Jasper Weekly Courier, Volume 14, Number 2, Jasper, Dubois County, 16 February 1872 — Page 2

$hc $asjirt Cowier.

C. DO AN E, Publisher. Waiting and Watoklngr. Without vou. without yoa. my drlinr ! Without you I What more can I eay. To ahow you how lonely my heart la W hcuever your heart it away t I wait and I watch for you. dearett, W ith never a doubt or a fear But that tome to-morrow will brine you, Some day of all daya in the year. How many to-morrow a there bare been 1 How many to-morrowi may be T Still th long-eat one doea but bring nearer That day of all otbera to me. So, cheerfully watching and waiting, While other, lees dear, com and go. I aing the old aonga that you once loved, And ait by the window and aew. And often I fancy you near me. Your hand on the latch of the door. Tour voice in the hail and your footstep. Near, nearer, toaide me once more. With glad eye half abut now I tee you. So strong, and to brave, and to true. With eye! know, even in dreaming. Belong to no other than you. I know that at latt it ia orer. The wearying trouble and care, And comfort and courage now back with The touch of your hand on my hair. But often, and often, and often I open my eye you are gone I I am titling alone by the window. The ahadowa of nicht coming on. So often I fancy you near me. It rurely aome day mutt come true. So tinging--! hope when I aing, dear. The tonga that I once aang for you. And railing, I whisper. " My darling. Shall tee only eyes that are bright: No tear, then, to dim their love sunshine ; Who knowa but he maj come to-night T BUILDING A HOUSE WITH A TEACUP. From Harper'a Magasine. " Let it alone, Lucy 1" exclaimed Granny Grey to her young visitor. " Why did you remove the shade ?" " Well, dear Granny, only because I reallv wanted to see it." "See it!" said the very handsome woman, with whom the aspect of youth vet lingered. "Why, darling, surely your eyes are not in the tips of your fingers? You could move it without removing the shade. You mean, I supnngjtj. you wanted to feel it ? Lucy laughed. In common with all the girls in Woolen Reach the name of the village in which Mrs. Grey resided she called her "Granny " Granny " was the pet name, the name of love, by which all the young people, bovs and girls, recognized Mrs. Orey Lucy Lynne was one of the good woman's especial favorites. There were steadier and wiser girls in Woolen Reach : but there was not one gifted with a gentler heart or a kinder nature than Lucy Lynne. " I do not know what I wanted,'' laughed Lucy ; " but you all make such a wonderful fuss about that cup that I thought I should like to know why ; and just now, when you had done reading, and closed the Book, leaving Mr. Grey's spectacle-case in it for a mark, I am sure you sat for quite five minutes looking at that cup at least your eyes were fixed on it and yet " The girl paused. " And yet what ?" questioned Mrs. Grey. " Why, though your eyes were fixed on the cup, it seamed as if they were somehow looking oeyond it ; and then indeed, your cheeks grew red, and your eyes had t its in them, and I thought, without intending it, you clasped your hands ; and you got up and looked ai the sheet almanac, and I thought you said to yourself, 4 Thank God Y " u Why, Lucy," exclaimed Mrs. Grey, "what an observant puss you are ! I little thought you were watching me as a cat would a mouse." " That won't do, dear Granny," laughed Lucy. " The cat watches the mouse because she wants to catch and eat it. Now you do not believe that I want to eat you?" " No, dear child, I never thought you wanted to eat me," answered Mrs. Grey, laughing in her turn ; " but I did not think you were so observant." " I am sure," said Lucy, " there are a dozen teacups in the house much prettier than the old thing you lay such store by. Some one said here the other day that the ' willow pattern' was considered very old-fashioned and in ' bad taste;' and you said it was, and that you hated the sight of it, and would have a new dinner service as soon as your ship came home; but," added Lucy, with a litt!,, t.ntit tli.it ahin ia a. Inno time on -" 1 o I the seas. As lone as I can remember I have heard you talk of what was to be done when the chip came home ; perhaps, when it does, Granny, it may bring you a pretty cup to put under the shade, instead of that 'willow pattern.' " No," said Mrs. Grey ; " not all the cups that ever came from China, even if they were filled with gold, would be half as valuable in my eyes as that discolored old tea cup of the ' willow-pattern,' which I have cared for and cherished for thirty years : and Mr. Grey values it as highly as I do." " Granny, will you not tell me why," inquired Lucy, " that I also may value it? I know you think a great deal of it, for you always dust the shade with your own hands." "If you can sit still, Lucy, and listen attentively, it will be a pleasure to me to tell you why I value that tea-cup. There t bring your favorite stool to my side, and sit down, and you shall hear, not an imaginary but a true story, which I hope you will remember all the days of your life. " You know my husband was a carpenter indeed, 1 may say is; though no does not work as hard as he used with his hand, I think he does with

