Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1883 — WIDOW WICKETT'S WINDOWS. [ARTICLE]

WIDOW WICKETT'S WINDOWS.

Mr. Tibbetts was riding slowly along the /oad, thinking, for once in a way, what a brief life this was, and how quickly we left it behind us. He had just been making out Mr. Parkman’s will, and it was doubtful if old Mr. Parkman would live until night. The pompous, bustling, dictatory man was dying, and the world would get along well enough without him, as it would without any of us. One person would grieve for him, and that the very one who would be benefited by ; his death. Years ago Mr. Parkman had picked up in the streets of New York, on a cold winter night, a pool* little Italian boy, who had been sent by his padrone to scrape the violin on a bleak corner. Mr. Parkman had found that*the little fellow was illtreated, and had taken the legal measures to release and adopt him, and this boy, now grown to be 17 years old, was the old man’s great pride and comfort. “I want to give everything to Ludovico,” he had said to the lawyer. “He deserves it, and I love him. My nephew, Ralph Vennor, would pounce upon everything if I left no will. No, I should make one, even if I had never found this boy. I should leave all to some charity. Ralph is a brute—rich, greedy, contemptible. Ludovico will carry out my ideas and do good with his money.” So the will was written, and it was now in the lawyer’s breastpocket, to be carried to his office and locked up in a certain box. “I may live for years,” said the old man, “and Ralph would make no bones of destroying the will, He’s a bad fellow —a very bad fellow.” But at the door Mr. Parkman’s man had told him that the doctor had said his master’s hours were numbered; that he would not see the next sunrise. No wonder Tibbetts felt that this was an uncertain sort of world. But the hoys down in the hollow beside the road on which his horse slowly trotted, who were making the most .of a holiday, and some fire-crackers and other gun-powdery playthings, such as one might fancy Satan had invented for his offspring, were troubled with no grave thoughts or solemn emotions. The black figure of a lawyer, long and lean, seated on his quiet horse, instead of awakening awe in their small bosoms, aroused them to deeds of mischief. Suddenly an invention resembling a bomb-shell, though smaller and less destructive, hurled through the air, hit Mr. Tibbetts in the small of the back and exploded. Mr. Tibbetts started; the horse reared, and in a moment more Mr. Tibbetts was on his back in the hollow, the horse a mile away up the road, and the will sticking in the solitary gooseberry bush that decorated the Widow Wickett’s front door yard. Now the Widow Wickett was one of these people who are always wretchedly poor, no matter what is done for them, and, though she had more given her than any other person in town, she always had broken panes of glass in her window, and was always patching them with pasteboard, tin pans and straw hats. Toddling about after the accident, of which she heard nothing, being down cellar at the time, she found a fine piece of stiff parchment sticking in her bush, and, as it tras just the sisje of two panes of glass, appropriated it at once, fastening it well on with many tacks. As she c u’d not read writing, the names on the sheet never struck h6r eye, and as for the red tape, she used that for a shoe string immediately. Meanwhile, down at the hotel to which he was carried, Mr. Tibbetts came to himself, found he was not greatly injured, expressed his opinion of boys in general, and waite 1 for his clothes, which were being brushed for him. “And, by the way,” cried Mr. Tibbetts, “bring me the document in the waistcoat pocket, Will am, it’s very valuable.” William could not turn pale; he was the color of charcoal; but ne stared at Mr. Tibbetts. “For de Lord, massa, your watch, an’ pocket-book, an’ penknife, and cardcase, an’ handkerchief is all, dere wasn’t no dockyment dar!” “A paper —a parchment,” explained Mr. Tibbetts. “Sartinly., lis aware what a docyment am, sah,” replied William, with proper dignity; but there wasn’t none, sah. ” Vain search was made on the road, in the hollow—everywhere. The will was gone. Sore as he himself was from his fall, Mr. Tibbetts had himself driven back to the Parkman mansion. He arrived there before the sun set, but old

