Nappanee Advance-News, Volume 17, Number 37, Nappanee, Elkhart County, 27 November 1895 — Page 3

Vpr HE cold gray sky broods dark on field and hill. The singing children of the woods have fled. The hermit thrush’s golden chime is still. The happy haunters of the grass are dead; The world is hushed with numb November’s chill. feut in the spacious farmhouse, lo! the glare : Os the hospitable hearth, and on the board the rich abundance of Thanksgiving fare. The year-long savings of the housewife’s hoard, A. haryest-home, though all the fields are bare. Here sits the graybeard sire, and at his side The youngest of his line, a prattling child; And there the husband by the new-made bride; And next the low-browcd lily maiden mild, Fhe soldier son, stern-featured, eagle-eyed. From far they come by many parted ways To meet once more beneath the ancient roof, Dear ever with the love of childhood's days; And hero again life’s severed warp and . woof Are Joined, and time’s swift wing a moment stays. And memory makes the old man young again, I He tells the oft-told tale, the outworn Jest. Outdoor the snow falls - fast on hill and plain, ; The distant church-clock tolls the hour of rest, And thanks are offered Heaven —not In vain. .-Charles L. Hildreth, in Demorest's Magazine. THANKSGIVING. That fields have yielded ample store Os fruit and wheat and corn, That nights of restful blessedness Have followed each new morn; That (lowers have blossomed' by the paths That thread our working days. That love has filled us with delight. We offer heartfelt praise. What shall we say of sorrow’s hours. Os hunger and denial. Os tears, and loneliness, and loss, Os long and bitter trial? Oh, In the darkness have not we Seen new, resplendent stars? Have we not learned some song of faith Within nur prison bars? Not only for the earth’s rich gifts. Strewn thick along our way, Her looks of constant loveliness, We thank our God to-day; But for the spirit’s subtle growth. The higher, better part, The treasure gathered In the soul— The harvest of the heart. —Mary F. Butts, In Youth’s Companion.

M jjs odds,” said Miss

Meheiable Brown, dashing a stray tear from her faded blue eyes, as she meditatively lifted a huge brown potato from the shining basin which she held on her lap and proceeded to pare it. “What with Lindy’s dying and John’s going away to college right here in my own house; the Green's, that I’d lived beside nigh onto forty years, takin’ it into their heads tha{ they must move into the city and be somebody, and Ruth mnrryin’ as she did and goin’ off ,s a missionary to Feejio or Hottentot; 6amantha lngols, that I’ve knowed ever since she was Samantha Merrymather, and wore pink calico pinafores to deestrict school, gettin’ the western fever and settin’ off with only a week’s notice to take up a claim and fight Indians way, out in Okelhama, or some such place. Though why she couldn’t be content on the neatest little fortj acres in all Blair county, that poor Silas slaved so hard for and left her when he died of typhus, is, as I told Eleanor Winner, when we was talkin’ it over at the mite society, the day it met at your house. Mis’ Williams, a mystery to me, and alius will be. For my part I never was one o' them rovin’ kind, and there ain’t a citizen in all Brownsville that has stuck any closer thanMetlietabelßrown for the past sixty odd years, if I can’t vote and do say it os shouldn't. “The Browns never was of that unstable disposition. There was my grandfather, Ebenezer Brown; Ihe settled on that eighty just south of ithe meetin’ house when there wasn’t a white man nearer than-fifteen miles. He come to stay and he stayed. When lie died my grandfather ‘took the same place and I've heard him pay lie never went beyond the county line buz once In thirty ysars, and that was in lookin’ after some stray cattle. Then there was my father, Jacob Brown, no one can say he was any hand to be skylarkin’ over the country. He was one o’ them peaceable, home-lovin’ men, and liked to took a fit when he was subporaied on the jury to Millersburg the time Nat Williams stole them sheep. „ “As for Lindy and me, you know as well as I do, we ain't slept outside this house In forty year, exceptin’ the time when Cousin Emily was married, and nothin’ would do but we must go to the weddin’. It was all fuss and flutter. We