his head, and 1 hear that his power

Of calculation is clear and rapid. " Oh yes," said Lucy ; " 1 have heard Mr. Grey say that temperance kept his braiu vdear." I married huu when I was very .a a at r .1 . young, continued Mrs. urey -some id too young, io take me cares oi tue world upon me ; but I thought my husband, who was a very well educated, man, would teach me how to bear them at least that was what 1 thought and believed ; but the real truth was, I loved him very dearly, and if there are faults, we are not inclined to see them, in those we love." "Then," Bald the saucy Lucy, looking archly up into Mrs. Grey's face, " I do not think. Granny, you love me very much, for I think you see all my faults, ever so biet" " My dear one !" replied her old friend, " I hope I see them all, because I am anxious my Lucy should be very perfect; and if her faults were not known, how could they be corrected ? And she has just displayed one." " A fault !" repeated Lucy, opening br ireat irrev eves. "Yes; you interrupted me at the commencement of a story you said you wished to hear, and I now feel indis posed to tell it," " Oh." exclaimed the repentant Lucy " indeed I will not do so again: I will be as silent as ever you could wish, and as attentive ; I did not mean to be rude, dear Grannv !" " Where did I leave off?" questioned Mrs. Grev. You said we were not inclined to see faulte in those we love," replied Lucy. " Oh. I remember. Well, dear, we had everv thing verv tidy and comfort able, and mv husband bad plenty of work. I did not think it then, but I had cause to mourn it afterward, that though I loved my husband, I was not as careful in my married life as I should have been of his little home comforts His dinner was not always ready to the moment, as it ought to have been ; nor was the hearth swept and the room tidied up, as it is a wife's duty to see that it is when her husband comes home from his dav's work. The hour or two of evening, when the toil of the day is ended, should be the happiest of the four-and-twenty, and cannot lau to be so if a household, however small, is properly cared tor. During the earlv days of our married life we never omitted reading a portion of the Testament, and sometimes singing the verse of a 2' mn, before we retired for the night, r. Grey had a beautiful voice," said the old lady, with very pardonable pride, " and, as you know, he leads in the church still. After we had been married about a year, it pleased God to make an addition to our family. That should have increased my dexterity, so that my attention to my child should not have been taken from, but added to, the comforte and pleasures of our home ; but, instead of that, my new duties rendered me heedless, and often sluggish. My husband liked to see me trim and neat in my person. " ' Katie,' he used to say, ' I only ask to see your hair brushed and shining, and your apron and cotton gown as they used to be clean.' He would often take the broom and sweep the hearth, and make up the fire, and put the white cloth on the table for supper ; and though 1 knew that was what I ought to have done before he came home, yet I don't know how it was I did not improve I had grown rather too fond of gossipping with neighbors who were idler than myself, and carrying my child who certainly was a beauty about to have it admired. This was our first baby our dear blue-eyed boy. I almost seemed fonder of showing him off than looking after my home. When rich married people do not think so much of each other as they ought to do, they have many other things to look to for happiness ; but if the lamp which led the poor to the altar grows dim, the house is dark indeed the light of their life goes out with it I" Lucy looked at Mrs. Grey with won dering eves: for she was the neatest and nattiest old baby you could see anywhere, and was held up as a pattern to all the young girls in the neighborhood. m I do not know now how