and though for a time Jenny hesitated, he drew from her at last the confession that it had been appro- priated by his mother, under a promise of procuring for her another when she should have made a dozen shirts to pay for it. An exclamation that evinced little filial reverence fell from his lips, and then as he soothed her grief, and sympathized with her, his boyish affection was deepened more and more by pity. "Never mind, Jenny," he said, in tones of simple and truth- ful earnestness, " wear any thing to-day, but go for my sake go ; I like you just as well in an old dress as in a new one." Jennv had been little used to kindness, and from her lonely and sad heart, gratitude found expression in hot and thicK Coming tears. Certainly, she would like of all things to go to the quilting, And the more, perhaps, that Helph was come for her ; but in DO MRS. WETHERBETS QUILTING PARTY. II time of her life had poverty seemed so painful a thing* Dur- ing the past week she had examined her scanty wardrobe re- peatedly ; her shoes, too, were down at the heels, and out at the toes ; to go decently was quite impossible, and yet, she could not suppress the desire, nor refrain from thinking, over and over, if this dress were not quite so much faded, or if that were not so short and outgrown and then, if she had money to buy a pair of shoes, and could borrow a neck-ribbon and collar! in short, if things were a little better than they were she might go, and perhaps, in the night, her deficiencies would be less noticeable. But in the way of all her thinking and planning lay the foi- bidding if; and in answer to the young man's entreaties, she could only cry and shake her head. She half wished he would go away, and at the same time feared he would go; she avoided looking at the old run-down slippers she was wearing, as well as at hei patched gown, in the vain hope that thus he would be prevented from seeing them ; and so, half sorry and half glad, half ashamed and half hon- estly indignant, she sat the work fallen into her lap, and the tears now and then dropping, despite her frequent winking, and vain efforts to smile. At length Helph remembered that his horse had not been cared for; and looking down from the little window, he found, to his further annoyance, that both horse and buggy were gone, and so his return home indefinitely delayed. " 1 wish to Heaven," he angrily said, turning towards Jenny, "you and I had a home somewhere beyond the reach of the impositions practised on us by Mr. and Mrs. Randall !" The last words were in a bitter but subdued tone ; and it was thus, in resentment and sorrow, that the love-making of Helph and Jenny began. VIII. DOWN the thinly -wooded hills, west of the great city, reached the long shadows of the sunset. The streets were crowded with mechanics seeking their firesides in one hand the little 5ft OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. tin pairin which dinner had been carried, and in the other a toy for the baby, perhaps, or a pound of tea or of meat for the good wife. The smoke curled upward from the chimneys of the suburban districts, and little rustic girls and boys were seen in all direc- tions, hurrying homeward with their arms full of shavings ; old women, too, with their bags of rags, betook themselves some- where Heaven only knows whether they had any homes, o ? where they went but at any rate, with backs bending undor their awful burdens, they turned into lanes and alleys, and dis- appeared ; the tired dray-horses walked faster and nimbler as they smelled the oats in the manger ; and here and there, in the less frequented streets, bands of school-boys and girls drove their hoops, or linked their arms and skipped joyously up and down the pavement; while now and then a pair of older child- ren strolled, in happiness, for that they dreamed of still more blessed times to come. The reflections of beautiful things in the future, make the present bright, and it is well for us, since the splendor fades from our approach, and it is only in reveries of hope that we find ourselves in rest, or crowned with beauty. We have need to thank thee, oh our Father, that thou hast given us the power of seeing visions and dreaming dreams! Earth, with all the glory of its grass and all the splendor of its flowers, were dreary and barren and desolate, but for that divine insanity which shapes deformity into grace, and dark- ness into light. How the low roof is lifted up on the airy pillars of thought, and the close dark walls expanded and made enchanting with the pictures of the imagination ! And best of all, by this blessed power the cheeks that are colorless, and the foreheads that are wrinkled by time, retain in our eyes the freshness and the smoothness of primal years; to us the.y can- not grow old, for we see " Poured upon the locks of age, The beauty of immortal youth." Life's sharp realities press us sore, sometimes, and but for the unsubstantial bases on which we build some new anticipations, we should often rush headlong to the dark. MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY IX. THEY were sitting together, Helph and Jenny, with the tvri Wght deepening around them, speaking little, thinking much, and gazing through the long vistas open to the sunshine, and brighter than the western clouds. But they did not think of the night that was falling, they did not hear the wind sough- ing among the hot walls and roofs, and prophesying storm and darkness. Suddenly appeared before them a miserably clad little boy, the one mentioned in a previous chapter as coming for money, and now, after a moment's hesitation, on seeing a stranger, he laid his head in the lap of Jenny, and cried aloud. Stooping over him, she smoothed back his hair and kissed his forehead ; and in choked and broken utterances he made known his mourn- ful errand: little Willie was very sick, and Jenny was wanted at home. Few preparations were required. Helph would not hear of her going alone ; and in the new and terrible fear awakened by the message of the child, all her pride vanished, and she did not remonstrate, though she knew the wretchedness of poverty that would be bared before him. Folding close in hers the hand of her little brother, and with tears dimming her eyes, she silently led the way to the miserable place occupied by her family. It was night, and the light of a hundred windows shone down upon them, when, turning to her young protector, she said, in a voice trembling with both shame and sorrow, perhaps, " This is the place." It was a large dingy building, five stories high and nearly a hundred feet long, very roughly but substantially built of brick. It was situated in the meanest suburb of the city, on an unpaved alley, and opposite a ruinous graveyard, and it had been erected on the cheapest possible plan, with especial reference to the poorest class of the community. Scarcely had the wealthy proprietor an opportunity of posting 3* 58 OlFR NEIGHBORHOOD. bills announcing rooms to let, before it was all occupied ; and with its miserable accommodations, and crowded with people who were almost paupers, it was a perfect hive of misery. Porch above porch, opening out on the alley, served as door- yards to the different apartments places for the drying of miserable rags play grounds for the children and look-outs, for the decrepit old women, on sunny afternoons. Dish-water, washing suds, and every thing else, from tea and coffee grounds to all manner -of picked bones and other refuse, were dashed down from these tiers of balconies to the ground below, so that a more filthy and in all ways unendurable spec- tacle can scaicely lie imagined, than was presented in the vicinity of this money-making device, this miserable house refuge. Leaning against the balusters, smoking and jesting, or quar- reling and swearing, were groups of men, who might be counted by tens and twenties ; and the feeble and querulous tomss of woman, now and then, were heard among them, or from within the wretched chambers. A little apart from one of these groups of ignorant disputants sat an old crone combicg her gray hair by the light of a tallow candle, other females were ironing or washing dishes, while others lolled listlessly and gracelessly about, listening to, and sometimes taking part in, the vile or savage or pitiable conversations. Children, half naked, were playing in pools of stagnant water, and now and then pelting each other with heads of fishes, and with slimy bones, caught up at random ; and one group, more vicious than the others, were diverting themselves by- throwing stones at an old cat that lay half in and half out of a puddle, responding, by feeble struggles, as the rough missiles struck against her, and here and there were going on such fierce contests of brutish force as every day illustrate the melancholy truth that the poor owe so much of their misery to the indul- gence of their basest passions, rather than to any causes neces- sarily connected with poverty. Depravity, as well as poverty, had joined itself to that mis- erable congregation. Smoke issued thick from some of the uhimneys, full of the odors of mutton and coffee, and as these auxed with the vile stenches that thickened the atmosphere MRS. WETHERBE^ QUILTING PARTY. 6* near the scene, Helph, who had been accustomed to the free air of the country, fresh with the scents of the hay-fields and orchards, found it hard to suppress the exclamation of disgust and loathing that rose to his lips, when he turned with Jenny into the alley, and his senses apprehended in a twinkling what 1 have been so long in describing. Up the steep and narrow wooden stairs, flight after flight, they passed, catching through the open doors of the different apart- ments glimpses of the same squalid character greasy smoking stoves, dirty beds, ragged women and children, with here and there dozing dogs, or men prostrate on the bare floors either from weariness or drunkenness and meagerly-spread tables, and cradles, and creeping, and crying, and sleeping babies, all in close proximity. From the third landing they turned into a side door, and such a picture presented itself as the young man had never seen hitherto : the windows were open, but the atmosphere was close, and had a disagreeable smell of herbs and medicines ; a single candle was lighted, and though the shapes of things were not distinctly brought out, enough was visible to indicate the ex- treme poverty and wretchedness of the family. It was very still in the room, for the children, with instinctive fear, were huddled together in the darkest corner, and spoke in whispers when they spoke at all ; and thg mother, patient and pale and wan, sat silent by the bed, holding the chubby sun- burned hands of her dying little boy. "Oh, mother," said Jenny, treading softly and speaking low. Tears filled the poor woman's mild blue eyes, and her lipi trembled as she answered, "It is almost over he does net know me any more." And forgetting, in the blind fondness of the mother, the darkness and the sorrow and the pain, and worst of all, the con- tagion of evil example, from which he was about to be free, she buried her face in her hands, and shook with convulsive agony. All the deprivation and weariness and despair, that had sometimes made her, with scarce a consciousness of what nhe was doing, implore the coming of death, or annihiiat'on, were ! n this new sorrow as nothing: with her baby laughing in her M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. arma, as he had been but the last week, she would be strong to front the most miserable rate. Tie after tie may be unbound from the heart, while our steps climb the rough steep that goes up to power, for the sweet Household affections unwind themselves more and more as the distance widens between aspiration and contentment, and over the tide that sweeps into the shining- haven of ambition there is no crossing back. The brow that has felt the shadow of the laurel, will not be comforted by the familiar kisses of love; and struggling to the heights of fame, the rumble of clods against the coffin of some mate of long ago, comes softened of its awfulest terror; but where the heart, unwarped from its natural yearnings, presses close, till its throbbings bring up echoes from the stony bottom of the grave, and when, from the heaped mound, reaches a shadow that darkens the world for the humble eyes that may never look up any more these keep the bleeding affections, theso stay the mourning that the great cannot understand. Where the wave is narrow, the dropping of even a pebble of hope sends up the swelling cir- cles till the whole bosom of the stream is agitated ; but in the broader sea, they lessen and lessen till they lose themselves in a border of light. And over that little life, moaning itself away in the dim obscurity of its birth-chamber, fell bitterer tears, and bowed hearts aching with sharper pains, than they may ever know whose joys are not alike as simple and as few. "Oh, Willie, dear little Willie," sobbed Jenny, folding her arms about him and kissing him over and over, " speak to me once, only once more !" Her tears were hot on his whitening face, but he did not lift his heavily-drooping eyes, nor turn to- wards her on the pillow. The children fell asleep, one on another, where they sat. In the presence of the strong healthy man they were less afraid, and nestling close together, gradu- ally forgot that little Willie was not among them and so came the good gifi which God giveth his beloved in nights of sorrow. In some chink of the wall the cricket chirped to itself the same quick short sound, over and over, and about the candle circled and fluttered the gray-winged moths, heedless of their perished fellows, and on the table stood a painted bucket half MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 81 filled with tepid water, and beside it a brown jug and broken glass. Now and then the mother and daughter exchanged anxious looks, as a footstep was heard on the stairs, but when it turned aside to some one of the adjoining chambers, they resumed their watching, not speaking their hopes or fears, if either had been awakened. From the white dome of St. Peter's sounded the silvery chime of the midnight ; the sick child had fallen asleep an hour before, but now his eyes opened full on his mother, and his white lips worked faintly ; "Jenny," she said, in a tone of low but fearful distinctness for with her head on the bedside she was fast do/ing into forgetfulness " he is going going home." " Home," he repeated, sweetly, and that was the last word he ever said. The young man came forward hastily the soft light of a setting star drifted across the pillow, and in its pale radiance he laid the hands together, and smoothed the death-dampened curls. " OH, my children !" cried Mrs. Mitchel, bending over the huddled sleepers, and calling them one by one to awake, "your poor little brother is dead he will never play with you any more." " Let them sleep," said Jenny, whose grief was less passion- ate, " they cannot do him any good now, and the time will come soon enough that they cannot sleep." " I know it, oh, I know it !" she sobbed, " but this silence seems so terrible ; 1 want them to wake and speak to me, and yet," she added, after a moment, " I know not what I want. I only know that my little darling will not wake in the morn- ing. Oh," she continued, " he was the loveliest and the best of all he never cried when he was hurt, like other children, nor gave me trouble in any way ;" and she then recounted, feeding her sorrow with the memory, all his endearing little ways, from If OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. his first conscious smiling to the last word he had spoken ; mim bered over the little coats he had worn, and the color of them, saying how pretty he had thought the blue one, and how proud he had been of the pink one with the ruffled sleeves, and how often she had lifted him up to the broken looking-glass to see the baby, as he called himself, for that he always wanted to see the curls she made for him. Sometimes she had crossed him ; she wished now she had never done so; and sometimes she had neglected him when she had thought herself too busy to attend to his little wants ; but now that was all irreparable, she blamed herself harshly, and thought how much better she might have done. The first day of his sickness she had scolded him for being fretful, and put him roughly aside when he clung about her knees, and hindered the work on which their bread depended ; she might have known that he was ailing, she said, for that he was always good when well, and so should have neglected every thing else for him ; if she had done so in time, if she had tried this medicine or that, if she had kept his head bathed, one night, when she chanced to fall asleep, and waked with his calling her "mother," and saying the fire was burning him ; in short, if she had done any thing she had not done, it might have been bet ter, her darling Willie might have got well. " The dear baby," she said, taking his cold, stiffening feel in her hand, " he never had any shoes, and I promised so often to get them." " He does not need them now," interposed Jenny. " I know it, I know it," she answered, and yet she could not subdue this grief that her boy was dead, and had never had the shoes that he thought it would be so fine to have. "Oh, mother, do not cry so," Jenny said; "I will come Home and we will love each other better, we who are left, and work together and try to live till God takes us where he has taken the baby home, home !" but in repeating his dying words, her voice faltered, and hiding her face in the lap of her mother, she gave way to agony that till then she had kept down. But, alas, it was not even their poor privilege to weep unin- terruptedly, and, shuddering, they grew still when, si nwly ajd MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTT. M neavily cliribing the narrow and dark stairs, sounded the well- known step of the drunken husband and father. A minute the numb and clumsy hand fumbled about the door-latch, and then with a hiccup, and a half articulate oath, the man, if man he should be called, staggered and stumbled into the room. His dull brain apprehended the case but imperfectly, and seeing his wife, he supposed her to be waiting for him, as he had found her a thousand times before ; and mixing something of old fondness with a coarse and brutal familiarity, he put his arm about her neck, saying, " Why the hell are you waiting for me, Nancy, when you know them, fellers won't never let me come home? Daughter," he continued, addressing Jenny, "just hand me that jug, that's a good girl, I feel faint like," and putting his hand to his temple, where the blood was oozing from a recent cut, he finished his speech with an oath. "Hush, father, hush," beseechingly said the girl, pointing to the bed ; but probably supposing she meant to indicate it as a resting-place for him, he reeled towards and half fell upon it, one arm thrown across the dead child, and the blood dripping from his bruised and distorted face, muttering curses and threat- ening revenge against the comrades who, he said deprecatingly, made him drink when he told them he wanted to go home, d n them ! In such imprecations and excuses he fell into a dreadful unconsciousness. Not knowing whom else to call, Helphenstein summoned Aunt Kitty, and with the aid of his arm and a crutch, but more than all leaning on her own zeal to do good, she came, and in her kindly but rude fashion comforted the mourners, partly by pictures of the glory " ober Jordan," and partly by narratives of the terriblest sufferings she had known, as taking the child on her knees she dressed it for the grave, decently as might be. " She had lost a baby, too," she said, " and when her breasts were aching with the milk, she felt as if she wanted to be gwine to it wharever it were, for that she couldn't 'xist without it no ways, but she did, and arter a while she got over it. Another son," she said, " was spared to grow up and do a heap of hard work ; he was away from her a piece down the river, wad kep a liberty stable, and at last, when he had saved 64 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. money enough, to buy himself, a vile-tempered critter kicked out his brains, and dat ar was his last. And so,' 1 said Aunt Kitty, " it was wust fbr de one dat growed up, arter all." The stars grew motionless, the heavy clouds loomed in som- bre and far-reaching masses, and the night went by drearily, wearily, painfully, till gray began to divide the heavy dark- ness, and through the gaps of the thick woods away over the eastern hills, the chilly river of morning light came pouring in. XI. THE funeral was over, and it was almost night when Mr. Randall returned from the country, having availed himself more largely of the horse and buggy than he at first intended, by taking several widely separate points, where errands called him, in his route. Mrs. Randall came too, and with her the great oasket, but not empty, as she had taken it. The poor animal had been driven mercilessly, and, dripping with sweat, and breathing hard, gladly turned to his young master and rubbed his face against his caressing hand. It was no very cordial greeting which the son gave the parents, and they in turn were little pleased with him, for any special liking is not to be concealed even from the commonest apprehension, and the attachment of Helph and Jenny had lately become an unquestionable fact. " What in the devil's name are we to do with that girl, mo- ther ? she don't earn her salt," said Mr. Randall. Their first inquiries on entering the house had been for Jenny, and Helph, with provoking purpose, had simply said she was not at home. Words followed words, sharper and faster, until Mr. Randall, with an affirmation that need nut be repeated, said he would suffer his house to be her home no longer ; if she could not be trusted with the care of it for a day, she was not worthy to have any better place than the pig-sty in which her parents lived. " 1 always told you," interposed the wife, " that girl was & mean, low-lived thing ; and it was none of my doings, the taking MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 66 aer from the washing- f> ib, where she belongs, and making her as good as any of us. I tell you them kind of folks must be kept down, and I always told you so." "You alwavs told me great things," said the husband, color- ing with rage ; " what in the devil's name is there you don't tell me, or you don't know, 1 wonder !" " Well, sir," she answered, speaking with a subdued sullen- ness, " there is one thing I did not know till it was too late." With all his blustering, Mr. Randall was a coward and craven at heart, and turning to the sideboard he imbibed a deeper draught of brandy than usual, diverting his indignation to Jenny, whom he called a poor creep-louse, that had infested his home long enough. " If you were not my father," answered Helph, who had inherited a temper capable of being ungovernably aroused, " I'd beat you with as good a will as I ever beat iron to a horse-shoe." " What in the devil's name is the girl to you, I'd like to know ?" " Before you are a month older you will find out what she is to me," replied the youth, drawing himself up to his full height, and passing his hand proudly across his beard. " My son, your father has a great deal to irritate him, and he is hasty sometimes, but let bygones be bygones; but what business had the girl away ?" And with a trembling hand, Mr. Randall presented a glass of brandy as a kind of peace-offering to his son. But, for the first time in his life, the young man refused ; he had seen its brutalizing effects the previous night, saw them then, and had determined to be warned in time. In answer to the question re- specting Jenny, however, he related briefly and simply the melan- choly event which had called and still detained her 'from her usual employments. "A good thing," said Mr. Randall; "one brat less to be taken care of; but that's no reason the girl should stay away; if the young one is dead, she can't bring it to life, nor dig a hole to put it in, either." Mrs. Randall, having adjusted her lace cap, and ordered 66 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. Aunt Kitty to keep the basket out of the reach of the big boys, and to remember and not eat all there was in it herself, ascended the stairs to ascertain how Jenny had progressed with her shirt-making. Such family altercations, it is to be hoped, are exceedingly rare; but T have not exaggerated the common experience of these specimens of the "self-made aristocracy." Ignorant, pas- sionate, vulgar nothing elevated them from the lowest grade of society but money, and this was in most cases an irresistible influence in their favor. In all public meetings, especially those having any reference to the poor, Mr. Randall was apt to be a prominent personage ; on more occasions than one he had set down large figures for charitable purposes ; in short, his position was that of an emi- nently liberal and honorable citizen, when, in fact, a man guilty of more little meannesses and knaveries, a man in all ways so debased, could scarcely anywhere be found. The drunkard whom he affected to despise had often a less depraved appe- tite than his own, and though he did not reel and stagger and lie in the gutter, it was only an habitual indulgence in strong drinks which rendered him superior to their more debilitat- ing effects. He lay on the sofa at home, and swore and grum- bled and hiccuped, and drank, and drank, and drank. His children did not respect him, and how could they, when the whole course of his conduct was calculated to inspire disgust and loathing in every heart endowed with any natural ideas of right. The two bullying and beardless sons who had grown up under his immediate influence, were precociously wicked, and possessed scarcely a redeeming quality, and the younger ones were treading close in their footsteps. Helph, however, had some of the more ennobling attributes of manhood. He was blunt and plain and rustic to be sure, but he was frank and honest and sincf industrious, sobei and affectionate, alike averse to the exactions and impositions of his mother, and the pitiful penuriousness of his father. He was neither ashamed of the toil-hardened hands that earned his daily bread, nor proud because his mother's earrings dan gled to her shoulders, or that her dress was gay and expensive, MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY 7 or that his father was president of a bank, and lived in a fine house. Independent and straightforward, and for the most part saving enough, so that he might give himself some trouble to find a lost shilling, yet where he saw actual need, he would give it. with as much pleasure as he had in finding it. Toward evening Jenny returned home, pale and sad and suffer- ing, but there were no little kindnesses, nor any softness of word or manner to greet her ; she was required at once to resume her work, and admonished to retrieve lost time, for that crying would only make her sick, and do no good; Helph, however, subdued his bluff gentleness into tenderness never manifested foi her before, and his occasional smile, through tears, was an over payment for the cruelty of the rest. Mr. Randall and his wife began to be seriously alarmed, lest a hasty marriage of the parties should bring on themselves irretrievable disgrace. A long consultation was held, therefore, and it was resolved to postpone, by pretended acquiescence, any clandestine movement, until time could be gained to frus- trate hopelessly the design which was evidently meditated by the son. " We have been talking of our own love," said they ; "how hard we should have thought it to be parted ; and seeing that' you really are attached to each other, we oppose no obstacle ; a little delay is all we ask : Jenny shall go to school for a year, and you, Helph, will have, by-and-by, more experience, and more means, perhaps, at your command." Much more they said, in this conciliatory way ; the dishon- esty was successful; and that night, instead of stealing away together as they had proposed, Helph slept soundly in his country home, and Jenny dreamed bright dreams of coming years. XII. MIDNIGHT overspread the city ; the clouds hung low and gloomy, and the atmosphere was close and oppressive, when a man past the prime of life, miserably clad, might have been een stealthily threading through by-ways and alleys, now 68 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. stopping arid looking noiselessly backward and forward, and tnen, with trembling and unsteady steps, gliding forward. He wore no hat, his gray hair was matted, and over one eye was a purple and ghastly cut, from which he seemed to have torn the bandage, for in one hand he held a cloth spotted with blood. He apparently thought himself followed by an enemy, from whom he was endeavoring to escape, and now and then he hud- died in some dark nook whence his eyes, bright with insanity, peered vigilantly about. So, by fits and starts, he made his way to the old graveyard where the poor are buried. The trees stood still together, for there was scarcely a breath of air, and he proceeded noiselessly among the monuments and crosses and low headstones, never pausing, till he came to a little new grave, the rounded mound of