never got to bed ’till near midnight, and I like to never closed my eyes to Bleep a wink the whole night. Lindy come homo next day with a nervous headache that lasted her until Sunday mornin’, and she wouldn’t have gone out then only it was communion. But, poor girl, she’s sleepin’ quiet enough under the snow this winter,” and Miss Mehetabel drew a long sigh and brushed aside another tear. “As I was sayin’, Mis’ Williams, what with all these changes, to say nothin’ of the belfry blowin’ oil the meetin’ Louse and makin’ it look so sort o’ squatty, this has hen the longest, dreariest year of all my life. To be sure I ain’t got anything to complain of bo far as creature comforts is concerned,” glancing approvingly around the tidy kitchen, and through the open door at the spotless dimity curtains of the best room. “But I don’t seem to have no livin’ soul to take an interest in, and nobody to take an interest in me, exceptin’ Rover and the parrot, and they are both like to die of old age most anj day. “I ain’t got no heart to eat nor work. It used to be so cozy like when Lindy ond me was here together, she' settin’ on one side of the table and me the o.ther, I always poured the tea and she dished the sauce. Lindy was good company—sort o’ cheerful like, even after she took that hackin’cough that

“ WITH NOBODY TO CATiK FOR ’EM.”

proved the death o’ her, as I always said it would if it lasted long- enough. “We was only two old maids, Lindy and me, but we was happy and comfortable. What with the weekly prayermeetin' roll in’ round so often; the mite society and the quarterly meetin’ coinin’ off once in three months, and the presidin’ elder stoppin’ with us on account of the preacher alv.'nys happenin’ to have so many children and bein’ sca’ce o’ spare beds, we hadn’t much time to be lonesome. ' “But it's all changed now Lindy’s gone. I turn sort o’ sick and faint when I think of Thanksgivin’ cornin’ on, and I settin' here and eatin’ turkey and cranberry sauce alt by myself,” and Miss Mehdtabcl, under pretense of rinsing her potatoes, walked to tne sink and dried her fast-filling’ eyes on the snowy towel. “Mr. Williams and I have thought and talked it all over, Mehetabel,” said the little pastor's wife, who had sat half smiling, half sweeping, but at the same time busily stitching away on a child's apron during Miss Mchetabel’s lengthy discourse. “We both think you ought not to live here alone as you have been doing, when there are hundreds of destitute children who need just such love and care as you are able to give. A child would be a great blessing in your lonely home. Have you ever thought of this, Mehetabel?” “Strange I But do you know X was thinkin’ about that very thing only yesterday. As I was goin’ down to the grocery store to buy a pound of tea, I went pass Mis’ Ellis’ old home and there was four o’ them children hangin’ on the rickety gate, with nobody to care for ’em, and their poor mother off doin' wasliin’ or scrubbin’, or anything she can turn her hand to —so sort o’ delicate as she is, too. “There wasn’t a better brought up girl in this whole deestrict than Mirandy Walters. That was her name before she was married. She was sent away to high school one term, too. But she had a hard row to hoe ever since her poor husband was run over by the steam engine and killed so sudden. I always feel like puttin’ my fingers in my ears every time I hear it screech at the crossin’ to this day. “Them children is just as bright as a whip. There’s Tildy, now, next to the oldest girl. They say there ain’t a scholar in the Sunday-school can recite verses to beat her, and her eyes shinin' as black as a coal when she stood up spealcin’ a piece at the Sundayschool concert. Well, as I was sayin', as I went by there yesterday and see ’em hangin’ on that rickety gate, so sort o’ forlorn nnd neglected, somethin’ sort o’ spoke right to me: ‘Mehetabel Brown, you ought to take one o’ them children and give ’em schoolin’. "I turned round sudden, but there

