Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1875 — THE LITTLE GREEN POCKETBOOK. [ARTICLE]

THE LITTLE GREEN POCKETBOOK.

John Singleton stood on the street corner waiting for his car. Business hours were over; he was going home—a bachelor’s home in a boarding-house, but none the less grateful to his imagination just then. A fine rain fell, the pavement was clogged with sticky, halfmelted snow, and altogether the evening was comfortless as evening can well be in early April, when the cheering hope of warm suns and dry streets is immediately at hand. The jingling car came by crowded, as always at that hour of the day. Mr. Singleton had to run half a square in the mud to catch it, a proceeding which did not improve his temper. He clutched a strap and glared gloomily at the ladies who monopolized seats, resentful, as a business man is apt to be, of the appearance of women in public conveyances at half-past five in the afternoon. Keeping his eye on the straw under foot, he paid no attention whatever to his neighbors—if, indeed, one can be said to have such in a horse-railway carriage.

Sixteenth street—Twenty-fourth—Thir-ty-second—Fortieth. The car emptied rapidly. As the last lady left rose to get out a small green book became visible, half hidden by the folds of her goWn. “I beg pardon—you have dropped something,” said John, picking it up. “Sir!” “ This book—you dropped it.” The old lady looked acidly, first at the book and then at John. “ The article is not mine,” she remarked, frigidly. Then she got out. Mr. Singleton was the sole remaining passenger. His impulse was to hand the book to the conductor, but a glance at that worthy’s face checked him. “Better advertise,” he thought; and, signaling the car te stop, he alighted in the mud of upper Broadway. His landlady opened the door in a nervous flutter. “Oh, sir, it’s you at last! There’s a telegraphic boy been waiting for you for ever so long.” Sure enough, there sat the boy; and the result of his message was that in half as hour John Singleton was speeding on his way to Western New York by the night express, a hastily-packed sachel under his feet, and his head full of other business than that of finding owners to lost property. The little green pocketbook remained behind in the pocket of the office-coat flung aside at the moment of departure.

There it might have remained for months, if, diving one day, man-fashion, after some lost article, his fingers had not happened to encounter it. This was a fortnight or so after his return. “ Hallo! what’s this?” he said. It was a moment before he recollected. “Bless me! this is too bad. I had forgotten the thing completely. I must be looking up the owner if there’s enough in it to pay for an advertisement.” He released the elastic strap and opened the pages. There was no money, no place for any. The little book was a diary, shabby, green-bound, with no name on the title-page. Most of the leaves were blank, a few only being scribbled over in a light, girlish hand* writing. John glanced over these in search of a clew, and pretty soon, growing interested, drew his chair to the fire, cocked up his feet and proceeded to read regularly.

The diary began: “ Oct. s.—Last night Alice and Tom and I went to Dr. Bellows’ lecture. It was interesting. He said that the great thing in life is direction, that is, that po matter how far off our aims seem, if our faces are only set toward them we are sure to get there some day. In the very middle of the cold winter, he said, we turn a corner and begin to go toward the spring, and it is as if we were there, because we are certain. That is beautiful. 1 shall try to recollect it when things seem especially contrairy, as they do sometimes. “ Oct. B.—l have been making my winter bonnet, or rather warming over the old one, for it is Alice’s turn to have the new this year. She ought to always, she has to see such stylish people in the houses where she teaches. The old brown felt doesn’t look bad, considering it is its third appearance. I’ve steamed the velvet, and curled the feather with a hot penknife, and tucked in a little blue bow, and Tom says it’s ‘ gorgeous.’ Tom is always funny about my things. “ The pudding Tom likes so much! “ Take eight large baking apples, pare, core, and lay them in a deep dish. Put a little sugar and a mite of cinnamon in each. Soak a teacupful of tapioca in a quart of viWr tor bow,'

