Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1881 — THE OLD WOMAN. [ARTICLE]

THE OLD WOMAN.

N6d Huntline sat at the breakfast table and abstractedly sipped his coffee. Ned was considered a great “ catch’ among the girls of Sleepy Hollow; not that he was either rich or handsome, for he was not, Dor was there anything remarkable about him, except his tidy habits and his well-known determination to take care of his parents, who had spent their earnings of a lifetime in rearing and educating their many children, all of whom, except Ned, were well married and comfortably settled in establishments of their own, in the far-away States, where constant application to business enabled them to live in peace and plenty. M'd Huntine, the senior, after whom the junior Ned had been named in infancy. and the worthy sire of the seven Huntlines, was now on his deathbed, and the wife and son were the only occupants of the breakfast table, where, in the years agone, there had been nine chairs promptly filled at every meal. “Do you think father will live the day out ?” asked Ned, sending up his cup for the second time and speaking for the first. “ It’s doubtful, son. There has been a rapid change within a half-dozen hours; ” The wife buried her face in her hands and wept silently. She was an oldfashioned woman, an exemplary wife, wlio had cheerfully borne her share of life’s many burdens through all the years of her union. She had been a strong woman in her day, too, but her step was feeble now, and her eyes were dim and her hands unsteady. “ Don’t cry, mother,” said Ned, softly, as he left his last cup untasted and went around where she was sitting. “ We’ve all got to take our turn when it comes. Death is only a transition. It’s but a question of time till we, too, shall die. Cheer up, mother. You are to have a valuable legacy to-day.” “ My son; I know I have a valuable legacy in you, and I try to be comforted. Your father is ready and willing to die, and it won’t be many years till I shall join him. But oh, Ned, it’s hard ! What will become of me ?” Tears choked her utterance, and Ned placed his arm around her tenderly and drew her head to his shoulder. “lam your legacy, dearest mother, and I shall prove a support to you that shall never fail. Mollie will love you, too. Don’t worry. Yqj| shall spend the balance of your days in ease and contentment and plenty.” “ Mollie, did you saj, Ned ?” “Yes, mother.” “ Not Mollie Hawkins ?” “ Yes ; Mollie Hawkins. We’ve been engaged for a year, and it is her wish and mine to be married to-day, so that father may witness the ceremony.” “ Oh, Ned ! It seems but wicked and cruel to be thinking about a wedding day. Wait a year, do I” “Father and I talked it over while you were getting breakfast, and he is glad to know of our plan, and seconds it heartily-. ” “Why didn’t you tell me before, Ned ? ” ‘ “ Because there wasn’t anything to tell. Mollie has always said you didn’t like her, and she begged me to wait till you have time to overcome your prejudices before I should speak to you about it. Mollie watched father with me during the after part of the night, and he had an easy, rational spell toward morning, and he said, ‘ I’d like to give Mollie to you before I die, as your mother’s legacy.’ I hadn’t supposed Mollie was his to give, but then she wasn’t anybody else’s, and I thought he enjoyed the fancy. The property is all mine, mother.” “ And so I shall lose you, my baby son, and your father, too. on the same day I ” cried Mrs. Huntline throwing her arms'around Ned and crying uncontrollably. Ned was vexed and annoyed. For his life he couldn’t see why his mother was not pleased with the idea of becoming the lifetime companion of Mollie Hawkins, the village dressmaker. Mollie was an orphan, steady, industrious, selfwilled and handsome. Mrs. Huntline would have been reasonably satisfied with her daughter-in-law if it had not been for the prospect of living with her as a dependent upon her bounty. Ned’s father, feeling that he was soon to die, had bequeathed to him the homestead and retail grocery store as a legacy, upon the condition that his mother should have a home and its comforts during all her declining years. Mrs. Huntline was sorely grieved because of the will, but she was not the woman to protest against her husban’s dying wish, so she wept over it in bitter and secret humiliation, and at last resigned herself, as a silent martyr, to a state of dependence upon the good will of her son and whomsoever he might marry. But she had not dreamed that he would marry Mollie Hawkips, whom, of all the girls of her acquaintance, she most thoroughly disliked. “I do not think I can live happily with Mollie, Ned. You know I have nowhere else to go, and you ought to consider .my wishes a little.” “ Why, of course you can, if you’ll be reasonable. You've only to turn everything over, just as it stands, to her, and you can make yourself comfortable. I’d be thankful to anybody that would take ' everything out of my hands and guarantee me a support, without effort on my part, during the remainder of my natural life.” “ You don’t know what you are talking about, Ned. It was never the design of nature that any person should live in that way.” “I know it wasn’t bo designed for men, but with women it’s altogether different.” Mollie Hawkins, who had been an assiduous attendant upon Ned’s father during his long illness, appeared on the scene at this juncture, as she had done for a fortnight past, to know if she could be of any service during the day. “ Mollie,” said Ned, rifling. Moth-