wasn’t nobody there, but someway Ct, been thinkin’ About it ever since? Then your cornin’ over this momih’ and sayin’ the same thing makes it look to me like an unknown providence. “Tildy’s my choice, and if shell come I’ll take her, and she shan’t lack for nothin’ as far as this world’s goods go. “If she could only be here by Thanksgiving. But there I I’ve an idee. Why not have ’em all over here to dinner, and you and Mr. Williams come, too? That would make—let me see—twelve besides myself. The best china wouldn’t hardly go ’round. But that doesn’t matter. I can eat off one o’ them blue plates just as well. Two turkeys ought to do, with plenty of mince pies and cranberry sauce. I’ve got ’em, too, as fat, sleek turkeys as ever was put on a platter. We could talk it over then, sort o’ quiet, while the children played. It wouldn’t be so lonesome as to look forward to settin’ down all by myself. I feel more cheery already. But dear, dear how I have run on! It’s quarter to twelve this minute, and these potatoes only half cooked, and you settin’ by starvin’ for your dinner.” Thanksgiving morning dawned clear and cold without, but within the snug home of Miss Mehetabel Brown there was warmth and comfort. This was to be a great day in her quiet, uneventful life. Preparations had been making for days.

Miss Mehetabel had taken from the upper bureau drawer in the spare bedroom that very morning sundry knitted tidies and mats, together with a pair of highly-colored and embroidered pillowshams that never saw the light excepting upon state occasions. These, with a huge beaded pincushion, purchased by Miss Melietabel’s grandmother from a genuine Indian princess, and which now rested primly upon the old-fash-ioned dresser, showed that the occasion in her eyes was one of great and unusual interest. In the snug pantry nil was in readiness. There were rows of mince and pumpkin pies, tender and toothsome; dainty preserves and jellies all ready to “set pn,” while from the oven of tho bright little range in The kitchen proceeded savory odors wondrously suggestive. Miss Mehetabel herself was arrayed in her best brown merino, carefully protected by a neat white apron. She had hesitated in making her toilet between the ordinary gold breast-pin to fasten her linen collars and a pale green ribbon bow with white lace at the ends, which had been her one piece of extravagance at Cousin Emily’s wedding. “It isn’t out of keepin’ with this occasion,” 6he murmured softly to herself at last, as the tOilance turned in favor of tho latter. “It brightens me up e bit,” and she carefully pinned it on and adjusted the ends. “Thanksgiving only comes once a year at best, and sucli a one as this but once or twice in a lifetime.” There was a sudden knock at the front door. In jvalked the preacher and his family, followed by Mrs. Ellis and her little flock, made as presentable as their scanty means would allow. All was excitement and merry talk, and soon the quiet house rang with the happy laughter of children. Dinner was dispatched by and by, and what a.dinner it was, to be cure—never tc be forgotten by certain empty little stomachs. The great matter was talked over after dinner, when they were cozily seated in the snug parlor. It was not all news to Mrs. Ellis, for she had received a gentle hint from the little pastor's wife a few days before, and had decided, like the brave, sensible woman she was, to hide the pain of the parting in her own heart and think only of the best interests of her bright little girl. It was all settled at last, and the children were called in for a parting hymn and prayer. As they knelt together in the gray winter twilight a deep, quiet' joy stole into the desolaite heart of Me-, hetcbel Brown. (f/ie drew closer to her the little form that knelt beside her, and whispered softly to herself amid her falling tears: “He setteth the solitary in families."— Emma Sparles Ulrich, in Unlon Signal,

TALMAGE’S SEKMON. A. Notable Discourse Giving “Advice to Young Women.” Tlmvlv Kagxefltlnnz to th Sex Gener.llj— Advent of the “New Wornhu” Deplored—Let the Young Women Got Close to God. Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage took for the subject of a recent sermon to his Washington congregation: “A Word to Women,” basing 1 it on the following letter lately received: Cincinnati, O.—Reverend Sir: You delivered a discourse in answer to a letter from six young men of Fayette, 0., requesting you to preach a sermon on "Advice to Young Men." Are we justified in asking you to preach a sermon on "Advice to Young Women?" [Letter signed by six young women.] Christ, who took His text from a flock of birds flying overhead, saying: “Behold the fowls of the air,” and from t%e flowers in the valley, saying: “Consider the lilies of the field,” and from the clucking of a barnyard fowl, Baying: “Asa hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, ’’.and from a crystal of salt picked up by the roadside, saying: “Salt is good,” will grant us a blessing if, instead of taking a text from the Bible, I take for my text this letter from Cincinnati, which is only one of many letters which I have received from young women in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, London, Edih.burgh and from the ends of the earth, all implying that having some months ago preached the sermon on “Advice to Young Men,” I could not, without neglect of duty, refuse to preach a Bermon on “Advice to Young Women.” It is the more important that the pulpit be heard on this subject at this time when we are having such an illimitable discussion about what is called the “New Woman,” as though some new creature of God had arrived on earth, or were about to arrive. One theory is that slie will be an athlete, and boxing-glove and foot-ball and pugilistic encounter will characterize her. Another theory ;is that she will superintend ballot-boxes, sit in congressional hall, and through improved politics bring the millennium by the evil she will extirpate and the good she will install. Another theory is that she will adopt masculine attire and make sacred a vulgarianism positively horrific. Another theory is that she will be so esthetic that broom handle and roll-ing-pin and coal scuttle will be pictorialized with tints from soft skies or suggestions of Rembrandt and Raphael. But I must be specific. This letter before me wants advice to young women.