which was smooth and fresh as if it had been raised but a single hour. " Here," he said, squatting on the ground and digging madly but feebly into the earth with his hands, "here is the very place they put him, d n them ! but his mother shall have him back ; I ain't so drunk that I can't dig him up;" and pausing now and then to listen, he soon levelled the heap of earth above his child. "In God's name, what are you doing?" exclaimed an au- thoritative voice, and a club was struck forcibly against the board fence hard by. Howling an impious imprecation, the frightened wretch rushed blindlv and headlong across the graves, leaped the fence like a tiger, and disappeared in the hollow beyond. An hour afterwards he had gained the valley which lies a mile or two northwest of the city, and along which a creek, sometimes slow and sluggish, and sometimes deep and turbulent, drags and hurries itself toward the brighter waters of the Ohio. The white-trunked sycamores leaned toward each other across the stream, the broad faded leaves dropping slowly slantwise to the ground, as the wind slipped damp and silent from bough to bough. Here and there the surface of the. water was dark- ened by rifts of foliage that, lodged among brushwood, gave shelter to the cheeky blacksnake and the white-bellied toad. Huge logs that had drifted together in the spring freshet, lay MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 69 black and rotting in the current, with noxious weeds springing rank from their decay. Toward the deepest water the wretched creature seemed Irresistibly drawn, and holding with one hand to a sapling that grew in the bank, he leaned far out and tried the depth with a slender pole. He then retreated, and seemed struggling as with a fierce temptation, but drew near again and with his foot broke off shelving weights of earth, and watched their plashing and sinking; a moment he lifted his eyes to heaven there was a heavier plunge and he was gone from the bank. A wild cry rose piercing through the darkness ; the crimson top of a clump of iron weeds that grew low in the bank was drawn sud- denly under the water, as if the hand reached for help, then the cry and the plashing were still, and the waves closed together. A week afterwards the swollen corpse of Jenny's father was drawn from the stream. XIII. ALL the boyish habits of Helph were at once thrown aside, and much Aunt Wetherbe marveled when she saw him a day or two after his return from the city, bring forth from the cel- lar a little sled on which, in all previous winters, he had been accustomed (out of the view of the highway, it is true), to ride down hill. " What on airth now ?" she said, placing her hands on either hip, and eyeing him in sorrowful amazement. A great deal of pains had been lavished on the making of the sled, the runners were shod with iron, and it was nicely painted ; indeed, Helj)h had considered it a specimen of the best art, in its way, and now as he dragged it forth to light, dusting it with his handkerchief, and brushing the spider-webs from among its slender beams, he found it hard to suppress the old admiration for his beautiful handiwork. Nevertheless, when he found himself observed, he gave it a rough throw, which lodged it, broken and ruined, among some rubbish, and drawing his hat over his eyes to con- ceal from them the wreck, he strode away without at all noticing his aunt, who immediately went in search of her TO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. good man, who, in her estimation at least, knew almost evert thing, to ask an explanation of the boy's unaccountable con duct. But the strange freaks of the young man were not yet at an end, and on returning to the house he took from a nail beneath the looking-glass, where they had long hung, the admiration of all visitors, a string of speckled birds' eggs and the long silvery skin of a snake, and threw them carelessly into the fire, thereby sending a sharp pang through the heart of Aunt Wetherbe, if not through his own. He next took from the joist a bundle of arrows and darts, the latter cut in fanciful shapes, which he had made at various times to amuse his leisure, and crushed them together in a box of kindlings, saying, in answer to the remon- strance of his relation, that was all they were good for. From the pockets of coats and trowsers he was observed at various times to make sundry ejectments, embracing all such trinkets as one is apt to accumulate during boyish years, to- gether with bits of twine, brass-headed nails, and other treasures that are prized by youths disposed to be industrious and provi- dent. But when he brought from an out-house a squirrel's cage, where many a captive had been civilized into tricks never dreamed of in his wild swingings from bough to bough, Aunt Wetherbe took it from his hands, just as she would have done when he was a way ward child, exclaiming with real displeasure, " Lord -a- mercy, child ! has the old boy himself got into you?" But Helph soon proved that he was not possessed of the evil one, by the manliness with which he talked of the coming elec- tion, discussing shrewdly the merits of candidates and parties, and of such other subjects as he seemed to think deserving of a manly consideration. All the implements necessary to shaving operations were shortly procured, and Helph was observed to spend much of his time in their examination and careful pre- paration, though no special necessity for their use was observa- ble, and hitherto the old razor of his uncle had only now and then been brought into requisition by him. When the first flush of conscious manhood had subsided, a thoughtful and almost sorrowful feeling pervaded the dreams of the young man j he was much alone, knit his brows, and MRS. WFTIIERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 71 vaguely when questioned. At last he abruptly an nounced his intention of beginning the world for himself. He would sell his horse, and the various farming implements he possessed, together with the pair of young oxen which he had piayed with and petted, and taught to plow and draw the cart, and with the means thus acquired he would procure a small shop in the vicinity of the city, and there resume his black- smithing. " Tut, tut," said the aunt, " I 'd rather you would steal away from the splitting of oven-wood and the churning of a morn- ing, just as you used to do, to set quail traps and shoot at a mark, than to be talking in this way. Your uncle and me can't get along without you : no, no, my child, you must n't th'nk of going." Helph brushed his hand across his eyes, appealing to the authority which had always been absolute; and removing his spectacles, the good old man rubbed them carefully through the corner of his handkerchief as he said, sadly but decidedly, "Yes, my son, you have made a wise resolve: you are almost a man now (here the youth's face colored), and it's time you were beginning to work for yourself and be a man amongst men ;" and approaching an old-fashioned walnut desk in which were kept all manner of yellow and musty receipts and letters, he unlocked it slowly, and pouring from a stout linen bag a quantity of silver, counted the dollars to the number of a hun- dred, and placing them in the hand of the young man, he said, "A little present to help you on in the world; make good use of it, my boy ; but above all things, continue in the honest, straight path in which you have always kept, and my word for it, prosperity will come to you, even though you have but a small beginning. I have lived to be an old man," he continued, " and I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." boyishly, Helph began drawing figures rapidly on the table with his finger, for he felt the tears coming, but it would not do. and looking rather than .speaking his thanks, he hurried from the house, and for ao pour ononpe'l vigoro,i?ly at tne wo- d-piie. n OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. It was soon concluded to hurry the preparations for his 6e partiire, so that he might get fairly settled before tho coming on of cold weather, and a list of goods and chattels to bft noii at public vendue, on a specified day, was made out, and bill* posted on the school-house, at the cross-roads, and in the bar- room of the tavern, stating the time and place of sale. Ellen Blake was sent for in haste to come right away and make up half a dozen shirts, and the provident old lady briskly plied the knitting-needles, that her nephew might lack for nothing. All talked gayly of the new project, but the gayety was assumed, and Ellen herself, with all her powers of making sombre things take cheerful aspects, felt that in this instance she did not suc- ceed. Now that he was about to part with them, the gay young horse that had eaten so often from his hand, and the two gentle steers that had bowed their necks beneath the heavy yoke at his bidding, seemed to the young master almost humanly en- deared, and he fed and caressed them morning and evening with unusual solicitude, tossing them oat sheaves and emptying measures of corn very liberally. "Any calves or beef cattle to sell," called a coarse, loud voice to Helph, as he lingered near the stall of his oxen, the evening preceding the day of sale. " No," answered the young man, seeing that it was a butcher who asked the question. " I saw an advertisement of oxen to be sold here to-morrow," said the man, striking his spurred heel against his horse, and reining him in with a jerk. "I prefer selling to a farmer," said Helph, as he leaned against the broad shoulders of one of the steers, and took in his hand its horn of greenish white. " My money is as good as any man's," said the butcher, and throwing himself from the saddle he approached the stall, and after walking once or twice around the unconsciously doomed animals, and pinching their hides with his ringers, he offered for them a larger sum than Helpn e.xpecteu ; he however btut aiw eyes ;o tte piupoaea advantage, saying h hoped MRS WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY 78 to sell them to some neighbor who would keep them and be kind to them. A half contemptuous laugh answered, in part, as the butcher turned away, saying he was going further into the country, and would call on his return they might not be sold. Thus far, Helph had not advised with Jenny relative to the new movement he was about making, but when all arrangements were made, and it was quite too late to retract, he resolved to ask her advice ; and I suspect in this conduct he was not acting without a precedent. From among a bunch of quills that had remained in the old desk from time immemorial, he selected one, with great care, and having rubbed his pocket-knife across the end of his boot for an hour or more, next began a search for ink, of which his uncle told him there was a good bottle full on the upper shelf of the cupboard. But the said bottle was not to be found, and after a good deal of rummaging and some questioning of Aunt Wetherbe, it was finally ascertained that the ink alluded to must have been bought ten or twelve years previously, and that only some dry powder remained of it now in the bottom of a broken inkstand : yet to this a little vinegar was added, and having shaken it thoroughly, the young man concluded it would answer. More than once during all this preparation, he had been asked what he was going to do, for writing was not done in the family except on eventful occasions ; but the question elicited no response more direct than " Nothing much," and so, at last, with a sheet of foolscap, ink, and a quill, he retired to his own room Aunt Wetherbe having first stuck a pin in the can- die, indicating the portion he was privileged to burn. Whether more or less candle were consumed, I am not ad- vised, but that a letter was written, I have good authority for believing. Murder will out, there is no doubt about that, and the day following the writing, Aunt Wetherbe chanced to have occasion to untie a bundle of herbs that, in a pillow-case, had been suspended from the ceiling of Helph's room for a long time, and what should she find but a letter addressed to Jenny Mitchel, fantastically folded and sealed with four red wafers ; it had * 'idently been placed there to await a secret opportunity 4 14 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. of conveyance to the post-office. Long was the whispered con ference between the old lady and Ellen, that followed this dis. covery ; very indignant was the aunt, at first, for old people are too apt to think of love and marriage in the young as highly improper ; but Ellen, whose regard for matrimony was certainly more lenient, exerted her liveliest influence in behalf of the young people, nor were her efforts unsuccessful, and an unob- trusive silence on the subject was resolved upon. During this little excitement in doors, there was much noise and bustle without; Helph's young horse was gayly capari- soned, and bearing proudly various riders up and down the space, where, among plows, harrows, scythes, and other agricul tural implements, a number of farmers were gathered, discuss- ing politics, smoking, and shrewdly calculating how much they could afford to bid for this or that article. Yoked together, and chewing their cuds very contentedly, stood the plurnp young oxen, but no one admired them with the design of purchasing. The vendue was soon over, and all else had been sold, readily and well. The sleek bay was gone, proudly arching his neck to the hand of a new master, and the neighbors brought their teams to carry home whatever they had purchased, and Helph half sighed as one after another put into his hand the money for which he had bargained away the familiar treasures which had been a part of his existence. As he lingered at the style, he saw approaching a large flock of sheep, closely huddled together, and with red chalk marks on their sides indicating their destiny; while behind came a mingled group of oxen, cows and calves, all driven by the san- guinary butcher with whom he had refused to treat for his favorites. " Well, neighbor," he said, thrusting his hand in his pocket and drawing thence a greasy leathern pouch, "I see you have kept the cattle for me after all." At first Helph positively declined selling them, but he did not want them ; it was very uncertain when there would be an opportunity of disposing of them as he wished, and when the butcher added something to his first liberal offer, he replied, " I suppose, sir, you will nave to take them." Riding into the MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. VI yard, he drove them roughly forth with whip and voice, from the manger of hay and the deep bed of straw. They were free from the yoke, and yet they came side by side, and with their heads bowed close together, just as they had been accustomed to work. Passing their young master, they turned towards him their great mournful eyes, reproachfully, he thought, and crush- ing the price of them in his hand, he walked hastily in the direc- tion of the house. " The bad, old wretch," exclaimed Ellen, looking after the butcher, as she stood on the porch, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of the shirt she was making ; and just within the door sat Aunt Wetherbe, her face half concealed within a towel, and crying like a child. A week more, and Ilelph was gone, Ellen still remaining with the old people, till they should get a little accustomed to their desolate home. The tears shed over his departure were not yet dry, for he had left in the morning and it was now dusky evening, when, as the little family assembled round the tea-table, he entered, with a hurried and anxious manner that seemed to preface some dismal tidings. Poor youth ! his heart was almost breaking. He had no con- cealments now, and very frankly told the story of his love, and what had been his purposes for the future. Mr. and Mrs. Ran- dull had suddenly given up their house, gone abroad, and taken Jenny with them, under pretext of giving her a thorough educa- tion in England. But the young lover felt instinctively that she was separated from him for a widely different purpose. And poor faithful Aunt Kitty, she had been dismissed without a shil- ling above her scanty earnings, to work, old and disabled as she was, or die like a beggar. After much inquiry, he had learned that she had obtained an engagement at an asylum, as an atten- dant on the sick. "Dear old soul !" said Aunt Wetherbe, "you must go right away in the morning and bring her here; she shan't be left to suffer, and 1 know of it." " Never mind all will come out bright," said Ellen, as Helph sat that night on the porch, alone and sorrowful. But he would not be comforted : Jenny had not left a single 7 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. line to give him assurance and hope, and even if she tnought of him now, she would forget him in the new life that was before her. All this was plausible, but Ellen's efforts were not entirely without effect; and when she offered to go with him to the city and see Aunt Kitty, who perhaps might throw some light on the sudden movement, he began to feel hopeful and cheerful almost: for of all eyes, those of a lover are the quickest to see light or darkness. Some chance prevented the fulfilment of Ellen's promise, and I was commissioned by her to perform the task she had proposed for herself. " It will help to keep him up, like," she said, " if you go along." A day or two intervened before I could conve- niently leave home, but at last we set out, on a clear frosty morning of the late autumn. Behind the one seat of the little wagon in which we rode, was placed an easy chair for Aunt Kitty. A brisk drive of an hour brought us to the hospital; and pleasing ourselves with thoughts of the happy surprise we were bringing to the poor forlorn creature, we entered the parlor, and on inquiry were told we had come too late she had died half an hour before our arrival, in consequence of a fall received the previous evening in returning from the dead- house, whither she had assisted in conveying a body. " 1 have ordered her to be decently dressed," said the superintendent, "from my own things; she was so good, I thought that little enough to do for her ;" and she led the way to the sick ward, where Aunt Kitty awaited to be claimed and buried by her friends. It was a room fifty or sixty feet Jong, and twenty perhaps in width, lined on either side with a long row of nar- row dirty beds, some of them empty, but most of which were filled with pale and miserable wretches some near dying, some groaning, some propped on pillows and seeming stolidly to regard the fate of others and of themselves. The sun streamed hot through the uncurtained windows, and the atmos- phere was pervaded with offensive smells. As my eye glanced down the long tiers of beds where there was so much suffering, it was arrested by the corpse of the poor old woman gone at last to that land where there are no more masters, no more servants. 1 shuddered and stood still MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. 71 as the two shrivelled and haglike women wrapped aid pinned the sheet about the stiffening limbs, with as much glee, imbecile almost, but frightful, as they apparently were capable >f feel- ing or expressing. " What in Heaven's name are you laugh- ing at?" said Helph, approaching them. "Just to think of sarving a dead nigger!" said one, with a revolting simper; but looking in his face, she grew respectful with a sudden recollec- tion, and drew from her pocket a sealed letter, saying, "May be you can tell who this is for we found it in her bosom when we went to dress her." It was a letter from Jenny to himself: poor Aunt Kitty had been faithful to the last. Not till I was turning from that terriblest shelter of woe I ever saw, did I notice a young and pale-cheeked girl, sitting near the door, on a low and rude rocking-chair, and holding close to her bosom an infant but a few days old : not with a mother's pride, I fancied, for her eyes drooped before the glance of mine, and a blush burned in her cheek, as though shame and not honor covered her young maternity. I paused a moment, praised the baby, and spoke some kindly words to her; but she bowed her head lower and lower on her bosom, speaking not a word ; and seeing that I only gave her pain, I passed on, with a spirit more saddened for the living than for the dead, who had died in such wretchedness. Jenny's letter proved a wonderful comfort to Helph, and cheerfulness and elasticity gradually came back to him ; but when, at the expiration of a year, his parents returned without her, and bringing a report of her marriage, all courage, all ambition, deserted him, and many a summer and winter went by, during which he lived in melancholy isolation. I shall not attempt td write the history of Jenny Mitohel, except thus much, which had some relation to our life at Clo- vernook ; and therefore pass abruptly into the future of my good friend Randall. Nearly fifteen years were gone since his sweetheart crossed the sea, and country belles had bloomed and faded before his eyes, without winning from him special regard : when, as he sat before a blaz : ng hickory fire one even- ing, waiting tor Aunt Wetherbe, who still enjoyed a green old 78 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. age, to bring to the table the tea and short-cake, there was a quick, lively tap on the door, and tho next moment, in the full maturity of womanhood, but blushing and laughing like the girl of years ago, Jenny stood in the midst of the startled group Jenny Mitchel still ! Helph had become a prosperous man in the world, and had been envied for the good fortune which his patient bravery so much deserved. The waves of the sea of human life bad reached out gradually from the city until they surrounded his blacksmith's shop, and covered all his lots as if with silver ; and he had been building, all the pre- vious year, a house so beautiful, and with such fair accessories, as to astonish all the neighborhood acquainted in any degree with his habits or reputed temper. " What does the anchorite mean to do with such a place ? he never speaks to a woman more than he would to a ghost." they said ; " so he won't get married ; and nobody is so particular about a house to sell, and it can't be he's going to stay in it all alone." But Helph knew very well what he was about, and was content to keep his own counsel. If he had mailed certain letters out at Clover- nook, our postmaster would have guessed at once his secret; but though Mr. Helphenstein Randall was very well known in town, there were so many objects there to interest the common attention that it was never observed when, every once in a while, he bought a small draft on England, nor that he more frequently sent letters east for the Atlantic steamers, nor that he received as frequently as there was foreign news in the papers, missives, every month more neatly folded and with finer superscriptions. He had been thought something of a philosopher, by Ellen Blake and I, and others were convinced, perhaps by justifying reasons, that he was as little impressible by woman's charms as the cattle in his stalls. But there are not so many philosophers in the world as some pretend, and his heart was all aglow with pictures of one on whom he looked in dreams and in the distant perfumed gardens of his hope. Jenny, deserted, and struggling with all the adversi ties that throng the way of a poor girl alone in so great a city, had written at length from London all the story of her treat- ment by her lover's parents, and having time for reflection MRS. WETHERBE'S QUILTING PARTY. T before he could answer her letter provoking all his nature to joy and scorn he had decided that she should not come back until she could do so with such graces and accomplish- ments as should make her the wonder and him the envy of all who had contrived or wished their separation. He had trusted her, educated her, and at last had all the happiness of which his generous heart was capable. Ellen Blake of course presided at the wedding, and the quilts quilted that night at Aunt Wetherbe's had been kept unused for a present to Helph's wife on her bridal night. When I am down in Jne city I always visit the Randalls, and there is not in the Valley of the West another home so sant. so harmonious, so much like what I trust to fhaiv oeaven. OUR NEIGHBORHOOD ZEBTJLON SANDS I. " A CAPITAL fellow," everybody said when speaking of Zeb, for no one ever called him Zebulon not even his brothers and sisters : if you had called him Zebulon, he would have laughed in your face. Poor fellow ! I can see him now, in fancy, just as I used to see him about the old farm-house when I was going to school always busy, and always cheerful, doing some good thing or other, and laughing and whistling as he did so. Let me de- scribe him as I remember him, when he was perhaps sixteen, and I quite a little girl. He was not handsome, but no one thought whether he were or not, so good-humored and genial was the expression of his countenance. He was a little below the or- dinary height, and stout rather than graceful, yet he was always perfectly self-possessed, and so never awkward. His hair hung in half curls of soft brown along a low white forehead, and a pair of hazel eyes twinkled with laughter beneath. His face was full, with the fresh glow of health breaking through the tan, for he was a farmer's boy, arid used to exposure and hard work ; but notwithstanding this, his hands and feet were delicately moulded and beautiful. At an early age he was fond of all manly exercises, and while still a child would brave the severest cold with the fortitude of a soldier. Many a time I have seen him chopping wood in the lai 1-winter, without coat or hat, and standing knee-deep in the 6iio w : his hair tossing in the north wind, and his cheeks ruddy as the air and exercise could make them. He was never too busy to see me as I passed, or 1o whistle me a gay " good morn- ing" if 1 were near enough to hear it, and had often a pleasant word or two beside. And I never forgot to look for him : children Are more fond of attentions than is apt to be imagined, and I per- ZEBULON SANDS. 