it was, or when it began, but we often forgot to read our chapter. My husband did not continue as good-humored as he had been d urine our early days, and I did not see hove much of that was my fault for not making him comfortable, as I had done at first. He was very fond of our baby, but the poor little fellow grew ill and peevish. lie could not bear to hear it cry. When it began to cry he would take up his hat to go out. The very thing which ought to have sent us on our knees in supplication that our infant might be restored to health seemed to break in upon our prayers ; and, instead of the hymn except, in deed, on Sunday evenings my hus band, who had, as I told you, a beaut i ful voire, would bring home a new song which he wished to learn, so that he might sine it at the Tradesman's Club at the Blue Lobster. " Slowly but surely he began, instead of returning home in the evenings, to attend these club meetings. 1 hen 1 saw my danger, and how foolishly, if not wickedly, I had acted, in not tending to my first earthly duty. at- " One morning I never shall forget it I rose determined to get my wash ing over and dried out of the way, as he had promised to return early. There is nothing, except a scolding wife, more miserable to a poor man than finding the fire from which he expected warmth and comfort hung round with steaming or damp clothes that a brisk, good manager would get dried and folded before his return. " I had made such good resolutions ;

but, darling," said Granny, after a pause, M 1 trusted to my own strength. 1 did not then as 1 do do now, entreat

God's help ask tor God s help to en able me to keep them. I was too tond, in my young, proud days, of trusting entirely to myself to my in will. Well, dear, 1 suffered one ma'.l matter or another to call me away, a ad an old gossiping woman and her daughter came and wasted my time ; and when I heard the church clock strike, and knew my husband would, be in in less than half an hour, and nothing ready to make him comfortable, though he had had a hard day's work at the saw-pit, in wet weather. 1 could have cried with shame and vex it ion. My resolve had been so strong in what? in my own poor, weak strength ! Well, I hurried ; but it is hard racing after misspent time. My husband came in, dripping wet, about five minutes before his usual hour. He looked at me, and at the clothes line, that was stretched in front of the fire, and, with a small chopper that he had in his hand, he cut the line, and down went my half-dried clothes on the not over-clean sanded floor. ' A soft answer turneth away wrath,' saith the proverb ; but I die not give the soft answer, and the wrath was not turned away. "'Very well, Katie,' he said; 'there is no place here for me to sit and rest, and no supper ready ; but I can get sitting, resting, and supper at the Blue Lobster, where many a fellow is driven by an ill-managing wife.' And with that he turned out of the door. It was in my heart to follow him, to lock my arms round his neck, and, begging his pardon, bring him back. But I was vexed about the clothes, and forgot the provocation. That was his first night all out at the Blue Lobster, but it was not hit latt. I saw my error, and I 5 rayed then for strength to do my uty ; but somehow my husband had got a taste for the popularity that grows out of a good story and a fine voice, and he had felt that woful night what it was to be warmed, when he was cold, by the fire of brandy, instead of sea-coal. Days passed ; our little boy, our Willy, grew worse and worse. Time had been when Mr. Grey would walk the night with him on his bosom, to soothe him to sleep; but now, if the poor child wailed ever so heavily, he could not hear it. Another child had been given to us, but she only added to our difficulties. Then, indeed, I labored continuously to recall what I had lost, but drink had got the mastery. We were backward with our rent : mv poor husband lost his custom ers, for he neglected his business ; and both clothing nd furniture went to satisfy our creditors, and that craving which cries for more the more it gets. I could not bear the sympathy of my neighbors for they would give me their pity held me up as a suffering angel while every hour of my life I recalled the time when neglect ot my witely duties first drove my husband to the pub lic-house. " When sober, my poor dear was full of sorrow, but he had not the strength to avoid temptation. He never used any violence toward me, though if 1 at tempted to hold any thing he wished to turn into drink, he would become iurious, and tear and rend whatever he could lay his hands on. One terrible night he broke every remnant of glass that remained of what once, for a tradesman s wite, 1 had such a store. Every thing was shattered, every thing trampled on and broken every thing but that one cup." " And how did that escape ? " questioned Lucy. 