Advice the first: Get your soul right with God and you will be in the. best attitude for everything that' comes. New ways of voyaging by sea, new ways of threshing the harvests, new ways of printing books, and the patent office is enough to exchant a man who has mechanical ingenuity and knows a good deal of levers and wheels, and we hardly do anything as it used to be done; invention after invention, invention on top of invention. But in the matter of getting right with God there has not been an invention for six thousand years. It’s on the same line of repentance that David exercised about his sins, and the same old style of prayer that the publican used when he emphasized it by an inward stroke of both hands, and the same faith in Christ that Paul suggested to the jailer the night the penitentiary broke clown. Aye, that is the reason I have more confidence in it. It has been tried by more millions than I dare to state lest I come far short of the brilliant facts. All through Christ earnestly tried to get right with 6od, are right and always will ho right. That gives the young women who gets that position superiority over all rivalries, all jealousies, all misfortunes, all health failings, all social disasters, and all the combined troubles of eighty years, if She shall live to be an octogenarian. If the world fails to appreciate her, she says: “God loves me, the angels in Heaven are in sympathy with me, and I can afford to be patient until the day when the imperial chariot shall wheel to my door to take me up to my coronation.” If health goes, she says, “I can' endure the present distress, for I am on the way to a climate the fitet breath of which will make me proof against even the slightest discomfort.” If she be jostled with perturbations of social life she can say: “Well, when I begin my life among the thrones of Ileaven and the kings and queens unto God shall be my associates, it will not make much difference who on earth forgot me when tlie invitations to that reception were made out.” All right with God you are all right with everything. Martin Luther, writing a letter of condolence to one of his friends who has lost his daughter, began by saying: ‘‘This is a hard world for girls.” It is for those who are dependent upon their own wits and. the whims of the world, and the preferences of human favor, but those who take the Eternal God for their portion not later than fifteen years of age, and'that is ten years later than it ought to be, will find that while Martin Luther’s letter of condolence was true in regard to many, if not most, with respect to those who have the wisdom, and promptitude, and the earnestness to get right with God, I declare that this is a good world for girls. Advice the second: Make it a matter of religion to take care of your physical health. Ido not wonder that the Greeks deified health and called Hygeia a goddess. I rejoice that there have been so many modes of maintaining and restoring young womanly health invented in our time. They may have been known a long time back, but they have been popularized in our day—lawn tennis, croquet and golf and the bicycle. It always seemed strange and inscrutable that our human raefe should be so slow of locomotion, when creatures of less impor-