er, allow me to introduce your new future mistress,” thought Mrs. Huntlme, rising to salute her, and trying hard to smile through her tears. “Mr Huntline is awake now, and seems easy,” said the nurse, entering the dining-room on tiptoe, and helping Herself to the coffee with the air of a person to the manor born. “ Eat your breakfast, nurse, while we visit the chamber together,” said Mrs. Huntline. „ , “ I will go and procure the license and the preacher,” said Ned. “Father is rational now, and he may grow delirious if we wait longer.” The other sons of the family were too far away to be summoned to his bedside. The dying man greeted his prospectire (laughter with a wan smile of welcome. „ “She will beyonr legacy, mother, he whispered. “ Ned has the property and you will have her, and may you all be happy. Where’s Ned ?” “Gone for the preacher, father. He will be here presently,” said Mollie, stooping to kiss him on the forehead. “ Mother,” exclaimed the dying man, “I have provided as well as I could for your support. You will have no more care and no more work during the remainder of your days.” “And no more liberty,” was the poor wife’s silent echo, but she made no audible reply. “ I’m going a long road, mother, but the journey will soon Iw over. Don t weep for me. We’ll meet again in the morning of a new existence.” Ned entered with the license and the minister, and the dying man’s attention was engrossed to his latest moment of consciousness in witnessing the ceremony that was to unite the young people ’till death or divorce should part them. “Take good care of mother, Mollie, was his parting injunction. The death-damp gathered on his forehead, the death-rattle sounded in his throat and all was over. The funeral obsequies passed off quietly, and Ned Huntline and his new wife returned to the old homestead to take up their new life, and Mrs. Huntline returned also to existence, since she was (jglh homeless and widowed. The new Mrs. Huntline elbowed her mother-in-law from her place at the head of the table, where she hail presided for over thirty years. The old Mrs. Huntline accepted the situation. She did not interfere with any of the new-fangled airs that took the place of the old-fash-ioned regulations. She glided in and out of the rooms like a ghost, and grew more and more conscious that she was considered a burden as the family’s expenses increased. Ned Huntline did not prosper in his business, and, as the years rolled on, the homestead was mortgaged to meet the demands of his creditors. Little responsibilities were added to the household in annual reinforcements, and the old adage, “ A fool for luck and a poor man for children,” was amply verified. Mrs. Huntline’s legacy did not prove a financial success. She was compelled to act as child’s nurse even more constantly than when her own babies were growing. She had been a servant without wages in her husband’s lifetime, but she was a servant of servants now. The Chinese cook would not tolerate her in the kitchen, nor could he prepare her food to her liking. The junior Mrs. Huntline grew more and more cold-hearted and exacting. Adversity pressed hard upon Ned, who gradually grew to think with his wife that his mother was a burden and in the way. Interest accrued upon the mortgage, and there was no money to meet the debt. Ned grew morose and uncivil, and when his mother, who had toiled beyond her strength in caring for his children, was laid low with a rheumatic fever, he inwardly confessed that her room would be more acceptable than her company. The anxiety and poverty and noise and discomfort preyed upon her spirits, and her recovery was slow. Mrs. Huntline was just able to sit up and occupy a chair at the breakfast table on the tenth- anniversary of her husband’s death. The children were noisy, the food was not to her liking, and the tablecloth was awry. She could not eat; she leaned back in her chair and wept silently. “ You have an easier time than any of us,” said Ned, petulantly, as he noticed her tears. “ Mollie says you have always been a trial to her. Can’t you be a little more reasonable ? It seems to me that if I hadn’t anything to worry me but the quality of my victuals I would not put on airs. ”

Mrs. Huntline was stung into open retort for the first time in all these years. “If your father had left me this homestead, as the legacy that is rightfully mine, I should have been able to surround myself with every needed comfort, and I wouldn’t have been obliged to overdo iny strength and catch the rheumatic fever by being a child’s nurse, either. ” “I’d like to know what you’d have done with the homestead if you had it,” surlily answered Ned. “ I wouldn’t have mortgaged it,” was the tearful reply. “ Suppose I, instead of your father, had died, Ned,” she continued, “ do you think he would have been contented with his lot if I had willed his homestead into other hands and left him to feel himself a burden in the house of his children? Do you think the legacy of a daughter-in-law, who would have thought him a nuisance no matter what he did, would have compensated him for the loss of his home ? ” Ned Huntline did not reply. But his brow contracted; he was thinking, thinking. Ten years had wrought a great change in him. No one would have thought, on the day of his marriage, that he would deteriorate in so short a time from the tidy, well-preserved young man of the decade gone by into the seedy, careless and wretched-appearing fellow that he now was. “If the homestead had remained mine,” said his mother, “you would not be living under a mortgaged roof now, Ned, nor would 1 have been a dependent Irudge during all these years. I don’t think I can live a’ great while—l hope [ can’t—but I wish to impress on you an important duty before my change comes. ” “ What is it, mother ?”

“It is this: Never wrong your wife, even on your death-bed, by willing the hard-earned home away from her; and never imagine that you can make her comfortable in her widowhood by depriving her of everything else and bestowing upon her a daughter-in-law that she did not choose as her only legacy.” There was a rap at the door, and a magistrate entered, bringing the lookedfor but unwelcomed news that the homestead had been sold under the hammer, and had barely brought enough to cover the principal, interest and expense of sale. “ We might get along very well if we were unincumbered,” said the daughter-in-law; “but I don’t see how we’re to live and take care of the old woman. ” And so it was settled that the old woman, whom nobody had any room for, should be sent to the East, by the cheapest style of transportation, to spend her remaining days with her eldest son, whose wife and caldron she had never seen, and in whose home she would be compelled to feel herself an interloper. She never knew that Mrs. Huntline, Jr., could never fill her pli\ce in the household with the work of any servant, no matter how high the wages. But she died, as she had lived during all the days of her widowhood, a pauper upon the bounty of her children, when she should haye bud » competence fmd jts accom-

panying feeling of independence through all her days. . , . . Si . Ned Huntline sees the injustice of it all now, and, though it is too late for him to profit by it, for his mother s interest, there is not a man in Sleepy Hollow who is more determined than he to so shape the legislation of the future that the superannuated mothers of men shall not be left homeless in their closing years.