then pour on, and bake till the apples are pink and tender. Milk and sugar. “ Marianne gave me this recipe. Tom says he wishes he could have it three times a week, but I tell him apples are very erpenstee. “ Nov. I.—l’ve been to a party, quite a large one. It was at the Almys’. Ellen Almy asked me, and papa said I might for once, because it did no harm to see the vanity of things. I think the vanity of things is very pleasant! There was a great discussion over what I should wear. Alice invented a trimming for my poplin out of mamma’s old blue silk and lent me her locket and pocket-handker-chief trimmed with edging. Alice is so dear! I left my hair down my back because Tom likes it best so, and the blessed boy made me a present'of a pair of new gloves—kids, pale yellow, with two buttons. I nearly cried over them, the poor fellow has so little money*; but he said Flossy must be ‘ swell,’ cost what it might. I had a rose for my hair off Alice’s bush and, altogether, regarded myself as very fine until I reached the Almys’; then, as papa would say, I found my level, for the girls were gorgeous, Lily in white silk, Ellen in lovely pink crape, with her hair powdered. Oh, 1 can’t pretend to remember, but they looked beautiful! After all, I had j ustas nice a time, for I danced every dance, in spite of my old blue; the German included. Such a kind, pleasant boy took me in to supper, and I spoiled my gloves by getting ice-cream on the thumb. Alice has put on benzine, but they won’t ever look so nice again. However, I never expect to go to any more parties, so, except for their being dear Tom’s present, it doesn’t matter.

“Why, what a baby this is,” soliloquized Singleton, at this point. “ I didn’t know that there were any such girls left.’’ “ Nov. 10.—Studied, read, practiced, made gems for tea. Papa called them capital. “ Nov. 15.—Ditto, ditto. “ Christmas Day.—'The owl for all his feathers is a-cold.’ Just come from church. We decided not to give any presents to each other this year, but spend the tiny bit we could spare on Mrs. Malcney and the chicks. Tom presented me with his india-rubber pencil, Mr. Squires haying given him a new one. “ May 2. — How long it is since I wrote anything in my* diary! All our time has gone to papa. He is better now; but how frightened we have been! It makes me shiver to recollect it. What could we do without papa? Now summer is near and he will grow strong. Alice and I have lost so much sleep that we are drowsy as owls. “ June s.—Papa is better, but Alice is all tired out. How hard it is to be poor when anybody is sick! I don’t mind it in well times.

“ Aug. 10. —Papa feels a little weaker, but the doctor says it may be only the heat. I was thinking just now of the sea; the long, cool roll of the breakers and the swash, the gulls diving and plunging, the crunching of the sand un-der-foot, hard, yet soft. How delicious it would be to feel it all again! Perhaps I shall dream about it to-night. . “ Aug. 11.—No; I dreamed instead that we were frying doughnuts in a hot kitchen. What a midsummer’s dream! lam afraid 1 have a vulgar mind! “ Oct. 4.—How little I guessed when I wrote such foolish words what was going to happen! Papa is dead. It was the 17th of September. I can’t write about it yet. Oh, papa! “Christmas again. Such a sad day! We three have been sitting over the register all the afternoon, and making our plans. Papa’s life-insurance is nil we have to live on now. Tom must give up being a doctor and take a clerk’s place. Mr. Squires has found one for him. He is very brave, and does not say one word to show- how disappointed he is; but we all know. I have written to ask Mrs. Morris to find me a place to teach children. Alice says I am too young, but I feel old, and if the children are not very big I think I can manage. Anything is better than letting Alice work so hard. If no place ‘opens as teacher I shall try for something else, for do something I must.

“Jan. 17.—Nothing yet, and dear, dear Alice has been ill for three weeks. She is a little better, or I don’t know what I should do. “ March 17. —I have heard of a place in a shop ” Here the writing broke off abruptly. John hastily turned over the remaining pages. Not another word, except in pencil near the end: “Black ribbon, 37 cents; boy at crossing, 8 cents; oranges for Alice, 6 cents;” and underneath a single line: “Patience isn’t always pleasant, but she leads to pleasant things.” “ Here’s a pretty business,” he soliloquized, stowing the little book in his breast-pocket. “As well search for a needle in a hay-stack as for this girl out of all New York city. Why can’t women write their names and addresses in full while they are about it?” He took up a newspaper, but the letters danced before his eyes, and before long he had pulled the green book out again and was rereading the journal. An odd excitement stirred his pulses. For a good many yeare—in fact, since the age of nineteen, when his first love jilted him—he had counted himself a determined old bachelor, and, having no mother or sister, had drifted out of the way of womankind and their interests. “Flossy’s” simple record seemed to bring him hack to this forgotten world. It was as if a girl had sat down by his side and whispered her secrets in his ear. I VUtow of a sweet, tired face behM a