tance have powers of velocity, wing of bird or foot of antelope, leaving us far behind, and while it seems so important that we be in many places in a short while, we were weighed down with incapacities, and most men if they run a mile are exhausted or dead from exhaustion. It was left until the last decade of the nineteenth century to give the speed which we see whirling through all our cities and along the country roads, and with that speed comes health. The women of the next decade will ,be healthier than at any time since the world was created, while the invalidism which has sooflen characterized womanhood will passover to manhood, which by its posture on the wheel, is coming to curved spine and cramped chest and a deformity for which another fifty years will not have power to make rescue. Young man, sit up straight when you ride. Darwin says the human race is descended from the monkey, but the bicycle will turn a hundred thousand men of the present generation in physical condition, from man to monkey. For good womanhood, I thank God that this mode of recreation has been invented. Use it wisely, modestly, Christianly. No good woman needs to be told what attire is proper and what behavior is right. If anything be doubtful, reject it. A lioydenish, boisterous, masculine woman is the detestation of all, and every revolution of the wheel she rides is toward depreciation and downfall. Take care of your health, O woman; of your nerves, iD not reading the trash which makes Up ninetynine out of one hundred novels, or by eating too many cornucopias of confectionery. Take care of ytmr eyes by not reading at hours when you ought to be sleeping. Take care of your ears by stopping them against the tides of gossip that surge through every neighborhood. Health! Only those know it£ value who have lost it. The earth is girdled with pain, and a vast proportion of it is the price paid for early recklessness. I close this though with the salutation from Macbeth: Now good digestion wait on appetite And health on both. Advice the third: Appreciate your mother while you have her. It is the almost universal testimony of young women who have lost mothers, that they did not realize what she was to them until after her exit from this life. Indeed, mother is in the appreciation of many a young lady a hindrance. The maternal inspection is often considered an obstacle. Mother has many notions about that which is proper and that which is improper. It is astounding how much more many girls know at eighteen than their mothers at forty-five. With what an elaborate argument, perhaps spiced with some temper, the youngling tries to reverse the opinion of the oldling. The sprinkle of gray on the maternal forehead is rather an indication to the recent graduate of the female seminary that the circumstances of to-day or to-night are not fully appreciated. What a wise boarding school that would be if the mothers were the pupils and the daughters the teachers. How well the would chaperone the fifties. Then mothers do not amount to much anyhow. They are in the way, and are always asking questions about postage’marks of letters, and asking: “Who is that Mary D.?” and “where did you form that acquaintance, Flora?” and where did you get that ring, Myra?” For mothers have such unprecedented means of knowing every thing—they say “it was a bird in the air” that told them. Alas! for that bird in the air. Will not someone lift his gun and shoot it? It would take whole libraries to hold the wisdom which the daughter knows more than her mother. “Why can not I have this?” “Why can not I do that?” And the question in many a group has been, although not plainly stated: “What shall we do with the mothers, anyhow? They are so far behind the times.” Permit me to suggest that if the mother had given more time to looking after herself and less time to looking after you, she would have been as fully up-to-date as,* you, in music, in syle of gait, in esthetic taste, and in all sorts of information. I expect that while you were studying botany, and chemistry, and embroidery, and the new opera, she was studying household economies. But one day from overwork, or sitting up of nights with a neighbor’s sick child, or a blast of the east wind, on which pneumonias are horsed, mother is sick. Yet the family she will soon be well, for she lias been sick so often, and always has got well, and the physician comes three times a day, and there is a consultation of the doctors, and the news is gradually broken that recovery is impossible, given in the words “while there is life there is hope.” And the white pillow over which are strewn the locks a little tinted with snow, becomes the point around which all the family gather, some standing, some kneeling, and the pulse beats the last throb, and the bosom trembles with the last breath, and the question is asked in a whisper by all the group: “Is she gone?” And all is over. Now come the regrets, the daughter reviews her former criticism of maternal supervision. For the first time she realizes what it is to have a mother, aud what it is to lose a mother. Tell me, men and women, young and old, did any of us appreciate how much mother was to us until she was gone? Young woman, you will probably never have a more disinterested friend than your mother. When she says anything is unsafe or imprudent, you had better believe it is unsafe or imprudent. When she declares is is something you ought to do, I think you had better do it She has seen more of the world than you have. Do you think *he would have any mercenary or conVenpcible motive in what she advises you? She would give her life for you if it were called for. Do you know of any one else who would do more than that for you? Do

you know of any one who would do as much? Again and again she has already endangered that life during Bis weeks of diphtheria or scarlet fever, and she never once brought up the question of whether she had better stay, breathing day and night the contagion. The graveyards arc full of mothers who died taking care of their children. Better appreciate your mother before your appreciation of her will be no kindness to her, and the post-mortem regrets will be more and more of an agony as the years pass on. Big headstones of polished Aberdeen, aud the best epitaphs which the family put together could compose, and a garland of whitest roses from .the conservatory are often the attempt to atone for the thanks we ought to have uttered in living ears, and the kind words that would have done more good than all the calla lilies ever piled up on the silent mounds of the cemeteries.