Mr. Parkman was already dead; and all rewards that were offered failed to bring the will to light. The Widow Wickett never read the newspapers. The law had its course. The nephew came into the property. The two old servants, who had been well provided for by their master, lost their situations. Ludovico was left without a penny; but he had a good education, and Mr. Tibbetts offered him a place in his law office, on a salary that saved him from starving—a better salary than he would have given any other boy. Somehow he felt himself responsible for the boy’s changed fortune; and he never quite gave up hope about the will. But six months passed; a year; —two—and nothing was heard of it. Now Mr. Tibbetts had charge of the Van Note property, and, as every one knew, the Widow Wickett’s house was upon it. She owned the building, but not the land, and paid a modicum of ground rent. Mr. Van Note being very “close,” it became every year some one’s painful duty to extract that small sum from the Widow Wickett. It was worse than it would have been to extract her few remaining teeth. Ludovico was set at the work this time, and, being young and sympathetic, came out of it crushed and miserable. At the tenth visit a little pile of the dirtiest bills and crookedest coin procurable lay at his elbow. “There’s your money. Now you’ve extortioned it out of me, take it. It was give me by a good lady to put the glass in my windys and save me from rheumatics agin the winter; but no, I’ve got to suffer now. I hope you’ll think of it when you’re as warm as toast in your feather beds and blankets—yah I” “Indeed, it’s not I. I couldn’t ask it of you,” said Ludovico, almost in tears. “Look here!” said the widow. “See my panes. Two windys. Twelve panes in each. Three whole in the lot. This them boys broke, and this cracked unbeknownst, and this my elbow went through; and the stovepipe fell, it went through these four; and this is them boys again; and I put a bit of stick that give under it, is the way it was them went. The cat was on the sill under it at the time. Ah, well! the coryner’ll have me this winter.” Ludovico went away with a swelling heart. “Ah!” he said to himself. “If I was as rich as my dear old friend intended I should be, I’d not oppress the poor. ” “There, sir, he said, handing the money to Mr. Tibbetts, “the wretched soul has paid it and now she can’t have her window panes put in. She’ll die of cold. How cruel Mr. Van Note is.” “Oh, Widow Wickett’s panes. We all know about them,” said Mr. Tibbetts. “They’re her stock in trade. Why, lad, they’re always out.” “Always! all these bitter winters?” sighed Ludovico. ’ Then an heroic thought possessed him. He would take the money he had saved for a coat and go to the glazier and buy nine panes of glass and some putty and himself mend the Widow Wickett’s windows. And when office hours were over away he sped, carried out his good intention and appeared at the Widow Wickett’s door with his hands full of glass and smiles of benevolence on his face, and announced his intention. The widow was horrified. The broken windows brought her half her income in charitable gifts from pitying strangers, but she was obliged to submit and pretend to be grateful. She sat in her rocking chair, ruefully looking on, ■ while Ludovico extracted the old hats and pants, and ripped off the parchment, and threw the whole outside the window into the door-yard where the gooseberry bush grew. Happily he worked, and soon the windows were all restored to their original condition. “The Lord’s blessin’ on you,” whined the widow, meaning something else. “Oh, don’t mention it,” sail Ludovico, politely. “You mustn’t wash them until to-morrow, or they’ll fall out. Good-by.” “Mrs. Wickett never washed anything, but she began to meditate on doing it instantly; and Ludovico marched away. He would have no coat, but his conscience would not trouble him. “Oh, if I were rich, how good I would be to the poor,” he said. At this instant something hit his heel sharply. A blessed breeze had impelled one-half of the parchment he had taken from the widow's window after him. He stopped and picked it up. The first thing that struck him was his own name. He looked at it closely. It was part of a will in his favor. Back flew the boy. The widow was cramming the other part under her teakettle, but he snatched it from her without a word and rushed away. Mr? Tibbetts saw him coming, and his prophetic soul saw a great revelation in the boy’s pale face. “What have you got there?” he shouted. Ludovico answered, “The Widow Wickett’s window panes.” A few days after the widow was in court, explaining how she came by such window panes. And so the boy came to his own and really is the rich man he dreamed of being as he daubed the putty against the frames of Mrs. Wickett’s window; and that old lady is well provided for by the gratitude of the young heir, who has bought her house for her, furnished it and settled on her an income beyond her wants; but she keeps an empty snuff-box in her pocket, and amiable strangers are often heard to mention that they gave a few pennies just now to a poor soul, who never could save enough for her one luxury—a pinch of snuff.—Wew York Ledger.