81 haps had the weakness in even an unusual degree. Ccmmonly he was chopping at the woodpile, but not always; sometimes I would see him driving the oxen toward the woods, seated on the cart-side, his great dog, Watcher, sitting beside him : he would not see me, and straightway the distance before me seemed to lengthen, arid the winter wind to have a keener edge. Sometimes he was about the barn, feeding the horses and cattle ; and I remember seeing him once on a distant hill, dispensing bundles of oats to the sheep : he saw me, however, far as he was away, and waved a bundle of the grain oats in friendly recognition. Everybody in the neighborhood knew Zeb, and had a kind word to say when they met him, for men and women, boys and girls, were alike fond of his good nature ; there was no distrust in his brain : he never walked with an irresolute step, or rapped at the proudest door with a misgiving heart, or doubted of the cordial reception that waited him, wherever he might go. But his confidence in the world was greater than its goodness war- ranted : he did not recognize the weakness that is in humanity, nor the weakness that was in himself, till too late. When he was a little boy, he said often, " I will never be sick, and never die I will go out in the woods and sing." And this was his spirit till he grew into manhood. Zeb had an only sister Ruth, or Ruthy, as he always called her, and the two children lived in the old farm-house with their father, a querulous gray-headed man, who had long forgotten he was ever young. He did not perhaps mean to be a hard master, nevertheless he was so sometimes. " Use doth breed a habit in a man," and Mr. Sands, I suppose, became accustomed by little and little to the much, to the all, his son did for him ; so that at last his expectations in regard to him could scarcely be equalled. Sometimes Zeb would come in at night, weary and dusty with the day's hard work, and, for his father's comfort, and perhaps in tlie hope of a little praise, tell over what he had done ; how he had felled and chopped to firewood the most stubborn tree in the forest, or, it might be, had plowed more ground than he had ex- pected, arid so had unyoked the oxen before the sunlight was quite gone. But never was he rejoiced by one word of congratulation. If he had felled a tree, " Why, there was another knotty thing 82 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. close by could he not have got that down too ?" If he had plowed more than another would have done, " He could have plowed on yet ibr an hour there was light enough." This was discouraging, but Zeb kept his patience through all, and tended the farm year after year giving all the profits that accrued into the old man's hand, and keeping nothing for himself. Ruth was as good as most persons, but less thoughtful of her brother's pleasure than her own. " Zeb, I want to go to town to-morrow, or next week," she was accustomed to say, and be- fore the appointed time Zeb would haul the little wagon to the creek, and wash the old paint to look as fresh as new. The corn was left ungathered or the mowing undone, and Ruth went to town and bought a new dress, and bonnet too, if she chose ; and Zeb said, " How pretty you will look when you wear them ! you will be ashamed to go with me in my threadbare coat and old hat : I am rather behind the fashion, ain't I, Ruthy ?" He laughed gaily all the while, and Ruth laughed too ntver thinking how many new hats she had had since Zeb had once indulged in such a luxury. The grass was whitening in the hazy days of October ; the orch- ards were bright with ripe fruit, and the corn was rustling and dry ; it was the autumn that made Zeb twenty years old. His lip was darkening a little from its boyish glow, and now and then soberer moods came to him than he had known before. Across a dry ridge of stubble land, overgrown with briers, he had been plowing all the windy day ; the oxen bent their heads low to the ground as the dust blew in their faces, and Zeb took oft' his torn- brimmed straw hat now and then, and shook out his curls, heavy with sweat, and fell behind the team, as though thinking of other things than his plowing. One side of the field was bordered by a lane leading from the main road to an obscure neighborhood. It was quite dusky where the lane struck into the woods, when a lady came riding thence on a gay black horse, and seeing Zeb at his plowing, tightened her rein, and, waiting ibr him to approach, gave the salutation of the evening in a sweet, good-humored tone. She was not dressed in the costume which ladies now-a-days think indispensable for riding, but wore instead a straw hat with red ribbons and a dress of sky-blue muslin not trailing low, but so ZEBULON SANDS. M short that her feet peeped now and then from beneath it. She sat her horse gracefully, and her cheeks were deeply flushed, perhapa from the proximity of the young farmer, perhaps merely from ex- ercise ; and her black hair hung in curls down her shoulders, and her black eyes sparkled with healthful happiness. So, altogether, she made as pretty a finishing to the rural picture as one could imagine. Certainly Zeb thought so, as leaning against the fence be caressed the glossy neck of the horse, champing the bit and pawing the dust impatiently ; and as he stood there it might have been noticed that he removed his hat, and so rolled the brim in his hand as to conceal how badly it was torn. It was observ- able too that he talked in a subdued tone and with downcast eyes very unlike his usual manner. After a brief delay, and a little restrained conversation, the young woman rode forward, putting her horse at once into a canter. For five minutes or more Zeb lingered where she left him not looking after her, nor seeming to see anything, as he idly cut letters in the fence-rail with his knife. Directly, however, he took up his hat from the ground, upon which it had fallen, re- placed his knife in his pocket, drew a sigh, and began to unyoke his team. But before he had quite freed the weary oxen he looked up : the blue dress and red ribbons were yet visible in the distance : he hesitated, and after a moment resumed his plowing, whistling a merry tune, but so plaintively and with such varia- tions as made it sad almost as a dirge. The pretty girl just riding out of sight is Molly Blake, a youn;j person who lives a mile or so beyond the woods that stand against the field in which the youth is at work. Zeb and Molly one 3 stood together at spelling school, and Zeb spelled for her all the hard words, in whispers ; and on a time, while picking berries, they chanced to meet, and it so happened that Zeb went homo with an empty basket, while Molly's was heaped full. The cause of their seeing each other to-day is, that Molly is going to mako an apple-cutting in a night or two, and has given the earliest invi- tation to Zeb. As he carved letters in the fence he was debating whether he would go or not ; and as he unyoked the oxen, he was saying to himself, " I will go home and rest, I am tired ; nd 1 can't go to the apple-cutting, at any rate, in my old clothed 84 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. and hat." Still he hesitated, and as he did so, saw the blue dress and red ribbons in the distance ; then came the thought that he might plow an hour or two more, and so gain time to go to town with some oats or potatoes, and bring home such articles as the frolic seemed to demand. And at this thought he ro- Biimed his work. It not unfrequently happens that a young man is not regarded by his sisters as he is regarded by other women ; such was the case with Zob ; and on this special occasion Ruth never once thought whether her brother had been invited to the party or riot, so engaged was she with her own plans and pleasures. It chanced this evening, as such things will chance sometimes, that supper was prepared an hour earlier than usual ; and, until it was too late for her to see, Ruth stood at the window, watching for her brother to come home. Meantime the fire burned out and the tea grew cold ; and then came impatience, and then petulance, so that Ruth said at last, " Come, father, we will eat without him, and let him come when he gets ready." ~ But Zeb came pretty soon, wearied, but with a brain full of pleasant thoughts, which shone out upon his manly countenance. " Well, Ruthy, I am sorry I have kept you waiting," he said, as he drew water for his oxen at the well. " I am sorry too," she answered in a calm, decided tone, that indicated a frigid state of feeling. " Come, Ruthy, do n't be vexed," said Zeb, laughing after the old fashion, " but get my supper, while I turn the oxen into the meadow (you do n't know how tired and hungry I am) and I will tell you what detained me." " You need n't trouble yourself to do that," she answered, tossing her head, '' it 's of no importance to me." Zeb pulled his old hat over his eyes, and walked soberly away with his oxen, quite forgetting that he was either tired or hungry. If Ruth felt any misgivings, pride kept them down ; and, to justify herself, she said, half aloud, " Well, I do n't care ! be had no business to stay awav till midnight." Neverthe- less, she arranged the supper as nicely as might be ; but Zeb did Hot come his appetite had quite deserted him. Across the ZEBULON SANLS. 1ft meadow, n(,ar where the oxen were feeding, he lay on the grass, the moonlight, flecked by the apple-boughs, falling over and around him. A day or two of unhappy reserve went by, Zeb remaining little about the house, and saying little when he was there, but plowing early and late, grieved rather than vexed. When he spoke to Ruth, it was with words and in a manner studiously- kind, and with her duller sense she did not see that he was changed, but a crisis had been reached at length in the young farmer's life and nature. The evening of so many happy anticipations was near at hand. The morning was bright, and Zeb rose early, and was busy with preparations for a little project he had in his mind, when Ruth came out, and assisting him to lift a bag of potatoes into the wagon, inquired whether he were going to town that day : she would like to go, she said, if he could make room for her. " I am invited to Molly Blake's to-morrow night," she continued, "and that is the reason I wish to go to town this morning." She did not ask Zeb if ht; also were invited: she never thought of the possibility. It was after noon before they reached the city, and leaving his sister at the house of a cousin, in the suburbs, with a promise of meeting her at an appointed hour, he drove away in search of a market for his oats and potatoes. The grocers with whom he was in the habit of dealing were all supplied ; the few offers he received were greatly below his expectations, and hours were spent in driving from street to street, before he was able to dispose of his produce at any reasonable price. He had found no time to dine no time to feed his horses and the heads of the tired animals drooped sadly, as he turned them toward the place where he was to meet Ruth. The show at the window of a hatter attracted him ; he had never had a fur hat, and checking his team close against the side- walk, he looked at the tempting display, and had mentally selected one which he thought would please him at the same time putting his hand in his pocket to ascertain whether he could afford one so fine when his attention was arrested by the sudden appearance of his sister. "Why, Zeb!" she said * OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. pettishly, "are you charmed with a hatter's window? I waited and waited till I was tired to death, and then set out in search of you." Zeb laughed, and answered, that if she looked at his old hat she would see why he was charmed, and assured her of his regret that she was alarmed about him. It was not fear for his safety that induced her to look for him, but need of money. The youth averted his face from the \\induw, and a disappointed expression passed across it, as he answered, "How much do you want, Ruthy ?" ' Oh, I do n't know," she said carelessly, " all you 've got." He turned away, as if to take up the reins perhaps even his dull sister, could she have seen it, would have been able to read something of what was at the moment written on his coun- tenance and reaching backward all the money he had, and climbing into the wagon, began to rub the mud from his trow, sers with a wisp of straw. Away went Ruth her thoughts full of new ribbons and shining shoes, and more than all, of the gold ring that was to sparkle on her finger the next evening. While these little purchases were being made, the horses stamped their feet, and switched their tails restlessly; and Zeb, fueling that he had no very present purpose, nor any sympathy to lessen his half-surly and half-tearful mood, turned his back to the hatter's window, and, seated in the front corner of the wagon, brushed the flies from the tired animals with his old hat. The sun was near setting when Ruth returned, her hands full of little packages and parcels, and her face beaming with joy. So they went home together, and when Ruth rode to town in the little wagon again, Zeb was not sitting beside her. The next day was a busy one, but before night the new white mron was made, tne pink ribbon knotted up, and the ring glit- tiering where Ruth had long desired to see it. '' Well, Zeb,'' she -said, as she turned down the lane to go to Molly Blake's, " I want you to make me a flower-pot to-night sawed in notches at the top, you know it's time to take up my myrtle." All day he had been thinking she would say something about his going with her disclose some regret, perhaps, when he should tell her he could not go ; but now the poor satisfaction of giving any expression to his disappointment was denied him, and I ZEBULON SANDS. fT making pictures in the air, of gayeties in which he could have no part, he set to work about the flower-pot. He thought haid, and wrought as hard as he thought, and the little box was soon completed notched round at the top, just as had been desired. It was not yet dark when the work was done, and Zeb held it up admiringly when he had filled it with fresh earth, and ar- ranged the long myrtlf vines to drop gracefully through the notches. He placed it IB the window of Ruth's room, and, the task accomplished, there came a feeling of restlessness that he could not banish, try as he would. The full moon was redden- ing among the clouds, and the yellow leaves raining down with every wind, as, folding his arms, he walked up and down among the flowers that he had planted in May. " Ah, Zeb, is that you?" said a good-natured voice, in a fami- liar tone ; and a young man, driving in a rattling cart, drew up before the gate, and followed the salutation with an oath and an inquiry as to Zeb's being at home, when there was "such almighty attraction abroad." Zeb came indolently forward, remarking that his friend was insensible t that great attraction as well as himself. " Oh, Jehu !" answered the young man, laughing boisterously, "I hope \ou don't think 1 was invited. Gracious me! you do n't expect a wood-chopper like me could get into such a place as Molly Blake's house 1 ?" And he laughed again, saying, " Zeb, my dear boy, how very verdant you are !" The man in the cart was, as he said, a wood-chopper a most genial and amiable fellow, notwithstanding some bufferings of adverse fortune for he had been cast loose on the world at an early age, and had faced scorn and hunger, laughing all the time. " Come, come, Zeb," he said, seeing the moping mood of the young farmer " climb into my coach, and allow me to give you an airing by the light of the moon. In with you ! 1 can fight down tne bluest devils that ever got hold of a chap." We are apt to inibibe the spirit of whomever we associate W'th. and Zeh aJi;cted a liveliness at first which he prsentlj 8 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. felt, and joined in the wild chorus which the chopper every now and then pealed out : " Never candles at night Made so pretty a light As the moon shining over our cabin, my dear ; Never home was so sweet As our woodland retreat, So where could we ever be happy but here 1" They drove rapidly, and talked mirthfully, and soon reached their destination, the ball-room of the Clovernook tavern, in which that night a political speech was to be made. It was late and raining when the meeting broke up, and a portion of the assemblage adjourned to the bar-room, to wait for the rain to slack, and to talk off their excitement and prejudice. " Well, boys," said our Jehu, who was moved to the highest pitch of his best humor by the politician's speech, which chanced to " meet his ideas exactly," " I feel as if a little drop of some- thing would do me good ; and besides I want you to jine me in drinking the health of the apple-cutters. Here !" he continued, exhibiting a bottle to the circle about him, " who of you will take off the head of this ' Lady Anne ?' " But one bottle did not suffice, nor two, nor three ; the spirits of the company rose higher arid higher ; strong and stronger drinks were called for the wood-chopper protesting that he could stand a treat as well as another, and especially urging the liquor upon his friend Zeb, topping off each proffer with, " Darn the expense, old feller ; drink, and forget your sorrows, and Molly into the bargain." Zeb declined at first, replying that he did n't care anything about Molly : but it would not do ; he was asked if he (bared to vex the proudy, and had so soon surrendered his manhood to her caprice. At last he yielded to the current so strongly set against him, and, swearing a great oath, drank off more brandy than might safely be taken by the most habitual tippler. But it is not necessary that I linger on that dreadful night. Alas, for poor Zeb ! it was a night that for him had never any ending. The sun was struggling up, and the mists were rising out of the ground like hot steam, when the wood-chopper again drew up ZEBULON SANDS. 89 his cait before the old farm-house ; and arousing his companion from the straw in which he lay in a fevered and maddened sleep, assisted him to the ground, balancing him on his feet as one might a little child, and steadying him as he tried to walk for he staggered feebly one way and the other, telling the chopper he did n't care a damn who saw him, that he was j ust as good as any man, and that Molly Blake was the prettiest girl in the world, and he would fight anybody who said she was not. " Come, Zeb," said his companion, " have more pluck ; do n't talk so like a fool ;" and passing his arm around him, he conti- nued, " be like me be a man !" And with such encourage- ment, he brought his friend as near the house as he dared, and left him to make his entrance alone. " Zebulon Sands," said his father, meeting him at the door, and giving the severest expression to a naturally severe counte- nance, " are you not ashamed to show your face to me ? I wish you had died before I saw this day. I do n't want to see nor speak to you," he continued, " till you can behave yourself better." Ruth stood by, speaking riot a word, but looking her contempt and indignation, while Zeb staggered against the wall, and with downcast eyes picked the straws out of his hair and from off his coat. He heard her laugh derisively, saw her turn away, and when he called her, she did not come perhaps she did not hear him. In a moment all the imbecility of drunken- ness was gone he knew what he had done, and felt a self-con- demnation bitterer than a thousand curses. The rain came on again after an hour or two, and continued throughout the day, and Zeb, creeping into the bam, listened to its falling on the roof, half wishing that some dread accident would come upon him, whereby a reconciliation with his father and sister might be brought about. But hour alter hour went by, and the dull and dreary beating of the rain was all he heard ; no gleam of sunshine broke the gloom that was about him ; no voice but the still, reproving one of conscience, met his listening ; so the day faded, and the night fell. At last, worn down physi- cally, and exhausted mentally, he slept, waking not till the break of lay. The rain had ceased, and the wind was whistling chillily fro u the north. He remembered what his father had said to 90 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. him. and the contemptuous laugh of his sister rang in his ears. If they had looked kindly on him, his heart would have been melted ; he would have asked their forgiveness, and perhaps would never again have yielded to temptation, made even stronger by his transient weakness. But they had met him with no kindly admonitions, and he had too much pride to seek an opportunity of humbling himself; so giving one sorrowful look to the old farmhouse, he pulled the torn hat over his eyes, thrust his hands in his pockets, and in a few minutes the hills of home were lost to him forever. Zeb whistled as he went, not for want of thought, but to drown it, and he walked fast, in a vain effort to get away from himself. The sun was scarcely risen when he found himself in the sub- urbs of the city, friendless and penniless. I need not describe his efforts to find employment : of course he understood nothing but the work to which he had been used, and his rustic manners and anxious credulity made him liable to constant impositions. III. " Well, Ruthy, I wonder if Zeb has found a better place ?'' said Mr. Sands one evening about a fortnight after the young man had gone to seek his fortune. " I do n't know," she answered, laying the embers together, for it was cold enough for fire now ; " I do n't know I do wonder where he is but he will take care of himself, 1 11 warrant that." " I hope he will," said Mr. Sands ; " but I do n't know. He was always a good boy I wish I had not been quite so hard with him." The silence that followed was broken by a rap on the door. " Come in," said Mr. Sands, and the cousin mentioned as living in the city suburb entered. Zeb was at his house, and very sick. The physicians had pronounced his diseas^ small-pox of the most virulent nature. With the suspense, some softness had gathered about the heart* of father and sister ; but when this intelligence came, more than (he old hardness returned. "If he had staid at home and minded his business," said the ZEBULON SANDS. n father, " he would have been well ; as it is, he must get along the best he can. It would be an awful thing to bring him into the neighborhood." " Dear me, I can 't go to see him," said Ruth, rolling up her sleeve, to examine the scar of vaccination. " It was too bad in Zeb to act so. I hope when he gets well he '11 behave himself." " He is very good, all at once," said the father. " Is he broke out in the face ?" So the cousin rode back again, little profited by his journey. Two or three days went by without any further tidings of Zeb, and then a neighbor chanced to hear in town that he was very bad ; still it was not definitely known that his case was desperate. " Very bad !" said Mr. Sands, when he heard this news " every body is very bad who has the small-pox : like enough he '11 be marked for life." But though he was uneasy, he neither sent a messenger nor went himself to visit his unhappy son. For three days nothing further was heard. Ruth said she thought he must be better, else they would hear ; arid the father said he guessed so too, or they would certainly get some news from him. The day was one of those deliciously genial ones which some- times gladden the autumn ; and the father and daughter, well and strong, could not realize that Zeb was dying. In the after- nonn Ruth went to pass an hour or two and drink tea with a friend. There were many new things to be seen, and many interesting matters to be talked about; so her thoughts were quite drawn away from her brother ; or, if now and then they returned to him, it was less fearfully than they had done before. It was nightfall when she set out for home, and though the dis- tance was not long, star after star came out, as, slowly walk- ing, she recounted all that she had seen and heard that after- noon ; how such an one had made her a new dress, and whether it were probable that such another were to be married, as re- ported ; and so, musing, she reached the hill that overlooked the homestead. All was dark : involuntarily she quickened her step, and in a moment recognized her father walking backward and forward in the road before her. His form seemed naure iS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. than usually bent, and his hands were crossed behind him- * cording to his habit in times of trouble and his gray hair wa uncovered, and blown about in the wind. He was waiting for her she knew, and why he was waiting she felt. " Oh, father," she said, seeing he did not speak, " have you heard from Zeb ?" " I wish I had cone to see him, Ruth," he answered, covering his face with his hands. " Is he dead ?" she asked in a low tone for the awful fear kept her heart still. " I do n't know," he answered trembling, " but I 'm afraid we shall never see him alive. He has not spoken, since last night at midnight then he said he should not get well, and that he should like to see me and you, Ruthy ; yet he told them not to send for us, saying we could do no good, and that our lives must not be endangered for him." " Oh, poor Zeb !" sobbed out the girl, " let us go and see him. Can 't we go to-night?" " Dear child, he does not know anybody to-day," answered the father, " and has not spoken since sunrise. Poor Zeb ! it is all our fault." So, talkingand weeping together, they entered the old house. How lonesome it was ! the wind had never been so mournful before. Ruth remembered when she and Zeb had listened to it in the autumns that were gone, but it was not dirge-like, as now. The drifting of the yellow leaves in the moonlight seemed to have a sorrowful significance ; and, years after, Ruth could not see them fall without recalling something of the feel- ing that came upon her that night. It is a Jong time since they sat together, father and daughter, listening to the winds and to the reproaches of their own hearts, as they remembered their harsh words and hard behavior. It is a long time since Ruth took from the notched flower-pot Zeb had made for her the greenest and freshest vines of the myrtle, and set them over his grave. And once or twice in every year the wood-chopper may be seen mending the mound, and pulling the weeds from among the flowers. He has never been known to " stand a treat" since the night he tempted his Triend to ruin. LEARNING CONTENT. LEARNING CONTENT,, I. " WHAT on earth am I to do now ? I 'd just like to know here you are crying out 'Mother, mother, mother !' a half a dozen at a time may be if I could make myself into two tv three women I might get along." So exclaimed Mrs. Polly Williams, throwing down a gar ment, on which she had been resolutely and silently stitching, and her air and manner indicating complete mental and physical exhaustion. The children, who had caused this violent out- break and the more ominous relapse, stood back in affright for a moment, and then recommenced the gambols and frolicsome quarreling in which they had been previously engaged. " I say, Billy, you and Jim pretend to be my horses, and turn down the red chair and pretend it's a stage, and get me on the top and pretend I 'm the driver !" shouted John Williams, a bright-eyed little fellow, not yet out of petticoats, and his round rosy cheeks seemed shining with pleasure as he seized the tongs for a whip. " Eh, why ! that 's a great whip we won't be horses if you are going to strike with that," sung out both boys at once ; upon which the child began making so rapid and terrible a stampede on the floor as to mollify their prejudices at once. " Oh. yes, Johny may drive us with the tongs," they said, "just as much as he wants to ; we can pretend it's a whip with two stocks and no lash a new-fashioned whip that cost fourteen hundred million dollars j" and turning down the red chair, they put themselves in the traces, a feat that was accomplished in a summary way, and by merely taking hold of the chair posts after which they trotted off in rather coltish style, looking 94 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. askance at Johny, who stood sniveling on one side of the room quite regardless of his team. In vain they capered and made divers snorts and pitches at him as they passed ; all for some time proved ineffectual ; but ere long his hands slipped from over his eyes, and a slantwise glance now and then betokened an increasing interest. The pretended horses, at this juncture, began kicking up their heels and dashing forward furiously, at the same time crying out at the top of their voices, "Oh, Johny's team is running away they will break the stage all to pieces, and Johny can't check them he is a little coward Johny is !" "No, I ain't," said the young Jehu, indignantly ; and uplifting his two-stocked whip before the brothers, he brought them to a sudden stand-still, on which he began pulling their hair right viciously. " Buhby must n't pull the mane of his colts so hard," remon- strated the boys, "or they will get mad and bite." Then they opened their mouths to the widest extent and closed them again with a snap that was in fact rather fearful to see, while Johny, with laughter on his lips, and the tears in his eyes, climbed upon the prostrate chair and indicated his wishes 'by sundry kicks and thrusts of the tongs. A few rounds over the carpet, and one or two hair breadth escapes in crossing the sunken hearth, which the talkative horses pretended was a new stone-bridge over the Ohio, without pro- tecting railings, and consequently very dangerous, especially with skittish colts, had a tendency to bring the little driver into a phrenzy of good humor, and he began with almost unintel- ligible earnestness to announce his progress. " Now we are just going by the school-house," said he, "and all the scholars are trying to look at us: Ab Long will get whipt for shaking bis fist at me, and Rachel Day is running after me to get a ride : run fast, horses, and get away from her ! now we are away a hundred miles past her, and I expect she is crying like a good fellow. Whoa! horses, here's the green tavern" and he brought up before a dining-table covered with a green shining oil-cloth, and dismounting, threw the reins, consisting of a strirg of white rags, which passed for fair leather, on the ground, in LEARNING CONTENT. -a true professional style ; and seizing a small tin bucket, in which the boys carried their dinner to school, he vigorously beat the air with one arm while he held the bucket beneath the door- knob, under pretence of pumping water, after which he held the empty bucket before the faces of the boys, whose noisy inha- lations of air passed for copiously refreshing draughts. " The looking-glass is the sign don't you see, Bill ? don't you see it, Jim 1" said John, pointing to a small square glass, in a cherry frame, which was hung with some attempt at style between the ceiling and the table, having for a back-ground some two yards of bluish-colored paper, embellished with figures of chickens and roosters of a bright pink color, decidedly well to do, an almost defiant aspect, and tails outspread like the huge fans with which fat old ladies in the country revive them- selves on Sunday afternoons, and also with little black demuie hens having yellow streaks, close at the neck, and widening out into gores between the wings. This was, in fact, the genteel part of the house, for closely neighboring the glass was the skeleton of a clock, standing out from another strip of highly- colored paper, with nothing but its square white face to screen from view its curious mechanism of pegs, wires, and wheels, while the pendulum ticked off the time below, and from hour to hour the two great iron weights dangled lower and lower, with a creaky, scraping sound, resembling the thunder of a caty-did if such a thing might be till at length they almost touched the floor, when the eldest daughter. Maria, whose honorary privilege it was, climbed upon a little workstand, and with slow and regular turning of the key, wound the aforesaid weights quite out of view behind the great white face. But to return to my young traveler : " Gee up, Bill ; gee up, Jim !" said Johny, taking up the fair leather reins, and snapping the tongs together by way of cracking his whip ; " now I 'in going by the store ; now I 'm going by the flour-mill ; now I 'm going away through the woods j now you must pretend all the chairs are trees, and that you run against them and break the stage and kill yourselves !" " Oh, no, Johny, that's no way at all," said Jim, looking back in a dissatisfied way; "you drn't know how to t r avel I've 9 OUR NEIUHBORHOOD. studied geography let me tell you where to go, something >*e." John remained sullenly silent a moment, and then urging hia team forward, said, "If you know such great things, teli them." "Now, Bill, do just as I do," said Jim, in an earnestly ad- monishing way, on which the two boys gave a jump, as sudden, and over as much distance, as they could, cumbered as they were with stage-coach and passengers. "Now," said Jim, "we are at Cincinnati" here followed another spring; "now we are at New York !" then came a quick succession of springs and announcements, which took in the world in a few minutes, and brought them back in front of the green tavern, when the loud stamping of the mother's foot caused a momentary silence. " Do you mean to tear the house down ?" she exclaimed, in a very loud and angry tone; "I do think I've got the woist boys of anybody in this world ; I don't know what to do with you ; it 's no use to try to make you mind ; I might as well speak to the wind bad, good for nothing boys that you are ! What would you think to see your father and me act as you do ?" The idea was so ludicrous that the boys laughed out- right, in spite of the solemnity of the occasion, and Johny, the least and most timid, ran under the table, that he might the more freely indulge his mirthful inclinations. "Oh, Johny is a rabbit now, that we have burrowed," said the boys, dropping on their hands and knees, and barking at him as much after the manner of dogs, as frequent practice had enabled them to do. At this juncture Mrs. Williams arose, and, taking down a switch that depended menacingly from the ceiling, she brought it to bear, much as a dexterous thresher would a flail, on so many bundles of oats. John presently came out, with his plump little fists in his eyes and a great blue spot on his fore- head, crying as if his heart would break. The older boys made sundry dives and plunges, in which one of the clock weights was pulled down and the table set askew, but all efforts to escape were circumvented, and they soon gave up and joined in the crying. * Now," said Mrs. Williams, with a good deal of exultation LEARNING CONTENT. 