I counter, of appealing blue eyes (he was certain they must be blue), of a veil of soft light hair (hair to match the eyes), swept over him, and all his knighthood was aroused. Find her he must, and help her: but how! Never did search seem more unpromisingly devoid of clew. To advertise was, of course, his first thought. “ Found, a small green pocketbook,” appeared next day among the “ Personals” in the Herald, and was reiterated so many times thereafter as to become, as it were, a permanent feature of the paper. A singular rage for shopping seized upon John. Every afternoon, leaving his office early, he betook himself to this amusement, choosing always those shops where women were employed. No bride elect, with a trousseau to buy, eyer went into the business more determinately. Long stairs daunted him not; he penetrated to third stories, to fourth, even to those mysterious topmost regions where “ ladies’ outfitting’’ is attended to. Everywhere he questioned, “Have you among your employes a young lady named Florence? I have accidentally come into possession of an article belonging to her which I am anxious to return.” But no one answered the advertisement; and, though more than one Florence turned up in the shops, they were not the one, they had no connection with the little green pocket-book. So May passed, and June and July, and when August drew on, and the city became a great focus of baking walls and evil savors; our friend, tough and active as he was, began to feel .the need of change. “ Flossy’s” words haunted him: “ The long, cool roll and the swash, the gulls diving and plunging in the spray;” they filled him with a longing for the sea. He resolved on a vacation; and one sultry evening, after an hour’s bumping on the railway and a farther jolt in a country wagon, he found himself at “Oriental Point,” on the Long Island shore; a spot which had rejoiced in the name of Clam Cove until a*recent rechristening at the hands of local speculators, whose imaginations, fired by the completion of the branch railroad, had jumped forward to anticipated hotels and a crowd of metropolitan “ boarders.” Both hotels and crowd were happily nonexistent a so far, and the Sylvan quiet of Clam Cove still brooded over -Oriental Point. The red farm-houses scattered along the beach sufficed for the few strangers who had found out the place, and in one of these Mr. Singleton and his knapsack were received and wel corned with a hearty country hospitality which it was to be feared would disappear with the nearer approach of the übiquitous steam-whistle. Two days of basking in sun and salt, two nights of cool freshness, made him a new man. Utterly content and utterly lazy, he felt indisposed for everything but to lie under the shade of rocks, watch the water come and go, and nap and dream.

It was on the fourth day of this oysterlike existence that be roused from a dozing reverie at the sound of voices speaking near. Some ladies had seated themselves just below him. One, dressed in mourning and wrapped in a shawl, seemed an invalid. The other had dark red-brown hair streaming down over a cool-looking white and black dress. She was reading aloud Lowell’s little poem, “Sea-Weed.” John caught the words distinctly. “ I wonder what that means exactly?” she said as she finished. “It is very graceful ” . - ... “Yes, but it’s puzzling too—a fascinating puzzle. I’m always wondering if Mr. Lowell, when he wrote it, meant the same thing which 1 fancy he meant. It quite teases me.” “And yet you like it so much!” “ Oh, that’s the very reason. I like to be teased and set to thinking. Alice, are you warm enough?” John pricked up his ears. But this girl has dark hair. “ Thanks—yes, I’m almost warm enough. Still, you might fetch the gray shawl, Marion, if you don’t mind.” John caught a glimpse of the girl’s face as she came back with the shawl, a fresh, pleasant face, with eyes of the same red-brown as the hair. She saw him too, and the sisters lowered' their voices. He -did- not hear another word after that. Two days later his landlady met him with a troubled countenance. “ I’m so sorry!” she began. “It’s just as sudden on me’s on you, but my daughter she’s written that she and the children must come home for a spell ’cause the youngest’s had cholera infanticide and the doctor he says they must get away’s fast’s they can and it’s too bad to turn you out but 1 don’t see no other way to fix it and if you don’t mind Elkins next door has a room free every bit like the one you’re in now and Almiry shall carry over your things and you’ll be every whit as comfortable and I hope you’ll have no hard feeling about it.” All this in a breath, and without audible punctuation. John comforted the good dame, whose face was full of trouble. After all, what did it matter? “ Almiry” lent a hand, and in two hours he was seated in Mrs. Elkins’ front-room, “ every whit as comfortable” as he had been in his old quarters. Going down to dinner, the red-brown eyes which he had noticed on the beach confronted him. It’s the Miss Whittemores, Mr.—l don’t recall your name,” remarked Mrs. Elkins, spooning out her steaming chowder. And in this Unceremonious way the introduction wm effected. lutlmwiM ripep fast u»dey such cir»

