Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1879 — Just Before Dawn. [ARTICLE]

Just Before Dawn.

“Ah! Heaven does indeed temper the wind to the shorn lamb,” pathetically said old Mrs. Diffendorfer the other evening at a tea fight, after putting away her twenty-eighth cup of Young Hyson. “ Why, what do you mean ? ” “You know that young widow, Mrs. Biffen, who lives across the street from us? Well, she has had nothing butsoriow, trouble and distress for the past five years.. First her father was killed by a burglar; then her mother married a nigger-minstrel; after that she had the yellow fever and small-pox together; and next her husband failed, and she had to take in washing. It was perfectly dreadful. The poor woman nearly went crazy. She was just beginning to bear up a little again, when her brother was sent up to the penitentiary for life; and, finally, last month her husband died in a fit, and the very next day her baby choked to death on a gum-drop.” “Gracious! the poor thing! ” “Wasn’t it just terrible? Everybody believed she’d commit suicide then; and she would have done so, too, but last week somebody providentially coaxed her to go to a church-raffle —and what do you all suppose happened? ” “What, for heaven’s sake, what? ” “Why, she won a seal-skin sacque! ” “You don’t mean it? ” “She did, though—perfectly splendid—came within an inch of the floor. The darkest hour is just before dawn—after all, Now, jsn’t itt ”-=~San Francisco Post.