7 in her angry tone, " you have got something to make a noisa for !" But as their loud clamor subsided into reproachful moans, the violence of the mothers wrath subsided too, and she began pouring out lamentations as though she were doomed to all the suffering in the world. Johny she took up in her arms and rocked, with many essays, not altogether ineffectual, to kiss his forehead well under which treatment the little fellow, forgetting his team and his bruises, sobbed into sleep. The older boys picked their nails and turned their faces to their chair-backs, while a sermon on this wise was inflicted by the matron : " Ain't you ashamed, James and William, great boys, big enough to be men, to act as you do, and give your poor mother so much trouble ! Here she sits, making and mending and cooking for you all day, and you don't care no, not a bit, you don't caie for your poor mother !" " You don't take the right means to make us care," they might have replied, but they said nothing, and she went on : " Poor old mother ! one of these days she '11 get sick and die, and have to be buried in the ground, and then what will become of you, and poor father too at work all day to get shoes, and bread, and everything you will be sorry- then you did n't mind mother, and be good little boys." Quite overcome with the desolate picture which poor father and his little orphans made in her imagination, she drew the corner of her apron before her eyes, and indulged in melancholy reflec- tions much longer than, under the circumstances, she should have done, for it was nearly night, and Mrs. Polly Williams was a farmer's wife, and the evening should have been a busy time the tea-kettle should have been filled, the milk skimmed, the room set in order, and many other things done, the while her checked apron was being moistened with tears, that she said nobody cared for. Meantime, Jonathan Williams, whose shadow, as he plowed, stretched half way across the field behind him, looked anxiously towards the house, for he was tired and not sorry to see the sun descending so near the western tree-tops. " What can be the matter with Polly ?" he thought, as he came over the ridge And saw the house looking still and desolate, while all the 98 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. neighboring homes were enveloped with wreaths of smoke, pleasantly indicative of approaching supper. " It is time, too, the boys were coming for the cows; I wonder if our folks are all dead, or what on earth they are about !" After another moment's hesitation, he concluded to plow one more round, before leaving off work for the day. The field in which he was engaged joined that of his neighbor, Thomas Giles, who chanced also to be plowing ; and it further happened that the two teams drew up to the dividing fence together. "Well, Mr. Williams," said Mr. Giles, "how does plowu. e go ground in pretty good order ?" "So so," answered Williams, too much disturbed in mind to appreciate correctly his neighbors question, perhaps. " A nice colt that bay of yours : how many hands high is he?" asked Giles, leaning over the fence and patting his arched neck caressingly. "Nice-looking enough," answered Williams; "but his sight, you see," " Humph ! pity but he has the eye of a kind critter ;" and Giles combed the long mane of the proud-looking animal, with his fingers, as though he thought him a pretty good colt after all. "Trade him," he added, after a moment, "if a fellow would give you boot enough ?" " No, sir ! I have no idea of selling or trading him," and Mr. Williams looked toward his house, which was now out of view, saying, ''I must be getting along home." "Time for me, too," said Giles; "I see by the smoke that supper is ready, and 1 only meant to stop long enough to send a message from my wife to yours, which is nothing more nor less than an invitation from rny wife to your wife to come to our house to-morrow afternoon. ' Early,' my wife told me to say, and that she would be disappointed if your wife did n't come." "I'll tell her," said Williams; and loosening the traces, he sent his horses homeward alone, and set out himself in search of the cows ; while Giles plodded along, wondering whether his neighbor had a touch of the rheumatism, (the weather had been damp) or what made him so down-hearted. As he drew LEARNING CONTENT. 99 near home, his wife came forth, with her rn'lk-pail, and a deep Bun-bonnet pulled down over her face. Little Daniel Giles btood beneath a cherry-tree, varying his idleness by throwing stones at the chickens which were going to roost in the boughs ; the mother paused, gave him a silent shake, boxed his ears, right and left, and passed on, without so much as glancing at Tommy. " Why, Emeline, what sends you out to milk to-night?" said the husband, kindly, as tucking up her skirts she placed herself beside a little kicking heifer, with brindled hide, and horns bent close together, switching her tail in the woman's face by way of salutation. " What sends me? why, it's time somebody was milking, I'm sure." Scarcely had she finished the sentence, when away went the pail, with a deep indention in one side, and the little cow was seen running and tossing her head in an opposite direction. " Don't try to milk the ugly brute, Emeline," said Mr. Giles, consolingly ; "it's as much as I can do." But Mrs. Giles, after shaking the milk from her apron, took up the pail in silence, and resolutely resumed her milking. Directly, however, she was left beside her overturned pail, alone, and the tears, in spite of her winking and pulling down the bonnet, dropped one after another down her cheeks. "If you had minded rne, that would not have happened," was the first exclamation of the husband ; but when he saw her tears, his tone changed to one of kind commiseration, and reach ing for the pail, to which she firmly held, he said, " Do n't, Erne line ; do n't be so stubborn ; go in and prepare the supper while 1 milk ; come, Emelime, come I expect Polly Williams will come to see you to-morrow." " 1 do n't care for Polly Williams ; I'm sorry she is coming," sobbed Mrs. Giles ; but her heart was softened a little, evi- dently, for she loosened her hold on the pail, which Mr. Giles took, as he continued, "To be sure, Emeline, Polly Williams is n't you, but I guess she is a good clever woman, for you know she comes into our house if any of us is ailing, just aa though it was her own j she seems to know just where and how to take hold." 100 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. " She ought to have some good about her, the dear knows,'" persisted Mrs. Giles, the fires of whose anger were not yet all burned down ; " but I suppose if she is coming there is no help for it." " Why, you told me this very noon-time," answered the hus- band, "just as I was dipping a tin of water from the pine bucket with your own lips you told me to try and get word to Polly to come over here a visiting to-morrow afternoon." "Well, what if I did?" " Nothing : only I supposed you wanted her to come." "Oh, you suppose great things, sometimes." "Well, well, never mind," said Mr. Giles; "I don't want to quarrel, and I do want my supper." " You are always finding fault with me," said Mrs. Giles, petulantly, " when I try to do everything ;" and then came out one cause, at least, of the vexation supper had been waiting half an hour. When the supper had been eaten by the husband, in silence, (Mrs. Giles did n't want any, she had a headache,) and removed ^uddenly, and the children were all asleep, happy in dreams of new hen's nests, perhaps, Mr. Giles drew his chair up to that of his wife, where she sat in a streak of moonlight, leaning her head on her hand. " Emeline," he said, pressing between both his toil-hardened hands one of hers, "don't you remember one night, when we were walking down the lane, and you blushed that I called you Mrs. Giles for your name was not Mrs. Giles then we saw riding home from market Mr. arid Mrs. Griffith, looking as though none the happier for being together, and I said to you, 'Emeline, is that the way we shall do, by-and-byT and you said, ' If 1 ever look so cross, Tommy, I shall not expect you to love me.' Then," he added, half sorrowfully, half reproach- fi 11), " I <- v i n't think you ever would." Poor Mrs. Giles over all her worn and faded and chilling experiences, came a wave from that fountain that is always fresh she did n't look cross any more. The next morning she went about preparations for Mrs. Williams, cheerfully, though she said it was troublesome to LEARNING CONTENT. 101 have visitors; but she should never be any more ready than she was then, she supposed. And so, with sweating and toiling and some scolding, she prepared custards and cakes, and such other delicacies as farmhouses afford, arranging the dinnnr meantime, that all might be in readiness at an early hour. The children, who were frolicsome and noisy and not too obe- dient, were called together from tree-tops and mud-puddles, and from under the barn their faces and hands reduced to a natural color by soap and water applications, their heads, which Mrs. Giles said looked like so many brush-heaps, combed and curled, and their torn and soiled garments exchanged for neat and clean ones and they were told they must see how pretty they could act, for that Mrs. Williams was going to bring her three nice little boys, who would be frightened to death if they behaved as they were accustomed to. A dozen whippings would not have been so effectual, and, tying on bonnets and hats, they walked down the lane and settled themselves in the shade of a tree to greet the coming of their visitors. They did not have long to wait, for the shadows were only slanting a little from noon when Mrs. Williams, with three accompaniments, whom she called at home the torments of her life, and abroad her troublesome comforts, was seen coming over the hill, in a dress, of a stiff woollen stuff, which she had worn from time immemo- rial, and holding before her face the faded green parasol which she had carried just about as long. " I'll declare," said Mrs. Giles, slipping out of one dress and into another, "she might as well have come before dinner, and be done with it ; what on earth can J find to say all this long afternoon ?" The new cap was hardly tied when the creaking of the gate announced the near approach of her neighbor, and as Mrs. Giles opened the door her face broke into the happiest smile. "Really, Polly," she said, violently shaking hands, "it does a body good to see you once more." " I am sure," answered Mrs. Williams, " I ain't much to see, and if I look happy it 's because I 've come to your house, where everything is so nice ;" and the two ladies, mutually pleased, and, laughing as though they never did anything else, walked into the house together. lot OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. When, the previous evening, Mr. Williams brought home the cows, with some misgivings he approached the house, for he yet saw no indication of life thereabouts. " Why, Polly, what in the world has happened ?" he said, placing his hands on either side of the door, and looking anxiously within ; but Polly neither looked up nor made any reply. " Heard any bad news, any way ?" he said, after a pause. Mrs. Williams shook her head ; and after a moment of bewildered silence, and seeing his boys lopping over the backs of their chairs, with swollen eyes and red noses, he renewed his efforts to ascertain what manner of calamity could have overtaken his household. " Sick, any of you ?" he said, in a tone between petulance and tenderness. Mrs. Williams partly removed the apron from her eyes, and looked askance at her husband, revealing a face reddenevl with tears, but she only shook her head, this time more mournfully than before. "Then what is the matter? seems to me you act strangely, for nothing." After lingering in vain anxiety a little while longer, he pro. ceeded to kindle a fire, and fill the tea-kettle ; and Mrs. Wil- liams, laying her baby in the cradle, presently went about preparations for supper. No farther explanation was asked or given, and a night's sleep operated to restore things to their usual tenor. " I had a little talk with Mr. Giles, last evening," said Mr. Williams, at breakfast. " Did you f ' said Mrs. Williams ; " well, what did he have to say ?" " Oh, not much he liked our bay oolt pretty well, and he said his wife said she wanted you to come ever there this after- noon airly, he said she said." " I have quite as much as I can get along with, at home," said Mrs. Williams ; and she looked as though she endured a great many hardships that nobody cared anything about. "Well, do as you like, Polly," said Mr. Williams, as he LEARNING CONTENT. 10* out to his day's labor ; " but he said, Emeline said she wanted you to come, and bring the children, he said, she said." " I am sure I do n't care much about visiting anywhere, and least of all about visiting Mrs. Giles." " Why, what have you against Mrs. Giles ? she is a nice woman, I am sure beautiful day, I guess it will turn out." " Oh, I have nothing particular against her I don't lay up hard thoughts against anybody," said the wife; "but it seems to me it would be hard work to talk to Mrs. Giles to-day." Notwithstanding all Mrs. Williams said, and half believed, she went more briskly about her work than usual, though, when the children asked if she was going, she replied, vaguely, that she would " see about it." " Toot-to-to-to-o-o !" went the dinner-horn, at half-past eleven, and Mr. Williams hastened home, for he well knew that visiting was to be done. " And so you have concluded to go, have you, Polly ?" he said, as he sat down to dinner. " I suppose I may as well go, and be done with it," she replied, " if I have it to do ; and the children are all crazy to go ; the day is pleasant, and there is nothing more than there always is to prevent; and so I must put on the old black dress that everybody is tired of seeing, and trot along in the sun I'll be glad when it 's over." An hour thereafter the happy meeting took place. "I was so afraid you would not come," said Mrs. Giles, untying the bonnet-strings of her friend, " for 1 had the queerest dream last night, and it has seemed to me that something bad was going to happen." " 1 do hate to be plagued with ugly dreams," said Mrs. Wil- liams ; " but what was it about ?" *' Why," said Mrs. Giles, "I dreamed that you were sick, and it did not seern precisely as if you were sick, either, but you were blind, and I thought your face was white as a cloth, and I tried to get where you were, for 1 saw you walking about in your own yard, but 1 kept falling as 1 tried to walk, and could n't get along, and when at last 1 was nearly there, I found that 1 had no shoes on ; still I thought 1 must go on, and jus* 104 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. as I opened the gate a great dog sprung at me and took me right in the wrist, and I fairly jumped out of my skin and waked right up wide awake as I am now. A good little bit it seemed to me as if it was the truth, for I couJd see just how you looked, and the thought of the cross beast made me almost trimble ; all I could do I could n't get to sleep again, and as soon as the first roosters crowed for daylight I got up, and it appeared like I could have no peace till I saw you." "Some people think," said Mrs. Williams, "that the state of the mind, or the supper we eat, or something or other, in- fluences our dreams, but I don't think any such thing." " No, nor I," answered Mrs. Giles, though she thought of retiring supperless, and of some unpleasant words and feelings previously ; she did not speak of them, however. " I am sure I have had dreams that were omens-like," resumed Mrs. Giles, sadly; "along before my poor little Emeline died, I dreamed one night that a strange woman, dressed in white, came to the door and asked me to see the baby, and though I did n't know who she was, it seemed to me that I must do as she bid, and I put little Emeline in her arms and she carried her away walking right through the air, I thought. It was only a little while till she took sick and died." At this recital the eyes of both the ladies filled with tears, and their hearts flowed right together. The children stood in silent wonder and fear, that seemed to say, " Why do you cry, mother ?" Mrs. Giles gave them some cakes and told them to go out to some shady place and play, for that they were seeing their best days. They did not believe that, though they obeyed, and presently their merry shouts and laughter indicated that their days were very good ones, whether their best or not. How easily we are acted upon by outward influences ! the lively carol of a bird, a merry peal of laughter, or a smiling face, gives tone and color to our feelings, and unconsciously we begin to look at the cheerful side of things ; and so, as the two ladies heard the pleasant sport of their children, their thoughts flowed into pleasant channels ; and as they rocked by the vine- curtained window, they chattered like two magpies now of the garden, now of the children and the school, now of what LEARNING CONTENT. )0 they had got, and now of what they proposed to get, all of which subjects were spiced occasionally with a little harmless gossip. " How well that dress does wear," said Mrs. Giles, rubbing the sleeve of her friend's gown between her fingers ; ' and it looks just as good as new, yet I wish I could get such a thing." " I always thought it was a good black," replied Mrs. Wil- liams, "and it does seem as if there was no wear out to it, and it 's the handiest kind of a dress, for, being worsted, 1 can wear it in winter, and yet it is so stiff and cool that I can wear it in summer just as well as if it were lawn." "I'll dare say," said Mrs. Giles; "where did you get the piece ? I must have one just like it the first time I go to town." To have he*rd the conversation of the women, their little confidences, and sly inuendoes, about Mr. Smith and Mrs. Hill, and the way they managed things, you would have supposed them two of the best friends in the world, and withal very amiable. And so in fact they were, as friends and amiability go ; neither, as she had anticipated, felt at any loss for some- thing to say, and the hours glided swiftly by. " La, bless me !" exclaimed Mrs. Giles, suddenly throwing down her work ; 'Just look at that shadder why, the afternoon don't seem to me to have been a minute long" " Did you ever ! who would have thought it ?" said Mrs. Williams ; but there they were, the long sunset shadows stretch- ing across the yard, and it was time for Mrs. Giles to make her biscuits. "1 guess, Polly," she said, "you will have to move your chair into the kitchen, for I don't like to leave you long enough to get supper, and it 's getting so late that I must spring about." So they adjourned together, and Mrs. Giles, tying on a checked apron and rolling back her sleeves, kneaded the flour vigorously, and the tea-kettle was presently steaming like an engine, and an extra large "drawing of tea" was steeping on the hearth. "Now, Emeline," said Mrs. Williams, lifting the tea-table into the middle of the floor, "you need n't say one word, for ] Kin going to set the table for you." 5* 106 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. " No, Polly, jou are not going to do any such a thing; it'i a pretty story if you must go to work when you come to visit; now just sit down and make yourself comfortable." " I shall do no such a thing," said Polly, " that is, I won't sit in my laziness when you are at work ; it will make me a good deal more comfortable to help ; I 'd be ashamed," she continued, laughing, " to tell you what you should n't do, if you were at my house." " Well, have your own way, and live the longer," replied Emeline, playfully tossing the table-cloth toward her friend, who proceeded to arrange the tea-things with as much ease and grace as if she were at home. The new dishes were admired ; the quality of the sugar ex- amined, both ladies agreeing that it was the whitest brown sugar they had ever seen, and so cheap ; the knives and forks were thought by Mrs. Williams perfect loves so small and highly finished ; and Mrs. Giles thought them so too, though she said she did n't know as they were anything more than common. " I will have a set just like them before I am a month older," said Mrs. Polly Williams. " And I will have a dress just like yours," replied Mrs. Giles, "and 1 must borrow the pattern too it fits so beautifully." So, it was agreed that they should go to town together Mrs. Giles for the dress, and Mrs. Williams for the knives and forks. Only the previous evening Mrs. Giles had said she hoped to have some new knives and forks before Mrs. Williams came again, though she supposed the old ones would have to do. What a pleasant time they had, drinking tea together! the cake had not one heavy streak, or if it had, neither of them saw it ; and the custard was baked just enough, the biscuits were as light and white as new fallen snow, and the butter and the honey, all the supper, in fact, was unexceptionable ; of course Mrs. Williams praised everything, and of course Mrs. Giles was pleased ; and as for the children, they were perfectly happy, till the time of parting. "Now you must come right soon, and bring all the children," said Mrs. Williams, they separated at the end of the lane. LEARNING CONTENT. irfl " Oh, yes, I shall come soon, but don't wait for me ; when- ever you can, take your work and run over." And after much lingering, and invitations iterated and reit erated, and promises made over and over, each to the other that she would be more sociable, they parted. And certainly there was no affectation of interest they did not feel ; the crust of selfishness that gathered over their hearts, in isolation, was rubbed off by contact, and the hard feeling, engendered by too frequent contemplation of the darkest side of things, was changed into kindness under the influence of genial looks and words so much in this journey of life do little things discourage, or help us on. When Mrs. Polly Williams opened the gate at home, she saw her husband sitting by the open door, waiting and looking for her ; the milking was done, and the kettle boiling, and it seemed no trouble at all to prepare supper for him ; and the less, perhaps, that he said, " Do n't give yourself trouble, Polly ; just set out anything that's convenient, and never mind changing yuur dress and cooking for me." " It will only require a minute," replied the wife, unslipping the hooks, for the old black dress had acquired a new value, and, turning it wrong side out, she hung it away more carefully than she had done for a year. "Well, how did you like your visit?" asked the husband, drawing his chair inside the door, as the dishes began to rattle down on to the table. "Oh, it was the best visit 1 ever had ; Emeline had everj- thing so nice, and was so glad to see me." Then she relate! many little particulars, only interesting to them sipping tea, the while, nut that she wanted any, but merely for company's sake ; and saying, in conclusion, that if her children were only like Emeline's, she would be so glad I Meantime, Mrs. Giles returned, and began washing her dishes, and singing as she did so, while Mr. Giles sat by, looking pleased and happy. "Just step into the pantry, my dear," said Mrs. Giles, (she had not said " my dear," previously, for a long time) " and get me a nice piece of brown paper to wrap these knives 108 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. and forks in," and she looked at them admiringly, as she rubbed them through the tea-towel. " And did you find the afternoon as tedious as you expected ?" inquired the husband, bringing the paper ; but the wife was so busy in praising the children of Mrs. Williams, that she did not seem to hear him, though perhaps she did. and meant it a reply when she said, " La, me ! everybody has their little faults, and little troubles, too, I expect we are none of us perfect. Just put the knives and forks on the upper shel" TWO VISITS, TWO VISITS. I. Two very excellent families were the Knights and Lytles, neighbors of ours years ago. But they were most unlike each other in disposition and character. Mrs. Knight was imbedded in old-fashioned notions, out of which she could not be lifted by any sort of modern invention, however skillfully contrived ; she was so meek that she considered herself unworthy of the earnings of her own hands ; she was also gloomy and dis- pondent ; but her friend Mrs. Lytle was altogether different. Mrs. Knight had consolation for all the ills of life, in the com- forting reflection that it would soon be over, though she some- times said she would be happy in it if she had anything to make her so. As to whether Mrs. Knight would have been very cheerful under any circumstances, seems to me a little doubtful, for no one but herself could see anything very adverse in her fortune. She was really a kind woman at heart, but she had no sight except for the dark side of things, and this, linked with extreme modesty, amounting frequently to a painful diffi- dence, made her singularly, and, as far as others could perceive, needlessly wretched. She was the wife of what is termed a well-to-do fanner, a man whose energy and upright dealing had won for him the respect of all his acquaintances. When a young man he had earned with his own hands the land on which he lived, clearing off the timber, burning the brush, rolling the logs together, and going through the various priva- tions and hardships, of which we know so little, except firm the reminiscences of pioneers. When a portion of the land had been cleared, and fences made, a young orchard planted, HO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. and ground broken for the first crops, in the interval between sowing and harvesting he Bet about building a house ; and when the wheat was stacked and the cornstocks rustling in the autumn wind, the smoke from as snug a cabin as was to be found in all the neighborhood, blew across the hills, pleasantly reminding him of the young and pretty girl whom he had scarcely learned to call his wife; and so he wrought with more hope and energy than before. Of course, prosperity mated herself with him, and the fields grew broader and wider, and the shadows of the orchard trees covered all the ground, while flocks of cattle and sheep dotted the pastures. But with these years I have little to do, only as the light reflected from them shows that Mrs. Knight had at least a provident husband. At the time of which I write, they were in the maturity of life old people I thought them, for I was not so old as I am now, and as we grow older we do not look on years as we do in childhood and youth. How long are the days then, and the years ! it seems as if they would never end ; but they pass more and more fleetly, dropping one after another into the strangely mingled sea that is behind us, and before we are aware the shadows are lengthening from the sunset. There was a sprinkle of gray among the yet thick locks of Mr. Knight, and the smooth brown hair of the wife and mother was now under a plain cap, though you might see a few be- traying lines of silver. Their home was no longer in the cabin in which their first wedded years were passed, for there came more to dwell in it than there was room for, and, with larger means, an ampler and more convenient habitation had been provided. They occupied a plain substantial brick house when I knew them, having about them ail the conveniences of comfort. if not of elegance, and as I said " daughters and sons of beauty " to gladden with the freshness of youth the worn experiences and common realities of life. "As the husband is, the wife is," Tennyson says, and though generally this may be true, it is not always so, and Mrs. Knight was an exception to the rule. Had she evinced in the management of her house and children the spirit and tact of her husband in the management of his affairs, home would not TWO VISITS. 