Advice the fourth: Allow no time to pass without brightening one’s life. Within five minutes’ walk of you there is someone in a tragedy compared with which Shakspeare’s King Lear or Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean has no power. Go out and brighten somebody’s life with a cheering word, or smile, or a flower. Take a good book and read a chapter to that blind ’man. Go up that dark alley and make that invalid woman laugh with some good story. Go to that house from which that child has been taken by death and tell the father and mother what an escape the child has had from the winter of earth in the springtime of Heaven. For God’s sake, make someone happy for ten minutes, if for no longer a time. A young woman bound on such a mission, what might she not accomplish. Oil, there are thousands of these manufacturers of sunshine. They are “King's Daughters” whether inside or outside that delightful organization. They do more good before they are twenty years of age than selfish women who live ninety, and they are so happy just because they make others happy. Compare such a young woman who feels she has such a mission witli one who lives a round of vanities, card case in hand calling on people for whom she does not care, except for some social advantage, and insufferably bored when the call is returned, and trying to look young after they are old, and living a life ttf insincerity and hollowness, and dramatization and sham. Young woman! live to make others happy and you will be happy. Live for yourself and you will be miserable. There never has been an exception to the rule; there never will be an exception.

Advice the fifth: Plan out your life ou a big scale, whether you are a farmer’s daughter, or a shepherdess among the hills, or the flattered pet of a drawing room filled with statuary, and pictures, and bric-a-brac. Stop where you are and make a plan for your lifetime. You can not be satisfied with a life of frivolity, and giggle, and indirection. Trust the world, and it will cheat you if it does not destroy you. The Redoubtable was the name of an enemy’s shiprthat Lord Nelson spared twice from demolition, but that same ship afterward sent the ball that killed him, and the world on which you smile may aim at you its deadliest weapon. Bea God’s woman. This moment make as mighty a change as did a college student #f England. lie had neglected his studies, rioting at night with dissipated companions and sleeping in the class room when he ought to have been listening. A fellow student came into his room one morning before the young man I am speaking of had arisen from his pillow,, and said to him- “Paley, you are a fool! You are wasting your opportunities. Do not throw away your life.” Paley said: “I was so struck with what he said that I lay in bed uhtil I had formed my plan for life. I ordered my fire to be always over night. I arose at five and read steadily all day. Allotted to each portion of the day its proper branch of study, and become the senior wrangler.” What an hour that was when a resolution definitely placed changed a young man from a reckless and time-wasting student to a consecrated man who stopped not until all time and all eternity shall be debtor to his pen and influence. Young women! draw out, and decide what you will be, and do, God helping. Write it out in a plain hand, .opt like the letters which Josephine received from Napoleon in Italy, the writing so scrawling and scattered that it was sometimes taken as a map of the seat of war. Put the plan t>n the wall of your room, it in the opening of a blank book, or put it where you will be compelled often to see it. A thousand questions of your coining life you can not settle now, but there is one question you can settle independent of man, woman, angel and devil, and that is that you will be a God’s woman now, henceforth and forever. Claso hands with the Almighty. Pythagoras represented life by the letter Y, because it easily divides into two ways. Look out for opportunities of cheering, inspiring, rescuing and saving all the people you can. Make a league with the Eternities. I seek your present and everlasting safety. David Brewster said that a comet belonging to our system called Lexell’s comet is lost, as it ought to have appeared thirteen times, and haa not appeared at all. Alasl it is not only the lost comets, but the lost stars, and what were considered fixed stars. Some of the most brilliant and steady souls have disappeared. One who has known in storms to sail 1 have on board; 4bove the roarring of the gale, I hear my Lord. He holds me when the billows smile; I shall not fail: If short ’tis sharp, Jf loan ’tis light; i>'e tempore all. Doctrine is nothing but the skin of trutfe let up and stuffed.—B. W. Beecher.