'It contained the infant's supper," replied Mrs. Grey. " I saw his hand hover over it, and the same moment his poor blood-shot eyes rest d on the baby, whose little outstretched arms craved for its food. Some sileat message at that moment must have entered his heart; his arms fell down, and without an effort to support himself, he sank into a heap upon the floor in the midst of the destruction he had caused. I tried to get him on to where once a bed had been ; we had still a mattress and a couple of blankets." Lucy did not speak, but her eyes were overflowing, and she stole her hand into that Mrs. Grey. The good woman soon resumed her story : " I saw that even there sleep came to subdue and calm him. My poor child ate her supper and fell asleep, and my sick boy was certainly better, and also slept. I crept about, gathering up the broken pieces, and endeavoring to light the fire. A kind lady to whom I had taken home some needle-work that m ,1 I LJ 1 morning tor several week3 i nan neen the only bread winner in addition to the eighteenpence I had earned, gave me a small quantity of tea and sugar and an old pewter teapot that, however battered, would not Weak, seemed to me a comforter. He would awake, I knew, cold and shivering, but I hoped not until the Blue Lobster and every house of the same description were closed, and then his thirst would compel him to take some tea. I heard the church-clock strike one, and it was a joyful sound ; no open doors, even to old customers, then. I knelt down be tween the children's blankets and my foor shattered husband, and prayed as never prayed before. " I had managed sufficient fuel to boil the kettle and create some degree of warmth, and I waited patiently and prayerfully for the waking. It came at last. The anger and the violence that had been almost insanity were all gone; only the poor broken-down man was there. He asked what o'clock it was. I told him the church-clock had gone half-past one. He then asked for water. 1 brought him a cupful, another, and another, and then a cup of tea. After he had taken it, he gathered himself up and took the stool I moved toward him. I poured him out a fresh, cup of tea. He looked for some little time vacantly at the table, and not seeing

another cup, he pushed that one toward me. I drank, half filled it again, and moved it to his hand. " ' My poor Katie,' he said, and kept repeating my name, ' has it come to this only one t Jp between us all ? ' "'And enough, too,' I answered,

smiling as gayly as 1 could ' enough to build a house and home on, if we trusted to tea1 "What united. is your meaning ? ' he in- " I was almost afraid to say what I meant, but I took courage, while trembling. 4 I mean, darling,' 1 answered, 4 that if we could both be content with refreshment of tea, we'd soon have a better and blither house than ever we had.' "'I've boen a bad father and a bad husband,' he said for by this time he liad nearly come to himself ' but all is gone, and it's too late to mend.' "1 made no answer, but just dre down the blanket from the faces of the sleeping children there never was any thing touched my husband like the little child. " ' Is all qone 1 ' I asked ; and with that he crushed his face down on his Cltwtjtru UBUUB ih luejr lay uu iuo unuio, and burst into tears. I knelt down .1 ..1 1. 1 ll.,... lu, .V,,. tnVU beside him, and thanked God for the tears in my heart, but I was so choked I could not sneak : and we staid that way ever so long, neither saying a word. Now it is strange what turns the mind will take. Even while his face was wet with tears, my darling lifted it.' " ' Katie,' he said and it may seem to you nothing but a fond old woman's fancy, but I've always thought there was no music in the world ever so sweet as the way my husband says 'Katie' unto this day ' Katie,' he says, ' let's turn the cup, and see what it reads.' Like all youngsters, I believe, we had tossed many a cup, in our boy and girl days, just for laughter. He took it up quite serious like, and turned it, and as he looked into it he smiled. ' There's a clear road.' he went on, 'and a house at the top, and a wonderful lot of planks; thev can't be ours, tor there is not a plank in or near the pit now.' "'But there will be,' I answered, eagerly. 