1H have been the uninviting place it was. The little arts which beaut'fy and adorn and make comfortable the humblest cabin, she knew nothing about. True, she had been in early life accustomed to privations, for rigid economy was then necessary, and nothing beyond actual wants was thought of. But with more liberal means there came to her no desires transcending any strict necessity. The fashion of the times had changed, and the requirements of people " in society " were greatly enlarged, but Mrs. Knight remained far behind everybody else, partly that she thought herself unworthy to fare better than her grandmother, and partly that life seemed to her too sorrowful a thing to bedeck with any ornaments, for, as I said before, she had a wonderfully quick apprehension for what was evil j and perhaps, too, she was over frugal. It is a great while I scarcely dare suggest how long since I first visited her, but all that then occurred is as fresh in my memory as if it were an incident of yesterday. The chimney tops were in view of my own home, and as Mr. Knight often passed our house on his way to market, I knew him very well, and he had often invited me to visit his wife, which 1 had never felt at liberty, from her retiring manners, to do. At length, however, I resolved, at least to show myself friendly, for per- haps, thought I, the fault has not been all on her side. So, one pleasant a ternoon in October, I arrayed myself in a gingham dress, which had been washed and ironed, and with the stoutest pair of shoes and the oldest bonnet 1 had selecting my costume with a view to the prejudices of the woman I was to visit speedily after dinner, which was at one o'clock, set out, carrying a bundle of sewing which would have served me at home for a week. I soon reached the farm, and, as I was passing through the fennel that fringed the roadside, came to an opening in the fence, where, seated on rails that slanted to the ground, were two little black-eyed girls, whom I recognized as the youngest children of Mr. and Mrs. Knight. u What are you doing here, my little friends 2" I said, pausing a moment ; but neither answered a word, and the youngest ten years old, perhaps seized a rough club which lay beside 112 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. her, and ran violently in the direction of a drove of cattle mostly fine milch cows, peaceably feeding in the pasture whicl bordered the roadside. The older sister, after picking the briars from her toes with 8 brass pin, turned her blushing face half toward me, as 1 repeated the question, and added, " I am just going to your house," and she told me, biting the hem of her sleeve, that they were " tending the gap," for that papa and mamma were both gathering apples in the orchard beyond the meadow, and the fence was down for them to drive home. As I spoke, I saw the team approaching, and, leaning on the fence, waited its coming near us, resolved to tell Mr. Knight of my good intentions, and await a more opportune season for my visit. But the good man would not hear a word of my returning home, and forcing a dozen apples of different kinds into my hands, he said, "A pretty piece of work, to-be-sure, that we should be disappointed of seeing you. Rachel happens to be in the orchard, but there is no need of it Jane Anne !" he cried to the little girls, '' leave off your chasing them are crit- ters, and run and tell your mammy that company is at the house clicket, you good-for-nothings !" This last piece of advice I thought quite gratuitous, for they set off at such a rate that one might have said, " The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light." Thus encouraged, I went forward, and was soon at the house. II. Mr. KNIGHT informed me as he opened the gate, that he should be at the cider-press till supper time, but that Rachel and the girls would entertain me ; and he added an expression of regret that he was not himself more at leisure. As I entered the yard, I saw that there were no walks cut through the sod, and that the grass was trampled away as it chanced, and beneath the tree (there was but one near the house) trodden quite bare ; and torn pieces of calico, bits of boards, and broken china, spoke of a demolished play-house. There were no TWO VISITS. lit flowers, nor snrubs to be seen, except a spindling "Jacob's Ladder " which grew in a broken teapot, beneath the parlor window. I rapt smartly at the front door, but received no answer. Indeed, after listening a moment, I was satisfied I should not be able to make myself heard, for from a chamber window came a sound like small thunder. The young ladies were spinning wool, and running races, as it seemed by the whuri, buzz and tumult, that came to my ears ; so, after a little reflection, I concluded to sit down on the steps and wait the coining of Mrs. Knight, but the husband, seeing this, called to me to go right in and make myself at home, and feeling that my delay would annoy him, I did so. But as he leaned back over the three bundles of rye through which the gleam of the rod apples shone, I could see that he was not smiling. The door opened immediately into the parlor, and seating myself there, I had some leisure for a survey of the style in which our neighbors were living. The walls were bare, but white-washed ; the flwor was covered with a home-made carpet, striped alter natel) with green and red and yellow ; six black Windsor chairs stood in a straight line against the wall ; a bed with a white muslin tester was in one corner ; and an old-fashioned bureau, on which lay a Bible and hymn-book, and a breakfast table, covered with a green and red oil-cloth, completed the furniture, except that the windows were shaded with highly-colored wall- paper. On one side of the chimney was a cupboard with glazed doors, originally designed for china, but filled with a variety of coverlids, varying in color from the faintest blue to the deepest red that could be dyed with pokeberries and pumpkin rinds. All was stiff and angular, and a smell of paint pervaded the atmosphere. Many times I fancied I heard the creak of the gate ; and at last, weary of waiting, I went to the window, assured that I detected steps and voices. Nor was I mistaken, for beneath the window, wringing a fleece of wool from the dye, and spreading it out on the grass, was Mrs. Knight. I was about tapping on the vu4ow, to inform her of my presence, when she spoke BO harshiy to the children, who were getting their play-house U> 114 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. rights, that I resumed my seat, resolved to await her leisure , and when her work was completed, with hands the color of an indigo bag, I perceived that she bent her steps in the direction of the kitchen. The time I deemed sufficient for any little preparation she might wish to make went by, and I began to find my position rather awkward, especially as I could hear her, apparently engaged in household duties, as though altogether unadvised of my being in the house. The children now began to climb up at the window, and looked in at me, laughing and hiding their heads alternately. " Is your mother at home ?" I asked, thinking still she was ignorant of my being there. It was some time before I could get an intelligible response, and then I was told that she was making bread in the kitchen. I was half inclined to return home, but remembering Mr. Knight's efforts toward sociability, I determined to press still further, and, retreating from my position, 1 stepped to the door of the kitchen, and made a sort of half apologetic observation in answer to the unsmiling face which presented itself; and on helping myself to a chair, as I was bidden, I followed my uneasy salutation with some deprecatory remarks, in a subdued tone, on the circumstances of our meeting, and of the pleasures of agreeable neighborhood. The day was warm, the sun streamed against uncurtained windows, the wood blazed in the deep fire-place, and the num- berless flies blackened the air ; but the woman wrought on un- moved. 1 drew my chair to the open door, and, unfolding my work, began to stitch, with great energy, talking the while of such things as I supposed would interest her. She said little, how- ever, and that, as it were, by compulsion. " Are the young ladies well V 1 said, sfter a long siler.ee, during which I had been examining the array of pots and skillets she was bringing about the hearth. " The gals, if you mean them, are well enough," she an- swered. " 1 have not seen them for a long while,' I remarked. TWO VISITS. JIB "No, I guess you havn't," she replied; "they are no gad abouts." I felt rebuked, but added that I was not often abroad my- self, and so should not be likely to meet them. " They are spinning, probably ?" I continued, after a moment. She did not reply directly, but wiping her face with her apron, exclaimed, ' Marcysakes on us ! I wish I was in Joppa it's so hot here !" " Yes, it is very warm," I said, " but you have cooler rooms ?" " I have no time to sit in them," she said, adding presently, "I don't know as it is any difference about me I am not fit for anything but to work, as I know of." I attempted a smile, and suggested that she was fit for any thing proper for a woman, I supposed. She took her chin in her hand and remained silent, looking as though she might be musing of the dead. At this point the youngest child, whose timidity was fust vanishing, and who felt, no doubt, some desire to amuse me, .sprang upon the table, and seizing a newspaper, from among a number that were strung over a cord attached to the wall near the ceiling, began showing me a picture of the president, with which it was embellished. " Is that the way you sarve your father's papers !" exclaimed Mrs. Knight ; "I'll president you, if you don't put that up." Mr. Knight was a man of some intelligence, took a political newspaper, which he read, and was pretty well versed in affairs generally, but to the rest of the family, the paper might as well have been written in Greek, for all they knew about it. It was not thought possible, indeed, that they could read or un- derstand anything contained in it, and as soon as it was read by the man of the house, it was hung above the reach of the children, who learned to regard it as something especially designed for old men in spectacles to look at on Sundays. I felt in part to blame for the misdemeanor of the child, if mis- demeanor it were, as it was on my account she had violated what seemed to be the law here. Therefore I was not sorry vhen, taking a skimmer in her hand, Mrs. Knight went into the 116 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. cellar to attend to some necessary duty, as I supposed, for she made no explanation or apology. There was thus presented a fine opportunity for the little girls to display the juvenile spirit which paternal authority generally kept subdued within them. They were perhaps a little ambitious too, for the exhibition of some of their various accomplishments before a visitor. So, concealing themselves from observation, though not from hearing, they began. " It rains, but it don't wet ; it's night, but it's not various things manufactured in the house, the provident woman carried weekly to town, for which business Mr. Knight kindly gave her room in his market-wagon ; and while she generally returned with her basket as full as she carried it away, he returned with his empty. But notwithstanding these expendi- tures Mrs. Lytle owed nothing, and though her purse was not so heavy as her neighbor's, neither was her heart. Her children had been kept at school for the most part, and she had even managed to send them two quarters to the new academy, and to dress them in a style, if less expensive, as neat and pretty as anybody in the neighborhood. I can see them now as 1 saw 132 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. them on the day of my visit Ady in a blue gingham dress and white apron, with bare neck and arms, and Kitty in a pink dress and black apron, till she tied over it a checked one to assist about the preparation of supper. " And that is the reason I am so late home to-day," Mrs. Lytle said, beginning at the close of her story. " You see I got out of the wagon just the other side of the school-house, and walked across to Hathaway's, to see how little Henry was, for I heard in market that the doctor had given him up. Poor child, he seemed so sensible, and told me to tell his mother not to cry !" and wiping her tears, she added, " Mrs. Knight was there, and you know her way : so they all felt worse than they would have done. As soon as she looked at Henry, she said he would not live till morning, and then calling his brother, she told him that Henry would never work or play with him again; and having told them two or three times, that all their tears would not make the child well, she went home to tend her soap-kettle, leaving directions in reference to being sent for in case she was needed." It was certainly characteristic that at such a time she should bring forward her hard, dark realities, and needlessly torture breaking hearts by allusions to the awful necessities of death. I spoke of my visit at her house, and related some particulars which tended to restore the cheerful tone of the conversation ; in fact we laughed outright, in view of the restraint and painful embarrassment which the young women felt in consequence of the visit of Mr. Francisco in open daylight. "I hope, mother," Kitty said, laughing and blushing, "you will not be so cross when I have a beau, for poor Hetty will never have a chance to get married I am sure." " I hope she will be cross," said the sister, " if you have such a clodhopper as he." " Come, come, girls," answered the mother, " Mr. Francisco is a good worthy young man, and though not given to match- making, I feel inclined to help them forward can't we facilitate their happiness in some way ?" The appeal was to me, and I entered at once into the conspir- acy. Mr. Francisco was to plow a field for Mrs. Lytle the com TWO VISITS. 133 ing week, and it was arranged that I should be the bearer of an invitation to the girls whose opportunities were so restricted, to assist in cutting apples at the cottage on a specified afternoon. The extent of this service cannot be estimated by those who have never seen or felt the cold straits of division thrown be- tween themselves and some dear object, by the strict discipline of parents or guardians, forgetting that they were ever lovers themselves. But perhaps now and then a modern Hero and Leander will appreciate it, and even if not, my conscience does not condemn me. for I verily believe they might never have told their love but through my harmless stratagem. But I am lingering too loner. With small talk of one kind and another, and a little harmless gossip, as I have confessed, the time passed rapidly, and through the vine-shaded window we saw the heavy mist of red gold hanging over the withering woods, and black forks of the walnuts darkening or the blood red top of the oaks shining through. The girls were very happy, and chattering like birds, as they prepared the supper, and great credit it did to their housewifery when prepared. The broiled chicken bore slight resemblance to Mrs. Knight's stewed roosters, and the clear, fresh jelly as little to the candied and crumby fragments which the good woman called preserves. The bread could not have been whiter, nor the butter more golden ; the cake was just done to a charm, and the table linen was as white as snow. How well and how pleas- antly 1 remember it all, though so long ago! the pretty pink china sparkling in the light of the candles the two brass can dlesticks scoured, so that they looked like freshly wrought gold, and our pleasant conversation as we sipped the delicious tea, and my promise to visit them often. According to the kindly custom of country people, Ady and Kitty went "a piece of the way home with me," telling me somo little secret hopes and fears they had not ventured upon in the day. It is wonderful what an influence twilight and night exert upon us; we draw closer to those we like, and sometimes, al- most unawares, give our hearts to their keeping; while from those we hate or fear, we are a thousand times mere repelled than in the noon. Passion, of whatever nature, strengthens iu 184 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD the dark. Many a sweet confession and sweeter kiss that have knit destinies together, owe their expression to the friendly stars. And many a blow has been struck that would not have been given, if the sunlight had shown the murderer clearly where to do his work. As we stood beneath the deeply crimson cone of a stunted ash that grew by the roadside, making our adieus, the stage-coach, its plethoric sides swinging one way and the other, rumbled past, hurrying to their various destinations a motley crowd of dust- fiovered passengers, and among them I noticed a slight and fair- faced youth, looking back from the window. "The school- master," I said, addressing myself to Kitty, who blushed to find herself detected in returning his earnest gaze, and hastily tied on the white hood she had previously held in her hand. " I rather think," I continued, laughing, " he is all your fancy painted him ; and from the attention with which he regarded us, perhaps we have, some of us, found favor in his eyes; but I will be gene- rous, having, as I shall, the advantage of first acquaintance, and you shall know him as soon as may be." So, jesting, we parted, as the first star, large and white, came out above the tree tops. The doors of the farm-houses stood open, the tables were spread, and I could see the shirt sleeves busy, as hands were moving from dish to dish, and the patient mother trying to still the fretful baby, while she poured the tea. About the barn- yards stood the cows chewing their food, and waiting to be milked. V. ON my arrival home, I found that my anticipation had been correct the young schoolmaster had preceded me, and sat at the parlor window deep in the mysteries and merits of " It is an ancient mariner And he etoppeth one of three !" His manner and salutation were civil enough, and very graceful withal, and I was struck at once with his beauty, which was such as imagination gives the poet ; but there was an indefinable something in his manner which made me feel ui} self an interruption to his pleasure, even before he resumed TWO VISITS. 1M his book, which, however, he presently did, after a little com monplace talk about the beauty of the sunset. This, to confess the truth, was vexatious, for most young ladies are pleased with but that demeanor which seems to say they are the only women in the world. The relations in which we stood involved no obligation on the part of either of us farther than that of common courtesy ; and though, as I said, the young man silently resumed his book, I felt it my privilege as it was my pleasure to remain in the parlor, as his own apartment awaited his occupation when he pleased. Moreover, he interested me, and perhaps I was not without hope, that when the twilight deepened a little more, he would begin some conversation. I wish that with any word painting I could bring his picture before you, but my poor skill is insufficient, and I cannot hope 1o give the faintest idea of that dreamy and spiritual expression which chiefly made him what he was, the most beautiful person I had ever seen. He was a little above the medium height, straight as an arrow, and of faultless proportions. His hair was of a perfect and glossy black, and hanging in wavy half curls down his neck and temples, gave to his face a look almost girlish. His eyes were very large and dark, but soft and melancholy, and along the delicate whiteness of his cheek the color ran blushing whenever he spoke. His hands too evinced his gentle origin. Closer and closer to the page he bent his head, as ebbed away the crimson tide in which, an hour asjo, the sun had drifted out of view, and not till star after star came sharpening its edges of jagged gold in the blue, did he close the volume. He did not speak, however, when this was done, but locking his hands together like a child, watched the ashy and sombre clouds which in the south were mingling into one, for a few minutes, and then, absorbed, as it seemed, with his own thoughts, walked slowly in the direction of the wood, that held in its rough arms the waning splendor that rained off with every sough of wind. Every moment the atmosphere grew more sluggish and oppressive, and the broad dim leaves of the sycamore, that shadowed the well, drifted slowly slantwise to the ground, 136 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. The summer had shaken from her hot lap the fierce thundei bolts, and there was no broken rumble nor quick sharp ratt'd to lend terrible grandeur to the autumn's dismal and pitiless storms, for one of which the night was preparing. The time was very still, and as I sat on the low mossy dorr- step. I could hear the voices of neighbors half a mile away, as they hurried the milking, and the rattle of the dry boards where the apple-sheds were being covered. Distinctly down the clayey hill, a mile to the south, I heard the clatter of fast- falling hoof-strokes, then it was lost in the damp hollow and up the long dusty slope, but I pleased myself with guessing at what points the horseman had arrived at such and such times, till almost at the expected moment he appeared on the neigh- boring hill, darkening through the lessening light. Holding the ragged rim of his chip-hat with one hand', he reined in his fiery sorrel at the gate of our house, and beckoned me to approach. Before 1 reached him, or even recognized him, for he was the young man I had met at Mrs. Knight's, I divined from the straight rod balancing on the arched neck of his im- patient horse, the melancholy nature of his errand : little Henry Hathaway was dead. Scarce any preparation was requisite, and, wrapt in my shawl and hood, I was soon on the way. Mr. Hathaway 's house was nearly a mile south of ours, and half that distance off the main road, to the west, so that to reach it most conveniently I struck across the fields. From the duty before me I shrank somewhat, not from any unwilling- ness to lend my aid, but I was young, unused to death, and haif afraid ; and when I reached the woods through which my way led, the rustling leaves beneath my feet seemed to give out the mournfulest sound I had ever heard. A few steps aside from my path, sitting on a mossy log, beneath an arbor of wild grapes, I beheld some vision of mortality, and suddenly stopping, gased with intensity of fear. That any sane person should be in such place at such time, was not very probable, for at that period our neighborhood was free from those troubled wanderers who people the dreariest solitudes with the white- browed children of the imagination, and soften the dull and dead realities with atmospheres of song. 1 think however, it TWO VISITS. kl was by no process of reasoning that I likened the dimly-ont- lined shape before me with that son of the morning, of whom heaven disburthened itself so long ago. A shower of wet leaves rained down on me, for the fine drops were already drizzling and pattering on the interlocked branches overhead, as I stood, more from inability to fly, than from courage, before the object which my fancy alone made terrible " Stand there, vision of a lady Stand there silent, stand there steady," spoke a voice, so musical that fear vanished, though it was not till another moment that I recognized the schoolmaster. When 1 did so, flushing in the wake of fear came anger, and I replied^ '' If you intend to enact fantastic tricks of this sort, I pray you will choose an auditor next time who can fitly repay you for myself, I must remain your debtor." Having spoken thus, I swept along the rustling leaves, with an air that might have done credit to an injured princess, as I fancied. Thoughtless and ungentle as my manner was, it was productive of a ma- turity of acquaintance, which greater civility would probably not have induced ; for immediately the young man joined me, and so sweetly apologized that I could not but forgive him. Of course he did not at first recognize me more than I him, and so for a time remained silent under my scrutiny. Though no longer afraid of shadows, having found one ap- parition so ha/mless, 1 was not sorry to have the lonesome way enlivened by the cheerful influence of my new friend's company. I think, however, neither of us felt any real pleasure in the other's society, and I may say, neither then nor ever after. Upon this encounter, we had each felt bound to manifest cordial feeling, but kept all the while a belligerent reserve force to fall back on at any moment. There was about Mr. Spencer for that was his name a distant and measured formality, which I mistook for pride and self-sufficiency ; the sentences came from his thin lips with cold regularity, as though chiseled in marble ; I felt then and always the disagreeable sensation of an utter impossibility of saying or doing anything which could in the least interest him. 1 88 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. He was young, as I said, and perhaps he seemed more youthful than he was. Had we both been some years older, I might have recognized, under the blind and statue-like beauty that could " view the ripened rose, nor seek to wear it," the signs of a passion that had burned itself to ashes. In interchanges of words, and not of thoughts, we climbed the fences, walked the logs over the runs, crossed the stubble land, and struck into the lane where the yellow dust was dim- pling more and more with the steady and increasing rain. As we drew near the house we became silent, for all about it seemed an atmosphere of death. Our footsteps, on the moist earth, did not break the hush ; even the watch-dog seemed con- sciously still, and, having turned his red eyes on us as we passed, pressed his huge freckled nose close to the ground again, whining low and piteously. A few sticks were burning on the hearth for the rain had chilled the air the flames flickering up, wan and bluish for a moment, and then dropping down into a quivering and uncertain blaze ; there was no crack- ling and sparkling, no cheerfulness in it ; and seated before it was the mother, rocking to and fro, her tears falling silently among the brown curls of the mateless little boy who rested his head on her knees. Two women, in very plain caps, and with sleeves turned back from their wrists, were busying themselves about the house, and in the intervals of work officiously comforting the mourner. I could only take her hand in mine ; I toad no words to illumine the steep black sides of the grave; in all the world there was nothing that could fill her empty arms ; why should 1 essay it ? One of the women directed us in a whisper to the adjoining room. Little Henry was already dressed for the coffin, and, kneeling beside the hard bed on which he lay, was Kitty Lytle, combing and curling his hair, that he might appear to his mother as life-like as possible. Her own rippling lengths of golden yellow fell forward, naif veiling her face, which, in its expression of earnest tenderness, made her per- fectly beautiful. The young man stepped hurriedly toward the dead, but his eyes rested on the girl. On the mantle stood half a dozen empty phials, with small TWO VISITS. 