cumstances. Reading, sailing and walk, ing together, spending whole days and day after day in company, it was no wonder that before long the three so lately strangers should become as old friends. It was easy to know the Misses Whittemore, they were so frank and simple, so pleasantly well-bred. Alice, the elder, a gentle, womanly creature, quiet in speech and manner, and full of a certain sweet common-sense, was evidently the object of fondest care to the browneyed Marion. John had never known any girls like them. It was a revelation of the pleasant possibilities of life to be in such contact. Still his shyness and old habit of distrust hampered and held him back. “ What man ever understood a woman!” he asked himself. “ I don’t pretend to. ‘Flossy,’ indeed! I did have areal glimpse of her in that blessed little book! Now if some fairy would just open a door and let me see the inside of Marion’s heart in the same way, then I should.know where I was.” Marion! Yes, the imaginary Flossy was dethroned; the real Marion reigned in her stead. John, however, was still unconscious of his subjugation, and how long the affair might have halted no one can tell had not Fate, as she often does, taken the matter into her own hands. “ My brother is coming down for Sunday,” said Alice, one morning. “Have you a brother?” f “Oh yes. Have we never told you about hhn? Poor boy! it is his first va; cation this summer. We have wished for him so often, and now at last he can come.” John watched the sisters curiously as they made ready for their walk to the depot that afternoon, but he did not offer to accompany them. “ Lucky fellow!” he muttered, with a sigh, end fell to gnawing his mustache, sure sign of uneasiness and emotion. By and by they came back, each holding an arm of a broad-shouldered, merryfaced youth, who walked between With face of entire contentment. “My brother, Mr. Singleton,” said Alice, in her gentle voice, as John rose to greet Qiem. “ Happy to know you,” said the newcomer, shaking hands cordially. “ The girls have written about you till I feel as if we were acquainted. I say, what a beach! Can’t we have a sail this evening, Flossy?” John started as if shot. “ I thought your name was Marion,” he said, confusedly, staring like one in a dream. “ Yes, so it is,” she answered, carelessly; “but my middle name is Florence, and Tom called me Floss always when we were little. He does now sometimes.” “ You really must leave it off,” said Alice. “ Flossy is absurd for a grown-up person.” “I’m rather fond of it,” remarked Marion; “it doesn’t sound absurd to me at all.” “It’s beautiful!” jerked out John, still absorbed in the suddenness of his surprise. Marion looked at him, astonished. He felt himself blush under her gaze, but offered no explanation, and the subject was dropped. The real and the ideal rarely combine in life. When they do, only one conclusion seems possible. Events flew rapidly after this eclairdssement. The course of true love has intervals of smooth running, for all the poets may say to the contrary. The bright hunter’s moon of that year looked down upon two extremely happy people, and when Christmas gladness dawned on earth it found them happier still. It was on the first delicious evening spent in their new home that John broke silence and told the tale of his treasuretrove. They sat together by the fireside, and Flossy turned the worn pages of the diary with a tender touch. “Dear, shabby old thing!” she murmured. “Yet it brought us together!” “ And to think how I searched for you in all the shops of the city!” • “ Shops? Oh, I didn’t go to the shop# you know. Aunt-Marion died the very week after I wrote that, and left me two hundred dollars because I was named for her. I felt so rich to be able to take Alice to the sea-shore. How little we guessed, when you came, and we grew to be friends, that all that time you had my old diary in your pocket!” “And how little I guessed that the ‘Flossy’l had hunted tot and dreamed about was close at hand! You’ll make me Tom’s pudding some day, won’t you, although ‘ apples are expensive?’ ” Marion raised the little green book to her lips and kissed it. Then she kissed John. — Harper's Bazar. ' , A Sad Affair.— Bhe sat alone with folded hands, And neither turned to right nor left, So mute and sad she looked like one Of hope and home and. friends bereft. Poor thing, I thought, and dropped a tear Thy loved ones all have gone before, Have sailed away o’er Death’s dark stream, And left thee pining on the shore. I gladly would have cheered her, but A stern, cold voice held me in check—- “ There’s nothin’ ails her much,” It said, . ’ “ She’s got aboil upon her neck.” “The average Boston woman,” says Jennie June, “is of medium height, rather slender and neutral tinted. She wears a gray or brown polonaise, is grave and serious of aspect and carries a sachel and an umbrella, even on fine days, so that one sees at once she is prudent, forecasting and does not live in Boston, but in the suburbs.” —The psyllodeballismon is the simple name of a new projectile. What deadly execution it would do if hurled into the ranks ofa spelling-class!— New York oommertrial Advertiser.