'It was only yesterday, down where the spmny overhangs the pool, 1 met Mrs. (irovelev. Mia gave me a blithe cood morninc, and asked if my goodman was going to turn his leaf soon. "Tell him to make haste from me," she said, laughing like a sun beam : " for he's too good a follow to go on much longer as he's been going. There's goodness in him. "'Are vou sure she said that?" whis pered mv husband. "So 1 told him indeed ßhe did, and more. ' She said she was waiting until you'd resolve to turn tolike a man, and " . . a . a m e i .Ii cut down tne small lot oi timter mat s waiting for your hatchet on the corner farm. "Ira determined, sue continued, " no one but he shall fell those trees. As I shall want to use the planks in the spring, he has no time to lose." She said something not pleasant about the public-house, but I could not let that pass ; so I up and told her that it was mv carelessness and neglect that turned you from vour own fireside.' " ' You should not have said that. Katie,' he answered. ' I'vo been a bad husband and bad lather, and I did not think there was one in the place now that would trust me with a day's work;' and his voice shook and faltered, but he got it out at last. ' Even if I did take a turn, it's not likely you could forgive me ! ' " And then I fell weeping at his feet, and laid bare my heart, and repeated that if I had been what I ought to have been, and kept the house he put over me fresh and clean, as I oucht to have kept it, instead of spending the morn :ng of my days in vanity and idleness, we need not have been two shivering sinners at that hour. I repeated again and again that it was my ways that drove him to find bv the tap-room fire what he had lost at home and then I lifted up my voice, and called to my Saviour to look down and help us both. I, with my voice lull of tears, promised my husband if he would try me only try me he would see what a home I would make for him. tie was always one for a little ioke. and even then he naid. and twirled the cup. ' A wellnlenished house in a tea-cup ; one tea X p cup between us. "'Yes,' I said, 'if nothing stronger than tt flows into that cut), or wets our lins out of that cup. we will build our Ml house.'' " We both kept long silence, and the hrenk of that blessed dav. though it showed me my husband's once glowing and manlv face pale and haggard, and his hand trembling so trembling that he could not carry the teacup to his lins without spilling its contents hrmiirht new life into our shattered borne. " Lucv, on that blessed day this day eighteen years ago strength was given us both to keep our promise to God and to each other : and somehow this text irot stamped upon our hearts i " ' We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.' " My poor darling ! ho hat! hard lines at first. Never was there a drunkard who did not cast about to make others as bad as himself. As the day drew on h had not courage, to face the street but I went up o Groveley Manor, and told the good lady that my husband would fell the trees ; that he might be trusted, because he no longer trusted in his own strength ; that he was a pledged teetotaler, and I was pledged to make hia home hannv : but that wo did not trust in our own pledges, but in faith that we could do all things through Christ, who strengthened us. " Still the lines were hard. He had to bear tin aeainst the taunts and the sneers of his boon companions, and I had t struggle hard to give a desolate room the welcome home look that would prevent bis wishing for the lights

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and the warmth and the excitement, and the praise his songs were sure to obtain. But, however scanty the furni ture, a poor man's homo can always be sweet and clean ; that is in the power of the poorest ; and though when he re turner rrotu li s hrst day's timbering there was but one tea cup between us, the old darned cloth was clean, the teapot and fire bright. No lord's children could be cleaner, and he said it was as a nosegay to kiss their sweet cheeks. It was hideous to see how his old companions loomed in upon our poverty, and tempted, or tried to tempt, huu back. One terrible drunkard staggered in, and mockingly asked if I would give my husband leave to go for an hour just half an hour even and 1 iOöc and went into the little bedroom. 