139 packages, cups, and teaspoons, and in one corner of the room the death-bed the impression of his face still fresh in the pillow. A napkin was pinned over the small looking-glass, and the table was draped in white. I wondered to see Kitty do her sad work so calmly, for she was younger than I, who trembled even to touch the shroud, but in thought and feeling, as I afterward learned, she had fai outgrown her years, and never lingered from the most painful duty. While Ady timidly remained with her mother, she had come through the night and the storm, and in her gentle minis- tries of love seemed first to have entered into her proper sphere. The sash rattled in the window as the winds went and came, and across the panes trailed darkly the leafless vines of the wild rose, but little Henry slept very quietly all the while. Silent for the most part, and conversing in low tones, when speaking at all, we sat young watchers with the dead. Hetty Knight, who had also'preceded me, kept in the dimmest corner, too bashful to speak in the presence of a stranger, and Mr. Spencer persisted in remaining, though I had twice informed him that it was not at all needful, inasmuch as Mr. Francisco was expected to sit with us. So, stormy and mournful, the night wore on. " Miss Hathaway," spoke a coarse voice a rough discord to the time ''he says the coffin will be here by sunrise," and, dripping and 1 streaming from the rain, Mr. Francisco entered the apartment consecrated to silence by that awful shadow that irnist ever make heavy the heart, with the shuffling step and unquiet manner with which he would have gone into his father's barn. Having thrown himself in a seat, in a graceless fashion which left his legs drifting off to one side, as though hinged at the knees very loosely, he asked, in a jocular tone, if we were all skeert. There was an exchange of smiles and glances between Kitty and the schoolmaster, as Hetty replied, that for one, she was never scared before she was hurt. Destitute of those common instincts of refinement, w : hieh are better and more correct than all teachings, these two young persons fra- ternize* 1 that night in a way that was visibly annoying to the 140 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. stranger. Mr. Francisco probably feared that a subdued man. net- would be attributed to cowardice, and, therefore, in mis- taken pride of manhood, was unusually brusque. After some pretending conversation between himself and Hetty for they evidently talked of what they were not thinking they gradually relapsed into silence. Leaning her head on the table Kitty had fallen asleep, and, under pretence of chilliness, the schoolmaster rvithdrew to the adjoining room, having first carefully wrapt my shawl about the pretty plump shoulders of the sleeping girl : I don't know why he should never have thought that I might need it, but he did not. I as heartily wished myself out of the way of the young lovers as they could wish me, and more especially when, taking an ear of corn from his pocket, the young man began shelling off the grains and throwing them, two or three at a time, in the face of Hetty, whose laughing reproofs were so gentle they did not correct the offence, and probably were not designed to do so. I could not make myself into thin air, but 1 did the best for them which the circumstances permitted. Taking up a torn newspaper, the only readable thing I could find, I turned my face away, and read and re-read a pathetic article of that sort which seems to have been invented for the first pages of the country journals. I was not so absorbed, however, as not to hear the facetious youth address his lady love with, " Did you ever see a cob that was half red V " No," was the reply ; and thereupon, of course, he drew his chair near Hetty's, as if to exhibit the phenomenon, but to her surprise he said, " T other half is red, too !" " Oh, if you ain't the greatest torment !" said Hetty ; and the jostling of the chairs told of their closer proximity. " 'T is half red, any how," said the beau ; " red as your cheek, and I could make that redder an what it is !" Whether the boasted ability was vindicated by experiment I do not know ; a rustling of capes and collars, and a sort of playful warfare, were my only means of inference. Presently the whispers became inaudible, and having read in the paper how a queen's sumptuous breakfast was removed untasted on the morning after her divorce, how the plumes failed to hide the TWO VISITS. 141 pallor of her discrowned brow, sadder perhaps for the lost love- light than the vanishing glory with other interesting parti culars of the mournful story I nestled beside Kitty and feigned the sleep which had so softly wooed her, from pain and all the world of love that fancy may have painted, to the golden sphere of dreams ; and though this pretence of sleep did not much refresh me, it was all the same to the lovers, and but for my accommodating artifice they might never have made our clergyman the promises they did a year thereafter. Toward morning, listening to the winds as they cried about the lonesome homestead, and the vines, creaking against the window pane, where the rain pattered and plashed, I passed over the borders of consciousness, and woke, not till the lamp was struggling with the day, that was breaking whitely through the crimson the clouds lifting and drifting away, and the rain done. In the dimmest corner the two most wakeful watchers still kept their places, and by the mingling light the schoolmaster was reading to Kitty, in a softly, eloquent tone, that most beautiful creation, beginning " All thoughts, all feelings, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All but ministers of love, And feed his sacred flame." Was the voice with which he told another's love interpreting his own] or why ran the blushes so often along his cheek, and why beneath his dark eyes burned those of the listener ? From the cherry tree came the cock, not flapping his wings and crowing proudly, but with the water dripping from his tail, drenched into one drooping feather; in the milk-yard were dry and dusty spots, where the cattle had slept ; the doves came down in flocks, pecking, now themselves and now thfir scanty breakfasts ; and warm and yellow across the hills came the sun- shine, to comfort the desolate earth for her lost leaves and flowers. But no one bent over the white bed of little Henry, saying, " Wake, it is day ;" and silently the mother laid her hand on his forehead, in placid repose under its golden crown )f curls ; silently her quivering lips pressed his and that was all. 142 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD VI. BUT I am lingering too long. Often while the soft hazy autumn was stretching away to the dreary and chill winter, th schoolmaster's walk was along the sheltering hollow where, from the westward, as twilight fell, brightened the lights of Mrs. Lytle's cabin. Often, too, when the cheery blaze reddened across the drifted snow without, he smiled among the happy group at the hearth-stone. And Kitty "already had his wild eyes unlocked her heart's springs." But, though drawn toward her, I could never believe his heart was much touched ; rather to escape from some haunting phantom than to embrace a new hope, it seemed to me he sought her. Alas for her, she could not see, for her own blind love, that it was no rapturous glow that burned in his cheek ; she could not hear, for her own trembling tones, that there was no fervor in his. If such things even were, I saw them not. We can scarcely imagine a young and timid girl, giving trovn its close folding, the treasure of her affection into the hands of indifference but I seek not to uncover from the dust the hoart that was once bright with the insanity of a dream. And for the living, whether guilty or guiltless, I judge him not. Betw een ourselves, the acquaintance never ripened into any sort of confi- dence. Sometimes, in the midst of our most earnest conversa- tions, he would break off abruptly and seek solitude in hisch/im- ber or with the stars ; at other times he would answer so vaguely that I knew he received no meaning from my words. He often amused his leisure with making sketches in pencil sometimes of scenery about the neighborhood, sometimes of the faces of his pupils; and more than one drawing of Mrs. Lytle's cottage graced his portfolio ; but there was one picture which he seemed to prize more than all others, returning to it again and again, and working at it with the most patient and elaborate care. W hen I rallied him about it, he said I should see it when completed, but that time never came; and when I guessed, one day, it was the portrait of Kitty, he blushed, but in the end shook his head sadly, and left me alone. The favorite picture was never left ou the table with the others. When that rough hunter of the young hardy flowers, March, TWO VISITS. 148 filled the budding woods with his wild laughter, I went from home with an invalid relation, in the hope that restoration, in some other clime, would " hang its medicine upon her lips." Previously to leaving I visited Mrs. Lytle's cabin. How busy and cheerful they all were the girls pruning the lilacs and roses, and planning the new flower-bed, and the mother arranging a bed of fiat-straw for the tall, awkwardly walking calf, white, and with e, pinkish nose and red specks along its sides, which the dove- colored heifer, " Beauty," had just brought home. We talked gayly at first, partly to conceal our sadness; and I remember telling Kitty it made no difference about her flow- ers she could not be there to see them bloom ; little thinking how sadly my prophecy would be fulfilled. She and I were be- come fast friends, and when I had said good-bye, to the mother arid sister, she tied on her bonnet, as her custom was, to walk part of the way home with me. We chose an indirect path through the woods, to protract the sweet sorrow of parting, and had nearly reached the spot where the last sad word must be said, when, sitting where the. shadows of the naked boughs and the sunshine flecked the greenly sprouting grass, we saw the schoolmaster. He was leaning against the trunk of a tree, and on his knee rested his portfolio. " Let us steal a march on him," I said, " and get a glimpse of the cherished picture ;" and repress- ing our laughter, and on tip-toe, we drew near, and peeping over his shoulder the secret was revealed. Pained and startled, I re- treated as lightly as I had approached, while, pale and trembling, Kitty remained transfixed. The schoolmaster was fast asleep, and the pleasant surprise we meant for him terminated in our own discomfiture. Without the least intention of doing so, we had broken over a charmed circle sacred to private sorrow the drawing was of a mountain side, with pines and hemlocks stretching bearded boughs above a grave, beside which the artist himself was kneeling, and beneath which was written " Oh I lost and buried love of mine, Though doomed a little while to part, Thy grave, God knoweth, is the shrine Of all the worship of my heart." By what strange impulse prompted, or by what authority 144 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. warranted, I know not, but Kitty remained till her dizzied vision had deciphered all. I pushed back the curls that had fallen over her face, kissed her forehead, white and damp now, and left her without speak- ing a word ; love's goldenest dream was breaking and lading in her heart ; though she smiled, it was a smile that brought tears to my eyes. So we parted. The fields were checked with furrows, and the corn planted ; the winds chased the waves over the grain fields ; the sheep were plunged in the full-flowing streams of the early summer, and, shorn thin of their fleeces, bleated along the hills ; nature went on with her work, and was bringing home the autumn to the music of threshing flails and the dancing of bright leaves along the woodland, when from my searching for the lost waters of health, I came back to the shelter of the homestead. For my summer absence, I regarded every thing with fresh interest ; the shutters of the schoolhouse were closed, and the rusty padlock hung at the door ; jqst beyond was the graveyard, and in the corner beneath the willow where the elders had long grown thick, offering vainly their snowy blossoms and shining berries to the schoolboys, a little space was cleared away, and the dark pit was waiting for the victim. Two men leaned over the stone wall, looking weary and impatient toward the north ; they were evidently expecting a funeral, while their spades, stick- ing upright in the fresh-heaped earth, waited to do their work. I would have asked who was dead, but just then between me and the grave swept a gay train of twenty or thirty equestrians, with low, clumsy old horses, and tall, gaunt colts already bear- ing marks of collars and traces, with stubborn ponies and slim limbed pacers all prancing and trotting and galloping together. A confused glimpse of the blue and crimson and green velvet of the side-saddles met my eyes, with smiling faces beneath the broad-rimmed flats, flapping up and down, and with veils streaming back, and white dresses gathered up and falling over the left arm, showing liberally the pretty petticoats of dimities, and scollops and ruffles. And further, I had some notion of a dozen or more trimly dressed youths ; with bronzed faces newly TWO VISITS. 1 shaved, and shining with their late ablutions all this I faintly apprehended, before the cavalcade disappeared, in a cloud of dust. Darkening out of it in the distance came a slow-moving train. The two impatient men would not be required to wait much longer. The road was narrow, and on a hill beneath an old oak, we waited for the procession to pass. It drew nearer and nearer, and as the foremost wagon stopped in the hollow, I saw plainly the long slender coffin, from which had slipped partly aside the folding-sheet. Next came the clergyman's carriage, and beside the venerable man, his good wife, her loving eyes shrouded from view ; and the carriage held, also, two more comfortless mourn- ers than they ; and as they passed, I trembled to recognize be- neath their black veils Ady Lytle and her mother Kitty was gone before. They were not many who followed her ; she was but a young girl, and the daughter of a poor widow ; a few of the near neigh- bors were all. The mother, pale and patient, held her baby close, as the wagon jolted and rattled by, and the young girl riding on horseback, looked thoughtfully on the sturdy brother at her side. Behind the rest walked a dozen little boys, now and then pausing to make curious prints in the dust with their bare feet, by way of diverting their thoughts. So from the hill we saw cross each other, the bridal train of Hetty Knight and the funeral of Kitty Lytle. ! OUR NEIGHBORHOOD UNCLE WILLIAM'S. No matter how ingeniously probabilities may be woven, how cunning are plots, or effective situations, the fictitious narrative has rarely the attractive interest of a simple statement of facts; and every one seems to have that quick instinct which detects the most elaborate imitations of truth, so that all the skill of the novelist fails to win a single tribute not due merely to his art. I cannot tell what I might be tempted to essay if I possessed more imagination or fancy, but with a brain so unfruitful of invention, and a heart bound as with spells to the past, I should find myself, even if attempting a flight in the realms of fancy, but recalling some half forgotten experience, and making Puck or Titania discourse after the manner of our landlord at the Clovernook Hotel, or the young women whose histories I began to mark when we were girls together in the district school. It is, perhaps, seven or eight years ago ah me, how soon we grow old enough to look back to seven, and eight, and ten years, as to yesterday ! since I went to spend the winter with my cousins, Delia and Jane Peters. They lived in the neigh- borhood of Elm Ridge. It is an obscure and was to me a lonesome place, though they said they had society enough all around them ; and indeed the village meeting-house and tavern- sign were within view, and the window lights of Abner Wid- dleton. the nearest neighbor, shone across the door-yard. The happiest occasions, if they bring change with them, are sad ; and I remember that I could not sleep well the night previous to my setting out, though I had been for weeks talking UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 147 of the pleasure I should have in visiting uncle William's family. The Past collar was ruffled, the last strings and hooks and eyes adjusted, my trunk packed, and my bonnet, with the green veil pinned fast, laid on the bed, and but a night lay between me and my little journey. Then it was, when all was ready, that a sorrowful, half-regretful feeling carne over me. I stood at the window and looked on the way the stage-coach would come in the morning ; watched the cows as they crouched with petty rifts of snow along their backs, and their faces from the wind ; and the chickens, as they flew into the cherry-tree, cackling their discomfort as they settled themselves on the smoothly worn boughs ; for it was a blustery night, and these common- places seemed to have in them a solemn import, all because I was to be a dozen miles away for a few weeks ! A dozen times I said to little Dillie, with whom I slept, " Are you awake ?" before I could sleep. But I was wearied out at last, and hut imperfectly heard the speckled cock telling his mates of midnight when a blessed wave of oblivion came between me and Elm Ridge, and I woke not till a hand rested lightly on my shoulder, and a familiar voice said, "I guess it's time." I needed no second call, but was dressed and waiting in a few minutes. It did not require much time for breakfast, I think. There seemed nothing for us to say as we watched the coming of the coach, while rny baggage was carried toward the gate thnt I might occasion no detention. A few repetitions of what had been already said, a few exchanges of smiles that faded into sighs, and the well-known rumble of the approach- ing vehicle arrested our make-believe conversation. My little baggage was hoisted to the top. I was afraid I should never see it again. A portly gentleman, having a round red face and pale blue eyes, reached out one hand it was freckled and fat, I remember to assist me in ; " All ready ?" cried the driver, and we were off. I looked back pre- sently, and saw them all standing just as I had left them, ex- cept little Dillie, who had climbed on the ferce, and was gaz- ing after us very earnestly. The coach jolted and rolled from side to side, for the road was rough and frozen ; and the pleth- oric individual, who wore a tightly buttoned brown overcoat, 148 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. leaned his double chin on his round hands, which were crossed over the gold head of a crooked but highly polished walking- stick, and conversed with the gentleman opposite, in an easy and complacent way that indicated a state of satisfaction with the world and with himself. His companion was exceedingly diminutive, having the delicate hands and feet of a child ; a mouth in which a shilling might scarcely be slipped; a little long head, bald about the crown, and with thin brown hair hanging far over his coat-collar, which was glazed with such contact to the depth of half an inch, as it seemed. I soon learned their respective homes and avocations : the fat man proved to be a pork merchant, homeward bound from a profit- able sale; and his little fellow traveller a tailor and small merchant of one of the western states. " There," said he, smiling, and pointing to a huge wagon of several tons burden, drawn by six stout horses, wearing bells on their collars, "there goes a little buggy that 's got a budget or two of mine aboard." The fat man smiled, and every one else smiled, as they saw the six horses straining with all their ability, slowly to drag along the ponderous load ; for the great wagon-body was heaped and overheaped with bags, bales, and baskets, crocks, cradles, and calicoes, in fact with all sorts of family and household uten- eils, from a plow to a teapot, and with wearing apparel from buckram and ducks to cambrics and laces. " Two or three times a year I buy up such a little bunch as that," he said ; and he smiled again, and so did every body else. " That bay cretur on the off side," he resumed, letting down the window and looking back, " is fallen lame, I believe my heart. Polly will be as mad as a hornet about it ; it 's her riding nag, d' ye see that ere bay." And as long as we could hear the bells he continued to gaze back, tying a silk handkerchief over his head as he did so, to protect it from the cold. "Whether the aforesaid Polly was his wife, and, if she was, whether she was mad as a hornet, are matters of which to this day I am pro- foundly ignorant ; but I have hoped that if Polly were wife to the little merchant, she was pacified with a new dress, and that the poor beast soon got the better of the lameness. UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 149 The fat man pointed out all the places in which the hogs he had just sold had rested of nights, and each time he concluded with, " Well, they '11 never root any more." It would be hard to tell why, but all the coach passengers looked with interest at the various fields, and woods, and pens, where the drover's hogs had rested on their fatal journey toward the city. " Just on this knoll, or that rise," he would say, " a fat fellow gave out, and we let him have a ride the rest of the way, or treated him to a hot bath." He occupied more than his share of room, to the very evident annoyance of the woman who was on the seat with him ; for she had much less than half for herself and her child, a deformed and forlorn-looking little boy of perhaps six years of age. He was scantily, even meanly dressed, his bare feet hanging quite below his cotton frock, and his stiff fur hat so large as to fall over his eyes, which were remarkably black and large. I could not but notice that the mother, as I supposed her to be, wrapped her shawl more carefully about herself than the child, who kept all the time moaning and fret- ting, sometimes crying out bitterly. She made no effort to soothe him, except that she now and then turned his face from one direction to another. Once or twice she held it close against her I thought not fondly, but crushingly and more than once or twice she dashed his head against the fat man's side, partly by way of jostling him, as I thought, and partly to punish the child for crying He rubbed his eyes till his little hands were wet with tears ; but never did she warm them in her bosom or dry them with kisses. Indeed, she seemed no more concerned than as if she had held on her lap a bundle of sticks. A sudden cry of evident pain drew all eyes to her. In one of the dabs at the fat man she had scratched the boy's face with a pin sticking in his sleeve. " Poor little beauty !" whispered a pale, lady-like looking woman to the person beside her, a black-whiskered, well-fed sort of man : " poor little beauty ! I wish I had it." " Really, Nelly," he answered, in a half kind, half mocking Vray, " you are benevolent ;" and in a lower voice he added, " considering the circumstances." I occupied the middle seat, with the merchant, and she who 160 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD had spoken so kindly sat directly behind me, bdt I turned in- voluntarily when I heard her voice, and saw, as I have said, that she looked pale and delicate, and that she dropped her veil and blushed at the gentle reproval of her companion. With this couple sat a rosy-cheeked, middle-aged woman, who had hitherto kept her lips compressed, but, as it appeared to me, with difficulty. She now leaned across the lap of the gentleman, and asked the invalid traveller if she had any chil- dren of her own, and if she was married or single ; saying she wondered she should feel such sympathy for that " ornary child," for that nobody but a mother could have the feelings of a mo- ther. " Now I," she added, " have left a little one at home six months old it was the fourteenth of last month and I 'ra just fairly crazy, though I have n't been gone a day, as you may say, for it was three o'clock yesterday when I started ; the baby was asleep then ; I expect maybe he cried when he waked up and missed me, but it seemed necessary for me to go away. I had to go, in fact, as you may say. Nobody drove me to be sure, but then we wanted a good many things about the house that, as you may say, nobody could get but myself, and I thought I might as well go now as ever. I knew the baby would be taken good care of by Liddy that 's my oldest girl ; but it seemed like I could n't get my own consent, and I went without it at last, as you may say. Do you live in town 1 ?" she inquired ; and, without pausing for a reply, contin- ued, " A body sees a heap of pretty things that a body would like to have, do n't they, if they only had plenty of money ? This is a tea-pot," she said, holding up a carefully wrapped parcel ; " it 's a new fashion, they told me ; but I think it 's a new-fashioned old fashion ; for I remember, when I was a girl, we used to have one just a'most like it." And she kindly tore off a bit of the envelope, telling the lady she could see the color, and that she had a set of things in a basket on the top of the coach, the same color, and the make of the same man, she supposed. Dear sakes ! I hope none of them will get broken, and won't 1 be glad to see my baby !" Having settled herself in her place, she leaned forward again to say, "Just hear that UNCLE WILLIAM'S. II fat mar. ! he talks about his affairs as if he thought every body as much interested in them as himself." ] could not help but smile at her innocent simplicity. How quick we are to detect the faults of others how slow to " see ourselves as others see us." " Do you see that old tree with the fork split off and hang- ing down 1 ?" It was the fat man who asked this question of nobody in particular but every body tried to see, and most of us did see. " One of my fellows hung himself there last week. He was well the day before. At supper we slept at a tavern not half a mile away I noticed that he did n't eat, and seemed down-hearted like ; but I did n't say nothing to him ; I wish now I had ; and in the morning he could n't be found, high nor low. Finally, we gave up the search, and got our drovers started-along later than common. I stopped a bit after the rest, settling with the landlord, who said to me, in a joking way like, that he guessed he 'd have to charge me for his wife's clothes-line ; that she said she was as certain as she was alive that it hung on a particular peg the last night, and she thought the missing drover knew something about it; he looked wild out of his eyes, she said. Just that way he spoke about it ; and I laughs at him, mounts my horse, and rides away. I had just come in sight of the drove when one of my fellers that 's the one whose legs you see," and he pointed to a pair of muddy boots hanging against the window from the out- side of the coach, " came toward me running on the full jump, and told me they had discovered Jake hung on a tree, and swinging in the wind, stiff as a poker." " Good gracious me !" exclaimed the woman with the sick ihild, and giving the fat man as much room as possible, " how lid he look, and what did you do with him ?" " Look ! he looked like a dead man ; and as for doing with lim, we cut him down, and put him under ground by the side of an old black log." " I wish I could see the one that discovered him," the woman said, trying to pull down the window ; " is he any kin to the man that hung himself, and had he taken the clothes-line?'* " He had taken the clothes-line, but the landlady on its being 152 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. returned to her, said it would bring bad luck to the house, and so threw it in the fire." The poor child was not thrust against him any more ; but it kept crying and moaning, and rubbing its eyes and the scratch on its face, which smarted as the tears rolled over it. " What ails your child ?" asked the fat man, who seemed not to have noticed its crying till he turned to answer the nurse's question. " Nothing, only he 's ugly and cross," she answered. " I guess any of us would feel bad," said the rosy-cheeked woman with the new tea-pot, " if our bare feet hung dangling about like his 'n, to say nothing of that scratch on his face. Wont you be good enough, sir, to take that pin out of your sleeve ?" " Certainly, ma'am ; I was not aware" he did n't finish the sentence to her, for she had leaned across the coach, and was saying to the pale lady that she never could see what a man wanted to have pins sticking about him for. "Naughty pin, was n't it!" said the fat man to the baby, taking from his sleeve the offending instrument and throwing it from the window; and he continued, putting the child's feet in one of his mittens, " Tell him murrur she must wrap him in her shawl." " You need n't look at me," she replied ; " I am not hi? mother by a great sight ; she 's in a mad-house ; they just took her this morning. It was a dreadful sight she a raving, and the children screaming and carrying on at a dreadful rate. They say she is past all cure, and I s'pose she is. She liked to have pulled all the hair out of my head when she saw I was going to take the baby. I am only a distant relation, but it 's not always near of kin that are the best to orphans. Sit up !" she exclaimed, giving the child a rough jerk ; " do n't lean against the gentleman as heavy as a bag of mush." The fat man had become a lion in her estimation since she learned that one of his drovers had hanged himself. " He doesn't disturb me in the least," said he; and taking off the child's hat, he smoothed its hair with his great hand. " I guess he is a right nice man," said the rosy -cheeked wo- UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 161 man, leaning tcward her of the pale cheek, who was untying a fur cape from her neck. " Put it round the little boy, my good woman," she said, reaching it toward her. " Really, Nelly," said the gentleman beside her, and he looked at her with evident displeasure. But the woman returned the cape, saying, " He 's got to take the world as he can get it; there is no use of wrapping him in n, fine fur cape, for an hour." "That fellow up there," said the fat man, "could give more particulars than I can about the wretched suicide I was telling of." " Wretched what 1" inquired the woman. " The fellow that was so fond of swinging ;" and as he spoke he lifted the child from her knees, unbuttoned his brown coat, and folded him warmly beneath it, resting his chin on the boy's hair, informing him that at home he had a little boy just about his size, and asking him if he would like to go home with him and be his little boy. The coach now rattled along at a lively rate, and, soothed by the warmth and the kindliness of the drover's tone, the poor lit- tle fellow was soon fast asleep. I noticed that the lady in the corner looked weary ; and that once when she laid her head on the shoulder of the man beside her, he moved uneasily, as if the weight burdened him, and that she lifted herself up again, though she seemed scarcely able to do so. "That's my house," said the rosy -cheeked woman, "right fernent William Peters's ; and I guess I am as glad to get home as they will be to see me the dear knows I did n't want to go. I would have paid anybody, and been very much obliged to them besides, if they could have done my errands for me." At the gate of her house an obedient-looking man stood in waiting for her ; and as the crockery was handed down, the gocd- natured owner gathered her sundry little parcels together; shook hands with the pale lady, saying she hoped she would soon get the better of the ill turn she seemed to have ; un- covered the taby's face, and kissed it, dropping a tear on its 7* 1M OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. clasped hands, as she did so, and saying " Just to think if it was mine !" I suppose by way of apology for what the world considers a weakness ; and, smiling a sort of benediction on us all, she descended the side of the coach. I followed, for my destination was also reached. " You going to stop here ? Well now, if that do n't beat all ! I suppose you are Mr. Peters's niece that I 've heard so much tell of. And as I am alive, if there aint Delia, just going away ! Poor girl, I guess she leaves her heart behind her." This suspicion she imparted in a whisper; and having said 1 must come in and see her, she flew rather than walked toward the house, for Jane was coming to meet her with the baby. I could only shake hands an instant with my cousin Delia, who seemed to anticipate little happiness from her journey, as I judged from tear-blind eyes and quivering lips. I thought she whispered to her father something about remaining at home, now that I was come. " Oh, no, Dillie, I do n't think it 's worth while," he said ; " she will stay here all winter, and you will be back in a month, at furthest." The companion of the pale lady assisted Delia into the coach with much gallantry ; the driver's whip-lash made a circuit in the air ; the jaded horses sprang forward as though fresh for the race ; and the poor little child, with its bare feet and red hands, waa lost to me forever. May the good Shepherd have tempered the winds to its needs, and strengthened it against temptations, in all its career in this hard and so often unchari- table world II. " How glad I am you have come," said uncle William, when we we.'e in the house ; " but it seems kind a lonesome for all." Jane was ten years older than Delia not so pretty nor sty lish, but very good, motherly, and considerate. They had no mother and lived with their father in the old house where they were bi >ught up. Delia was about sixteen at the time of inj UNCLE WILLIAM'S. Ill visit ; handsome, captivating, and considered quite the belle of the village and neighborhood. We were a small and quiet family at uncle William's. He himself did little but tend the parlor fire, read the newspaper, and consult the almanac and his watch, which things made up his world. He knew all the phases of the moon, and what the weather would be likely to be for a month in advance ; he knew what his favorite editor said, and believed it; in fact, there was no other paper; its contents seemed designed more especially for him than for anybody else ; and to this day I can not rid myself of the impression that uncle William's newspaper was altogether the most excellent thing of its kind in the world. When the sun came up, he took from beneath the parlor look- ing-glass, where it hung of nights, the great silver chronometer that had been his father's and his grandfather's, turned the key a few times, held it to his ear, consulted the almanac, and com- pared the sunrise with his time, as if to see that the sun were punctual to its appointment. He then mended the fire, and took up the " Republican," and when it was read through once he began again, more studiously to examine, and thoughtfully to digest its most noticeable contents. It always had something good in it, he said, and it would do him no harm to read some of the pieces a dozen times. When the sunlight slanted through the south window, he carefully folded the paper, and again con- sulted his watch. At sunset another comparison was made of time authorities, and the almanac again resorted to, and then began the evening reading. Uncle William never indulged in what is termed frivolous conversation; the only thing in the way of fun I ever heard him say was that the editor of his paper was a man that had a head. But he was less morose, and far more genial, than another of my relations, uncle Christopher, with whom he held no inter- course whatever, but of whom I shall have something to relate in these reminiscences of Clovernook history. ane had little more to say than her father. She never read, and had never been from home ; and so, of course, she was not very wise; and as she never talked of things that did not con- cern her, there was not much for her to discuss. In all ways lft OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. she was strictly proper; so much so that ordinal y mortals found it more difficult to lov^e her than they would have done had she possessed more of the common human infirmities. Our con- versation was mostly of the weather, with which, however, she was always contented ; so that if the storm beat never so tem- pestuously, I scarcely dared yawn, or say even that "I wish it would clear off." I should have been happier if the house had been left in some disorder on Delia's departure, so that we might have employed ourselves by setting it to rights ; but everything was in its place; so we of necessity sat down by the fire, .and the little we did say was in whispers, that we might not disturb uncle Wil- liam, who forever sat by, reading in a monotonous mutter, neither aloud nor in silence. Sometimes he would invite me to read, for the benefit of himself, who had read it twenty times previously, Jane, who did n't care a straw for reading, and the sixteen cats that dozed about the hearth, some "piece" which he thought of remarkable interest or beauty. " Will Delia be gone long ?" I inquired after my arrival ; for I had previously learned that she was gone two or three hundred miles from Elm Ridge, to a small city which I had never known uncle William's folks to visit, and I was curious to know the why and wherefore. Jane stitched a little faster, I thought; the twilight was deepening so much that I could not have seen to stitch at all ; but she only answered that her sister's stay was uncertain. " 1 did n't know you had friends there," I said, for I did not like to ask more directly. " Did n't you ?" answered Jane, stitching as before. I was not discouraged, and remembering what the rosy- cheeked woman had said about Delia's having left her heart be- hind her, I continued, "She has grown very pretty since I saw her ; she must be very much admired." " Our preacher's wife gave her a book," she said, " at Christ- mas, and our singing master old Mr. White offered to teach her for nothing." And these were all the evidences of the admiration she received which Propriety Jane thought fit to disclose for me. UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 117 " Who lives opposite ?" I asked ; for the house, looked so cheerful, with its lights moving about, the chimneys sending up their blue smoke, and the bustling in and out of doors, that I could not help wishing myself there, since not a candle was lighted in our house, and there was no supper in preparation, nor any cheerful talk to enliven the time. " Mr. Widdleton's folks," replied Jane, and rising from her chair, she stood close against the window, that she might see to stitch a little longer. " What sort of people are they ?" " Oh, very nice people." " It must have been Mrs. Widdleton with whom I came up in the coach : a rosy-cheeked, good-natured woman, who seems fund of talking." " Yes, it was she." " Well," said I, "she bought a new teapot, with a variety of other things, as she was good enough to inform us all." Jane made no reply whatever, nor by smile or gesture indi- cated that Mrs. Widdleton had been communicative in any unusual degree. The snow was falling dismally, the fire was low, and the coming on of night seemed gloomy enough. Uncle William was splitting pine boards into kindling, and though all day I had wished he would afford us by his absence a little opportu- nity for conversation, I now heartily wished he would return, and tell us when the moon would change. As I listened to the winds, and wondered what kept my uncle and cousin alive, there was a low and what seemed to me a very timid rap at the door. Jane opened it ; and though her tone evinced neither surprise nor pleasure, it was not uncivil, as she received the visitor. He seemed for he was a young man not to feel at liberty to sit down, though Jane invited him so to do; but, having made some commonplace observa- tions relative to the weather, he inquired whether Miss Delia were at home. " No," answered Jane ; and she gave no invimation as to where her sister was gone, or when she would return, or whether sne would ever do so. 168 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. " I will then bid you good evening," he said, " and do myself the pleasure of calling again." When he was gone, Jane left the room, having made no reply to the young gentleman's intimation. On his entrance, I had stirred the coals to make a little light, but it was so faint that I saw him but imperfectly, though with enough distinctness to warrant me in believing him a very handsome man, of not more than twenty-two or three years of age. Besides, his voice was so soft and musical as, together with his fair looks, to leave a most agreeable impression. Who he was or whence he came I could not know, but somehow [ was interested in him, and pressing my face to the window, looked eagerly through the snow to see in what direction he went. At the gate he paused, thrust his hands into his pockets, and seemed to muse for a moment, looking one way and then another, as if in doubt what to do ; but presently he lighted a cigar with a match, and, turning in the direction of a tavern, was quickly lost from my observation. "Who was that young person?" I asked, when Jane returned to the parlor. " Edward Courtney." " Does he live in the village?" "No." " I noticed that he went in that direction." Jane lighted the candle and took up her work. " Very handsome, is n't he f I said. " Yes." What is his occupation ?" " His father, with whom he lives, is a farmer, but lately come to our neighborhood." " Well, I wish he had passed the evening with us, and not been so exclusively devoted to Miss Delia." Jane said nothing, and I inquired when he would be likely to come again. " I do n't know." "Really, Jane," I said, "you are provoking; for once in vour life tell rne something I wish to find out. What is it, that his name is Edward Courtney, and that his father is a farmer; UNCLE WILLIAM'S. lit he may be a scapegrace for all that. Pray, what do you kno-vr about him, and why do you not like him 1 for I am sure you do not." " Why, yes, I like him well enough," she answered ; " but I know nothing about him to tell; he is rather a wild young man, I think." " What wild thing has he done?" " Oh, I do n't know : I do n't know as he is wild.* And holding out one foot, she asked me how I liked her shoes, saying they were made out of dog-skin ; she thought they were as pretty as morocco, and her father said he thought they would last all winter. " S'cat!" exclaimed uncle William, at this moment making his way through a dozen of the feline tribe; and having mended the fire, he said he believed the moon quartered that night, and proceeded to examine the almanac. To me the evening seemed setting in very lonesomely, and it was a most agreeable surprise when one of Mrs. Widdleton's children came in to ask cousin Jane and myself to pass it with her. To my disappointment, however, Jane did not feel like going ; she was afraid of getting the toothache, and believed she could not go very well. " You go, any how." said the boy who had asked us ; "Mother ays if you ain't acquainted, come and get acquainted." I hesitated, for it seemed awkward to go alone into a stran- ger's house, but the urgency of the lad and my own inclination prevailed ; and I was already aware that the social customs of Elm Ridge were not trammeled by oppressive conventional restrictions. On my arrival, I saw, to my surprise, the whiskered gentle man whom 1 have mentioned as the companion of the pale lady in the coach. " Really, madam," he said, " I do hope, if it will not be a serious inconvenience, that I can prevail upon you not so much on my own account as for my wife's sake. She \spious, and does n't like being at, the hotel, where Sunday is pretty nearly as good as any other day." 160 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. " And are you not pious ?" asked Mrs. Widdleton, looking at him in innocent astonishment. He smiled and shook his head, but made no other answer. " Well, I do n't know what to say. I liked the little Woman" " Yes, I like her too," interrupted the man, with a peculiar smile, intended perhaps as an expression of humor. " Did you ever !" exclaimed Mrs. Widdleton, and she went on to say that she feared their plain way of living would not suit a fine lady, who had been used to servants, and like enough never had to wet her hands. She would see what Abner thought. " By all means." And the gentleman seated himself, and caressed one leg, while she withdrew, for a consultation, to the kitchen, where a hammering seemed to indicate the going forward of some active business. " Just have it your own way, mother," I heard him say. " If you are a mind to do more and have more, why you can ; but seems to me you have enough to do ; though I do n't care. Do just as you please ; but I hate to have you make a slave of yourself, mother." " Well, Abner," she answered, " one or two more in the family don't seem to make much difference; and if they are not suited, why they can find another place, may be." When the gentleman had taken leave, which he did very politely, Mrs. Widdleton informed me that his name was Heve- lyu ; that he was a southern man, lately married, and had come north for the sake of his wife's health. This she had learned during her late interview with him. She also informed me she was going to board them awhile ; that she wanted to get a few things for Liddy, more than she could spare the money to buy not that Abner would be unwilling to give it to her, but then he had so many uses for his money. Mrs. Widdleton was one of those bustling, active women, who never seem in their right sphere except with hands full and overflowing. Everybody was active about her Mr. Widdle- ton mending her washing-tub, Liddy making a new gown, one UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 11 ot* the children rocking the cradle, and all at something. Aa for what she did during the evening in the way of mending and making, I can not recount it, but the cradle was heaped, and so were all the chairs about her, with the work she did. We had cakes, and apples, and cider, and nuts, besides a constant flow of talking, in which Mr. Widdleton, having finished his tub, participated. I felt, I remember, a wish that everybody might be just as contented as they, and have just as bright a fire. But Mrs. Widdleton ah me, I do n't like to write that " but" was a little given to talking of things that did not con- cern her, as well as of things that did ; and when the children were gone to bed, and while Abner had ground the coffee for breakfast "he is so handy about the house," said Mrs. Wid- dleton we drew close to the embers, and the good woman glided naturally from her own tea-set to the tea-sets of her neighbors, and thence the transition to her neighbors them- selves was almost imperceptible. A number of interesting little family affairs came to my knowledge that night; but I will not attempt a report of all her disclosures only of some intimations that more immediately interested me. Uncle Wil- liam and Jane had put their heads together, she said, and sent off Delia, the dear knows where, to prevent her keeping the company of Edward Courtney; and for her part she thought, though she did n't want to say anything one way or the other, and it was very seldom she did speak at all, that Delia or any other girl might go further and fare worse, for Edward Court- ney was just as nice a young man, apparently, as ever she set eyes on, and she would just as soon a daughter of hers married him as to marry some persons that some persons thought a good deal better, or to live at home till she was forty years old, and nurse the oats. Jane, she confessed, was just as good a girl as ever was, and uncle William was just as good a man ,ts ever was, but they would think it very hard to be made to marry somebody they did n't like; and, for her part, she thought it was just as bad to be kept from marrying whom you did like. u It 's one thing to marry ^" said Mrs. Widdleton, " and another thing to love the man you marry ; and, for hy 162 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. part, I would have Abner or I would have nobody. I was always averse to match-making, but I have a great mind as ever I had in my life" she suddenly paused, and added, " No, 1 do n't know as I will, either ; but I hate to see folks as cool as a cucumber about such things, and think nobody has any feel- ing more than themselves. Poor Delia ! Yes, I have the greatest mind no I do n't know as I will I might reflect on myself if it did n't all come out right." And she vigorously trotted her baby, long after he was asleep ; and I have always thought that then and there she settled the knotty point, for she said at last, with a smile, that if she should tell Edward where Delia was, it would n't be telling him to go there and marry her; but even if she should give him a piece of her mind to that effect, she did n't know as they could take her up and hang her. Before I returned to uncle William's that night, she concluded she would call on Mrs. Courtney in a day or two ; she wanted to borrow a dress pattern of her ; perhaps she would see Ed- ward, and perhaps not ; and she did n't know as she would say anything about Delia if she did see him ; it was the pattern she wanted. But notwithstanding this conclusion, I felt assured that she would give Edward the " piece of her mind" with which she had first proposed to endow him. The following day I related to Jane the incidents of the even- ing : how Mr. Widdleton had mended a tub, and his wife had darned and mended ; in fact, whatever had been done or said that could interest her, not omitting the conversation about Edward and Delia for I was determined to find out something in reference to the affair, as I persuaded myself I had a perfect right to do, considering our relationship; and Delia's pale face haunted me ; her supplicating appeal for permission to remain at home I felt assured was not on my account ; I saw pots of her flowers standing about, dying from neglect, and I could not help thinking her thoughts had been otherwhere. So, as I said, I told Jane that Mrs. Widdleton thought Delia and Edward would make a fine match, and that she was sorry it was likely not to take .place; for I did not choose to repeat her* precise words. My very proper cousin colored slightly, UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 1| and said, that if Mrs. Widdleton had not so many excellent qualities, she would be a busybody. This was the only re- proach of any one I ever heard from her. I confess to greater imperfection ; the affairs of other people interest me, and I am apt sometimes to say what I think of their conduct and character. I used to take my seat at the window, and there being neither conversation nor reading within, I naturally looked out for amusement, and found it in the movements of our neigh- bors ; for humanity is more to us than everything else, as those who have passed a winter in an isolated country place can very easily believe. The evening after this visit, I saw a light in the front chamber of Mr. Widdleton's house, where I had never seen a light before, and supposed the Hevelyns were there. The following morning I saw Mrs. Widdleton set out, bright and early, in the direction of Mr. Courtney's house. She walked against the north wind with a straightforward and ener- getic step, and I wondered whether there were any purpose in her movements that did not concern the pattern. It was nearly noon when she returned, accompanied by young Mr. Courtney. They paused at the gate, and seemed in earnest conversation for a long time. Liddy came to the door and looked earnestly toward her mother several times ; the baby was fretting, I knew ; but as often as they seemed about to separate they drew nearer again, till it seemed their conversation would never have an end. Seated on the outside of the evening coach that day I noticed a young man who, I thought, resembled Courtney, and I was the more convinced of its being him from the graceful way in which he recognized Mrs. Widdleton, as he passed. A red scarf about his neck concealed, in part, his face, so that I could not be positive it was he. " But if it is," thought I', "he may have a thousand objects in view besides Delia. 1 have no right to think anything about it." Still I did think about it. Often in the courses of the days I saw Mrs. Hevelyn, wrapt in a shawl which seemed of a very rich and costly pattern, t inding or sitting by the chamber window. Sometimes I ol> 194 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. served her wipe her eyes, and always her movements indicated sadness and dejection. Occasionally when the sun shone in the middle of the day, she walked about the yard, examined tha dead flowers, and looked up and down the lonesome road, re- turning again to the house with a languid and heavy step. When the evening coach came rattling over the near hill, I saw her either raise the sash or step out into the yard, and watch it eagerly, as though in expectation of some one; and when it passed she would sometimes return with her handkerchief to her eyes, and sometimes, sinking at once on the frozen ground, sit, as though powerless to go in, for an hour or more. One sunshiny day I went out into the yard to see if the flags were sprouting or the daffodils coming through the grass, for I had seen a blue-bird twittering in the lilac and picking its feathers that morning. "How d' you do?" called a voice that seemed not altogether unfamiliar, and looking up, I saw Mrs. Widdle-' ton leaning over her yard-fence, with the evident intention of having a little chat. " What is the news," she asked, "at your house ?" " Oh nothing ; what is the news with you ?" " How does uncle William (for she called Mr. Peters uncle William when she spoke to me of him) seem to take it?" " Take what ?" said I. " Why, about Edward and Delia." " And what about them ?" " Why, they say he 's gone off to B ." Here she low- ered her voice, and, saying that walls had ears sometimes, crossed from her yard-fence to ours. " He 's gone off to B ," she continued, "and they say it's to get married." " Is it possible !" " Yes ; and old Mr. Courtney is going back to the city to five, and they say Edward and Delia are going right into the old house ; and from the way things seem to begin and go on, 1 think they will do well." I said I thought so too, though what things she had seen beginning and going on 1 was not in the least advised, however dhrewdly I might guess. UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 1W If they should be married, and come and live in the old place, and do right well, as she hoped and believed they would, she thought Miss Jane and " uncle William" would be ashamed of themselves. III. As often as I met the ever busy and good natured Mrs. Wid- dleton, she had much to say about poor Mrs. Hevelyn. Her husband went away, she said, the very day he brought her there and right among strangers so, it seemed as if the poor thing would cry her eyes out. "Often of evenings," said Mrs. Wid- dleton, " I go up into her room to have a cheerful chat. You know a body must talk or they won't say anything and I find her lying on the bed, her face all smothered in the pillow, and her heart ready to break." She informed me further, that Mr. Hevelyn had written only once, and then barely a few lines, since he went away. Two or three days went by, when, at nightfall, I observed an unusual stir about Mr. Widdleton's house ; lights moved busily from cellar to chamber ; a strange woman, in a high white cap, appeared from time to time ; and presently the two little girls came over to pass the evening, saying their mother had given them leave to stay all night if they wished to. The next morning the chamber-windows were closed, and Mrs. Widdleton herself came in soon after breakfast to take her children home, and informed them that somebody had brought Mrs. Hevelyn " the sweetest little baby !" Tidings were despatched to the absent husband, and day after day the young mother exerted herself beyond her ability to make her little darling look pretty, that the heart of the expected father might be rejoiced the more; and day after day the coach went by, and the sun went down, and he did not come. At length, one day, in answer to Mrs. Widdleton'a urgent entreaties, and with a hope of giving the poor lady some comfort, 1 went in to sit for an hour with her, taking my sewing. I four.d her a sweet and lovable creature, indeed not possessed ] OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. of very strong mind or marked characteristics, but gentle, con- fiding, and amiable. She had put back her curls in motherly fashion, and her cheek was thin and pale ; but she was beauti- ful, and her large eyes had in them a pathos and power which drew one toward her, as if by a spell. She seemed pleased with my praise of the child ; said she had named him John, for his father; and added, " He wants to see the darling so much ! and nothing but the most pressing necessity keeps him away poor John !" It was a new illustration of the difficulty of dis- possessing a faithful heart of its confidence : she would be the last to learn how little that father merited her affection. " Do you think my little beauty is going to have red hair 1 ?" she said, pressing her lips against his head. Her own was a deep auburn. She looked at me, as if she wanted me to say no ; but I could not, conscientiously, and so replied evasively, " Why, do n't you like that color ?" " I do n't care," she said ; " it would be pretty to me, no matter what color it was ; but John thinks red hair so ugly." " Perhaps it will be the color of yours, and that will please him." " He used to call mine pretty," she said ; and, taking it down, laid it on the baby's head, and compared it, with the greatest apparent interest. While thus engaged, the coach drew up at the gate. " Oh, it is he ! it is he !" she cried ; and, placing the baby in my arms, wound back her long hair, and flew to meet him, as though the heavens were opening before her. " Why, Nell," I heard him say, as he assisted her up stairs, " you have grown old and ugly since I left." The tone was playful, but she replied, " Oh, John !" in a reproachful accent that indicated a deeply felt meaning. " And where did you learn this style of arranging your hair? Is it by good mother Widdleton's suggestion ? Really, it is not becoming it is positively shocking ; and red hair requires the most careful dressing to make it endurable." She tried to laugh as she entered the room, and said to me, 'Do n't you think John is finding fault with me already ! but, never mind, I'll find fault vith him one of these days." UNCLE WILLIAM'S. Iff " I dare say, my dear, you will have cause," he answered, half seriously, half laughingly ; and, putting her arms about his neck, she kissed him. as fondly as though he had said she was looking young and beautiful. " Oh, the baby !" she suddenly exclaimed. " Why, John, you have n't seen him !" " Do n't, my dear, make yourself ridiculous," he whispered, *' but introduce the lady, and then go and arrange your hair : there is time enough to see the baby." I rose to go, as 1 would have done sooner but for my little charge ; but the Hevelyns insisted so much on my remaining, that I was forced to sit down. The mother kept smiling, but tears seemed ready to fall ; and I placed the child in the father's arms, and said, " See, how like you he is !" " Uood gracious !" he exclaimed, turning away his eyes, " yon do 't mean to say I look like this thing !" " No, not quite," I said, laughing ; " not so well." " And you call this boy mine, do you ?" he said to his wife ; " rvi hair, and blue eyes, and ugly in every way. Why, his hand is as big as a wood-chopper's." And he held up his own, which was delicate and beautiful. " Now, John, dear, he does look like you, and Mrs. Widdleton, too, says he does." And to prove the resemblance she brought a picture of her husband, saying I might trace the resemblance more readily from that. " Ah, Nelly," he said, putting it aside, " that never looked like me." And to me he added, " You see it was painted when I 'ound that I had to marry Nell ; and no wonder I looked woe- begone !" I took up a book of engravings, and, laying down the child, he turned over the leaves for me. " I am so faint !" said the wife, putting her hand to her fore head. " What shall I do, John ?" " Oh, I do n't know," he answered, without looking toward her ; " get some water, or lie down, or something." I gave her some water, and, seating her in the arm-chair, re- turned to the book, that I might not appear to notice her emotion. She turned her back toward us with a pretence of rocking the 168 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. 