1 knew I could trust him, because he had ceased to trust himself. And I blessed God when I saw the tempter staggering forth, de riding my husband, and prepared to commit violence on any who opposed his progress. ' it is some time before neighbors or once friends can believe in a drunkard's reformation. The dear good lady who took the surest way to insure his lived to see our growing prosperity ' build ing a house with a tea-cup.' she always called it and my good man was not slow to declare the effect the clear high road pictured forth in the tea-grounds bad upon his excited imagination on that memorable night. Our necessaries returned to us slowly very slowly at first but the neighbors, when they saw how hardly and earnestly my husband worked, offered us credit for what they thought we needed ; but we resolved to abstain from all luxuries until we could pay for what we got. Some of our little valuables had been left at the publichouse as security for scores, and the landlord thought himself a most in jured man when my husband redeemed his one article of finery a gold sbirtpin that had belonged to nis iatner. We learned the happiness every Satur day night of adding to our comforts: and from that day to this my husband has always found his house swept and garnished no damp linen hanging about, no buttonless shirts or holey stockings. The children were trained to neatness and good order, and the sound of discord and contradiction has never been since heard within our home. The babits of our first months of mar riage returned ; a few verses of the Holy Writ, a prayer, and a hymn refreshed the memory of our bond with God and with each other. We feel those exer cises far more impressive now than we did when we practiced them as a cold ceremony rather than as the result of a living faith. " In less than six years my husband built this cottage, I may say with his own hands. We got the bit of land at a low rate, and over hours ho worked at it as only a teetotaler can work. Uur Willy has never been a strong lad, and the doctor says if he had been even a trifle wild he would have been long ago in the church-yard. With all my love for his beautiful infancy, I did not do my duty the first two years of his life. A careless wife is never a caretul mother, whatever she may think ; but it has pleased the Lord to let in his light uj-on us betöre the night came. And it was not folly to carry two things first into house our Bible and the old tea-cup that attracted your curiosity. It is not too much to say that the cup often re minded us of our duties. And you can understand now, I think, darling, why Goodman and Granny Gray value it before all the gay china that could come from beyond the seas ; lor 1 may rightly say that, by uod s nein and messing, this house was built out of that tea-cup." Wonderful Presence of Mind in a Wo man. A correspondent writing from Pitts burgh, Pa., gives the following account of a singular accident which occurred in that city lately i "A freight train ran oil the track, near the corner oi urant street ami Seventh avenue, and demolished a dwelling in which Mrs. Reagan and her three children were sleeping. Mrs. Reagan heard the crashing of the car and the shouts of the men, und realized that the house was in langer. A lamp was burning on the other side of the room, and the fiist thought Mrs. Reagan had was of the lamp, and of the danger of explosion and fire if the house should fall. With remarkable presence oi mind she seized her babe in her arm-, sprang out of bed, ran to the lamp and extinguished it ; then she ran down stairs, and had just reached the toot oi the stairs when the car struck the house and completely shattered the end and side, throwing the wnoie nutKiin: into a mass of ruins. Mrs. Reagan and her babo were buried in the debris, the entire second floor, except a portion upheld by the back wall of the hou-e, falling over them. They were protected by the floor falling ujton portions of the wreck, which kept it from falling directly upon them. The child was not hurt, tho mother sustained many bruises, but no serious injury. The two other children were sleeping on the second floor, one side of which fell to the ground. They rolled against the wheels of the car that had caused all the ruin, and were uninjured. A chambermaid in Bangor, while shaking a rug out of a second story window, lost her balance, turned a complete somersault, and came down to the ground with a rush. Astonishing to all who witnessed the fall, she jumped up, ran into the house, and resumed her work as if nothing had happened. A very singular matrimonial case ve cently happen ed in Essex county, Va A gentleman's second wife's two sons married his third wife's two daughters. A debt for which there is no attach' ment the debt of nature.

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