3radle, but, in reality, to conceal inevitable tears. Mr. Hevelyn ia~w it, his conscience smote him, and, stooping over her, he kissed her forehead, and smoothed her hair, saying, with real or affected foridnesb, " You know, dear, I was only jesting." And she was pacified, and smiled again. The next morning the strange gentleman took the coach ; he could not stay longer, the wife said ; and other lonesome days came and went. One wild March morning, when the snow blew blindingly against the windows, little Peter Widdleton came running in with great haste. Mrs. Hevelyn's baby was very sick, and she wanted me to come. I found, on arriving at her room, that it had not seemed well for several days, and that the previous night it had grown seriously worse, and that then the most alarming symp- toms were visible. She had written every day to her husband, she told me, and as he neither came nor wrote, she was terri- fied on his account, though it was possible her letters might have been miscarried. Dear, credulous soul ! The morning coach went by, and the evening coach went by, and he came not ; and all the while the child grew worse. Mrs. Widdleton's skill was baffled ; and as the mother rocked the little sufferer on her bosom, and said, " What shall I do ! oh, what shall I do !" I forgot all the words of comfort I had ever known. Poor baby ! its little hands clinging tightly to the mother's, it lay all day ; but at nightfall it sunk into slumber, and, though its mother kissed it a thousand times, it did not wake any moio. It was piteous to see her grief when we put it down in the snow, and left it with the March winds making its lullaby. After the burial, Mrs. Hevelyn lost the little energy that had kept her up before, and sat without speaking all the day. She seemed to have lost every interest in life. We were sitting around the fire one night, eight or ten days after the baby died, when Mrs. Widdleton came bustling in to tell us that Mrs. Hevelyn was gone ; that her husband had written her to join him without a moment's delay ; that he had not sent her one cent of money, nor in any way made provision lor her to go. " But for all that," said our neighbor, " she wafl o'jariy crazy to go, arid the letter really made her a deal bett< r UNCLE WILLIAM'S. 181 She gave my Liddy most of her clothes, partly by way of paying, I suppose for you see she had no money all but her wedding- dress ; that, she said, she should need before long ;" and the kind v/oraan, taking up one of the cats, hugged it close by way of keeping down her emotion. Ah well," she added, presently, " she has n't much to care to live for, I am afraid." IV. When our excellent neighbor had completed the narrative re- specting her late guest, and bestowed fit tributes on the respec- tive characters of the wife and the husband, she sat a moment in profound silence, and then, as if she had said Be gone ! to all gloomy recollections, her face resumed its wonted glow, and her eyes sparkled with secrets until now suppressed, and at the thoughts of surprise and consternation she was likely to introduce into my uncle's family surprise and consternation in no degree associated with real evil, or the good woman would have been the last being in the world to feel a satisfaction in their creation or anticipation. Suddenly interrupting the third perusal of the leading article in the week's " Republican," she said, " Did you know, Old Mr. and Mrs. Courtney move to town to-day." " Do tell," said uncle William, looking very much pleased, " I wonder what they are going to do with their house ?" " Well, I hardly know," replied Mrs. Widdleton, looking slyly at me ; " some say one thing and some say another ; but I have my own thoughts. I do n't think Edward Courtney went to B for nothing ; and I do n't think he will come back with- out a certain little woman, whose name begins with Delia, for a wife." Cousin Jane dropped half the stitches off one needle, and uncle William opened the paper so suddenly that he tore it, which he said he would not have done for a fip ; and he forgot what quar- ter the moon was in, and, on being questioned, said he did n't know as he cared. Mrs. Widdleton was right; for the next evening I went with her to call on the bride, my friend carrying with her a custard- pie and a loaf of plum-cake. We found the happy pair taking 8 170 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. tea at a little table, with their faces glowing with sympathetic devotion ; and when last I saw them they were as happy as then lovers yet, though they had been married a dozen years. A year after my visit I heard, by chance, that Mrs. Hevelyn was dead, and the fragment of her life and love that I have written, is all I know. UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S. UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S. I. THE night was intensely cold, hut not dismal, for all the hill* id meadows, all the steep roofs of the farm-houses, and th> black roofs of the barns, were white as snow could make them. The haystacks looked like high, smooth heaps of snow, and the fences, in their zigzag course across the fields, seemed made of snow too, and half the trees had their limbs encrusted with the pure white. Through the middle of the road, and between banks out of which it seemed to have been cut, ran a path, hard and blue and icy, and so narrow that only two horses could move in it abreast ; and almost all the while I could hear the merry music of bells, or the clear and joyous voices of sleigh riders, ex- ultant in the frosty and sparkling air. With his head pushed under the curtain of the window next the road, so that his face touched the glass, stood my father, watching with as much interest, the things without, as I the pictures in the fire. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets; both his vest and coat hung loosely open ; and so for a half hour he had stood, dividing my musings with joyous exclama- tions as the gay riders went by, singly, or in companies. Now it was a sled running over with children that he told me of; now an old man and woman wrapt in a coverlid and driving one poor horse ; and now a bright sleigh with fine horses, jingling bells, and a troop of merry young folks. Then again he called out, " There goes a spider-legged thing that I would n't ride in," and this remark I knew referred to one of those contrivances which are gotten up on the spur of a moment, and generally alter the snow begins to fall, consisting of two limber saplings 172 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. on which a seat is fixed, and which serve for runners, fills, and all. It was not often we had such a deep snow as this, and it carried the thoughts of my father away back to his boyhood, for he had lived among the mountains then, and been used to the hardy winters which keep their empire nearly half the year. Turning from the window, he remarked, at length, " This is a nice time to go to Uncle Christopher's, or some where." " Yes," I said, " it would be a nice time ;" but I did not think so, all the while, for the snow and I were never good friends. I knew, however, that my father would like above all things to visit Uncle Christopher, and that, better still, though he did not like to own it, he would enjoy the sleighing. "I want to see Uncle Christopher directly," he continued, " about getting some spring wheat to sow." " It is very cold," I said, " is n't it ?" I really could n't help the question. " Just comfortably so," he answered, moving back from the fire. Two or three times I tried to say, " Suppose we go," but the words were difficult, and not till he had said, "Nobody ever wants to go with me to Uncle Christopher's, nor anywhere," did I respond, heartily, " Oh, yes, father, I want to go." In a minute afterwards, I heard him giving directions about the sleigh and horses. " I am afraid, sir, you '11 find it pretty cold," replied Billy, as he rose to obey. " I do n't care about going myself," continued my father, apologetically, "but my daughter has taken a fancy to a ride, and so I must oblige her." A few minutes, and a pair of handsome, well-kept horses were champing the bit, and pawing the snow at the door, while shawls, mittens, &c., were warmed at the fire. It was hard to see the bright coals smothered under the ashes, and the chairs set away ; but 1 forced a smile to my lips, and as my father said " Ready 1" I answered " Ready," and the door closed on the genial atmosphere the horses stepped forward and back- ward, flung their heads up and down, curved their necks to the UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S. m tightening rein, and we were off. The fates he praised, it is not to do again. All the shawls and muffs in Christendom could not avail against such a night so still, clear, and intensely cold. The very stars seemed sharpened against the ice, and the white moonbeams slanted earthward, and pierced our faces like thorns I think they had substance that night, and were stiff; and the thickest veil, doubled twice or thrice, was less than gossamer, and yet the wind did not blow, even sc much as to stir one flake of snow from the bent boughs. At first we talked with some attempts at mirth, but sobered presently and said little, as we glided almost noiselessly along the hard and smooth road. We had gone, perhaps, five miles to the northward, when we turned from the paved and level way into a narrow lane, or neighborhood road, as it was called, seeming to me hilly and winding and wild, for I had never been there before. The track was not so well worn, but my father pronounced it better than that we had left, and among the stumps and logs, and between hills and over hills, now through thick woods, and now through openings, we went crushing along. We passed a few cabins and old-fashioned houses, but not many, and the distances between them grew greater and greater, and there were many fields and many dark patches of woods between the lights. Every successive habitation 1 hoped would terminate our journey our pleasure, 1 should have said yet still we went on, and on. " Is it much farther ?" 1 asked, at length. " Oh, no only four or five miles," replied my father ; and he added, " Why, are you getting cold 1" " Not much," I said, putting my hand to my face to ascertain that it was not frozen. At last we turned into a lane, narrower, darker, and more lonesome still edged with woods on either side, and leading up and up and up farther than I could see. No path had been previously broken, and the horses sunk knee deep at every step, their harness tightening as they strained forward, and their steamy breath drifting back, and freezing stiff my veil. At the summit the way was interrupted by a cross fence, and a gate was to be opened a heavy thing, painted red, and fastened 174 UUR NEIGHBORHOOD. with a chain. It had been well secured, for after half an hour's attempts to open it, we found ourselves defied. " I guess we '11 have to leave the horses and walk to the house," said my father ; "it 's only a little step." I felt terrible misgivings ; the gate opened into an orchard ; I could see no house, and the deep snow lay all unbroken ; but there was no help ; I must go forward as best I could, or remain and freeze. It was difficult to choose, but I decided to go on. In some places the snow was blown aside, and we walked a few steps on ground almost bare, but in the end high drifts met us, through which we could scarcely press our way. In a little while we began to descend, and soon, abruptly, in a nook shel- tered by trees, and higher hills, I saw a curious combination of houses brick, wood, and stone and a great gray barn, looking desolate enough in the moonlight, though about it stood half a dozen of inferior size. But another and a more cheerful indi- cation of humanity attracted me. On the brink of the hill stood two persons with a small hand-sled between them, which they seemed to have just drawn up ; in the imperfect light, they appeared to be mere youths, the youngest not more than ten or twelve years of age. Their laughter rang on the cold air, and our approach, instead of checking, seemed to increase their mirth. " Laugh, Mark, laugh," said the taller of the two, as we drew near, " so they will see our path they 're going right through the deep snow." But in stead, the little fellow stepped manfully forward, and directed us into the track broken by their sleds. At the foot of the hill we came upon the medley of buildings, so incongruous that they might have been blown together by chance. Light appeared in the windows of that portion which was built of stone, but we heard no sound, and the snow about the door had not been disturbed since its fall. " And this,'' said 1, " is where Uncle Christopher Wright lives ?" A black dog, with yellow spots under his eyes, stood sud denly before us, and growled so forbiddingly that we drevi back. " He will not bite," said the little boy ; for the merry TTNULE CHRISTOPHER'S. 175 makers had landed on their sled at the foot of the hill, and followed us to the door ; and in a moment the larger youth dashed past us, seized the dog by the fore paws, and dragged him violently aside, snarling and whimpering all the time. " Haven't you got no more sense," he exclaimed, " than to bark so at a gentleman and ladies ?" II. In answer to our quick rap, the door opened at once, and the circle about the great blazing log fire was broken by a general rising. The group consisted of eight persons one man and seven women ; the women so closely resembling each other, that one could not tell them apart; not even the mother from the daughters for she appeared as young as the oldest of them except by her cap and spectacles. All the seven were very slender, very straight, and very tall ; all had dark complexions, black eyes, low foreheads, straight noses, and projecting teeth ; and all were dressed precisely alike, in gowns of brown flannel, and coarse leather boots, with blue woollen stockings, and small capes, of red and yellow calico. The six daughters were all marriageable ; at least the youngest of them was. They had staid, almost severe, expressions of countenances, and scarcely spoke during the evening. By one corner of the great fire- place they huddled together, each busy with knitting, and all occupied with long blue stockings, advanced in nearly similar degrees toward completion. Now and then they said "Yes, ma'm," or " No ma'm," when I spoke to them, but never or very rarely any thing more. As I said, Mrs. Wright differed from her daughters in appearance, only in that she wore a cap and spectacles ; but she was neither silent nor ill at ease as they were ; on the contrary, she industriously filled up all the little spaces unoccupied by her good man in the conversation ; she set off his excellencies, as a frame does a picture ; and before we were even seated, she expressed her delight that we had come when " Christopher" was at home, as, owing to his gift, he was much abroad. Uncle Christopher was a tall muscular man of sixty or there- abouts, dressed in what might be termed stylish homespun 176 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. coat, trowsers and waistcoat, of snuff colored cloth. His cravat \vas of red-and-white-checked gingham, but it was quite hidden under his long grizzly beard, which he wore in full, this pecu- liarity being a part of his religion. His hair was of the same color, combed straight from his forehead, and turned over in one even curl on the back of the neck. Heavy gray eye- brows met over a hooked nose, and deep ip his head twinkled two little blue eyes, which seemed to say, " I am delighted with myself, and, of course, you are with me." Between his knees he held a stout hickory stick, on which, occasionally, when he had settled something beyond the shadow of doubt, he rested his chin for a moment, and enjoyed the triumph. He rose on our entrance, for he had been seated beside a small table, where he monopolized a good portion of the light, and all the warmth, and having shaken hands with my father and welcomed him in a long and pompous speech, during which .he good wife bowed her head, and listened as to an oracle, he greeted me in the same way, saying, " This, I suppose, is the virgin who abideth still in the house with you. She is not given, I hope, to gadding overmuch, nor to vain and fool- ish decorations of her person with ear-rings and finger- rings, and crisping-pins: for such are unprofitable, yea, abominable. My daughter, consider it well, and look upon it, and receive instruction." I was about replying, 1 don't know what, when he checked me by saying, "Much speech in a woman is as the crackling of thorns under a pot. Open rebuke," he con- tinued, " is better than secret love." Then pointing with his cane in the direction of the six girls, he said, " Rise, maidens, arid salute your kinswoman ;" and as they stood up, pointing to each with his stick, he called their names, beginning with Abagail, eldest of the daughters of Rachael Wright and Chris- topher Wright, and ending with Lucinda, youngest born of Rachael Wright and Christopher Wright. Each, as she was referred to, made a quick ungraceful curtsy, and resumed her seat and her knitting. A half hour afterward, seeing that we remained silent, the father said, by way of a gracious permission of conversation, I suppose, "A little talk of flax and wool, and of household dill tJNCLE CHRISTOPHERS. IM gonoe, would not ill become the daughters of our house." Upon hearing this, Lucinda, who, her mother remarked, had the " liveliest turn " of any of the girls, asked me if I liked to knit ; to which I answered, " Yes," and added, " Is it a favor- ite occupation with you ?" she replied, "Yes ma'rn," and after a long silence, inquired how many cows we milked, and at the end of another pause, whether we had colored our flannel brown or blue; if we had gathered many hickory nuts; if our apples were keeping well, etc. The room in which we sat was large, with a low ceiling, and bare floor, and so open about the windows and doors, that the slightest movement of the air without would keep the candle flame in motion, and chill those who were not sitting nearest the fire, which blazed and crackled and roared in the chimnev. Uncle Christopher, as my father had always called him (though he was uncle so many degrees removed that I never exactly knew the relationship), laid aside the old volume from which he had been reading, removed the two pairs of spectacles he had previously worn, and hung them, by leather strings connecting their bows, on a nail in the stone jamb by which he sat, and talked, and talked ; and talked, and I soon discovered by his conversation, aided by the occasional explan- atory whispers of his wife, that he was one of those infatuated men who fancy themselves "called" to be teachers of religion, though he had neither talents, education, nor anything else to warrant such a notion, except a faculty for joining pompous and half scriptural phrases, from January to December. That inward purity must be manifested by a public washing of the feet, that it was a sin to shave the beard, and an abomination for a man to be hired to preach, were his doctrines, I believe, and much time and some money he spent in their vindication. From neighborhood to neighborhood he traveled, now entering a Idacksmith's shop and delivering a homily, now debating with the boys in the cornfield, and now obtruding into some church, where peaceable worship eis were assembled, with intima- tions that they had " br' v en teeth, and feet out of joint," that they were " like cold and snow in the time of harvest, yea, worse, even as pot-sheds covered with silver dross." And such ex- 8* 179 * OUR NEIGH BORHOOD. nortations he often concluded by quoting the passage : " Though thou shouldst bray a fowl in a mortar among wheat, with a postle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." More than half an hour elapsed before the youths whose sliding down the hill had been interrupted by us, entered the house. Their hands and faces were red and stiffened with the cold, yet they kept shyly away from the fire, and no one noticed or made room for them. Both interested me at once, and partly, perhaps, that they seemed to interest nobody else. The taller was not so young as I at first imagined ; he was un- graceful, shambling, awkward, and possessed one of those clean, pinky complexions which look so youthful ; his hair was yellow, his eyes small and blue, with an unquiet expression, and his lands and feet inordinately large ; and when he spoke, it was to the boy who sat on a low stool beside him, in a whisper, which he evidently meant to be inaudible to others, but which was, nevertheless, quite distinct to me. He seemed to exercise a kind of brotherly care over the boy, but he did not speak, nor move, nor look up, nor look down, nor turn aside, nor sit still, without an air of the most wretched embarrassment. I should not have written "sit still," for he changed his position continually, and each time his face grew crimson, and, to cover his confusion, as it were, he drew from his pocket a large silk handkerchief, rubbed his lips, and replaced it, at the same time moving and screwing and twisting the toe of his boot in every direction. I felt glad of his attention to the boy, for he seemed silent and thoughtful beyond his years; perhaps he was lonesome, 1 thought ; certainly he was not happy, for he leaned his chin on his hand, which was cracked and bleeding, and now and then when his companion ceased to speak, the tears gathered to his eyes; but he seemed willing to be pleased, and brushed the tears off his face and smiled, when the young man laid his great hand on his head, and, shaking it roughly, said, " Mark, Mark, Marky !" " I can't help thinking about the money," said the boy, at last, "and how many new things it would have bought: just of it, Andrew !" UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S. 77, "How Towser did bark at them people, did n't he, Mark T aid Andrew, not heeding what had been said to him. "All new things!" murmured the boy, sorrowfully, glancing at his patched trowsers and ragged shoes. " In three days it will be New-Year's ; and then, Mark, won't we have fun !" and Andrew rubbed his huge hands together, in glee, at the prospect. " It won't be no fun as I know of," replied the boy. "May be the girls will bake some cakes," said Andrew, turning red, and looking sideways at the young women. Mark laughed, and, looking up, he recognized the interested look with which I regarded him, and from that moment we were friends. At the sound of laughter, Uncle Christopher struck his cane on the floor, and looking sternly toward the offenders, said, ''A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back !" leaving to them the application, which they made, 1 suppose, for they became silent the younger dropping his chin in his hands again, and the elder twisting the toe of his boot, and using his handkerchief very freely. I thought we should never go home, for I soon tired of Uncle Christopher's conversation, and of Aunt Rachael's continual allusions to his "gift;" he was etidently regarded by her as not only the man of the house, but also as the man of all the world. The six young women had knitted their six blue stockings from the heel to the toe, and had begun precisely si the same time to taper them off, with six little white balls o ! yarn. The clock struck eleven, and I ventured, timidly, to suggest my wish to return home. Mark, who sat drowsily in his chaii, looked at me beseechingly, and when Aunt Rachael said, "Tut, tut ! you are not going home to-night !' : he laughed again, despite the late admonition. All the six young women also said, "You can stay just as well as not ;"and I felt as if I were to be imprisoned, and began urging the impossibility of doing so, when Uncle Christopher put an end to remonstrance by exclaiming, "It is better to dwell in the corner of the house, top, than with a brawling woman, and in a wide house." It 180 OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. was soon determined that I should remain, not only for the night, hut till the weather grew warmer; and I can feel now something of the pang I experienced when I heard the horses snorting on their homeward way, after the door had closed upon me. " I am glad you did n't get to go !" whispered Mark, close to me, favored by a slight confusion induced by the climbing o the six young ladies upon six chairs, to hang over six lines, attached to the rafters, the six stockings. There was no variableness in the order of things at Uncle Christopher's, but all went regularly forward without even a casual observation, and to see one day, was to see the entire experience in the family. " He has a great gift in prayer," said Aunt Rachael, pulling my sleeve, as the hour for worship arrived. I did not then, nor can I to this day, agree with her. I would not treat such matters with levity, and will not repeat the for- mula which this "gifted man " went over morning and evening, but he did not fail on each occasion to make known to the All- Wise the condition in which matters stood, and to assure him, that he himself was doing a great deal for their better manage- ment in the future. It was not so much a prayer as an an- nouncement of the latest intelligence, even to "the visit of his kinswoman who was still detained by the severity of the elements." It was through the exercise of his wonderful gift, that I first learned the histories of Andrew and Mark ; that the former was a relation from the interior of Indiana, who, for feeding and milking Uncle Christopher's cows morning and evening, and the general oversight of affairs, when the great man was abroad, enjoyed the privilege of attending the district school in the neighborhood ; and that the latter was the "son of his son," a " wicked and troublesome boy, for the present subjected to the chastening influences of a righteous discipline." As a mere matter of form, Uncle Christopher always said, J will do so or so, " Providence permitting ;" but he felt compe- tent to do anything and everything on his own account, to " the drawing out of the Leviathan with an hook, or his tongue with UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S. 181 ft cord to the putting a hook into his nose, or the boring hia iaw through with a thorn." "I believe it's getting colder," said Andrew, as he opened the door of the stairway, darkly winding over the great oven, to a low chamber ; and, chuckling, he disappeared. He was pleased, as a child would be, with the novelty of a visitor, and perhaps half believed it was colder, because he hoped it was so. Mark gave me a smile as he sidled past his grandfather, and disap- peared within the smoky avenue. We had scarcely spoken together, but somehow he had recognized the kindly disposition I felt toward him. As I lay awake, among bags of meal and flour, boxes of hickory nuts and apples, with heaps of seed, wheat, oats, and barley, that filled the chamber into which I had been shown cold, despite the twenty coverlids heaped over me I kept thinking of little Mark, and wondering what was the story of the money he had referred to. I could not reconcile myself to the assumption of Uncle Christopher that he was a wicked boy ; and, falling asleep at last, I dreamed the hard old man was beating him with his walking-stick, because the child was not big enough to fill his own snuff-colored coat and trowsers. And certainly this would have been little more absurd than his real elFort to change the boy into a man. There was yet no sign of daylight, when the stir of the family awoke me, and, knowing they would think very badly of me should I further indulge my disposition for sleep, I began to feel in the darkness for the various articles of my dress. At length, half awake, I made my w