Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1883 — Page 6

A DREAM. »heard a dog howl in the moonlight night. And I went to the window to see the eight; AH the dead that ever I knew Geing'One by one; and two by two, On they passed, and on they passed, Townsfellows all, from first to last; Born in the moonlight of the lane, And quenched in the.heavy shadow again. Schoolmates, marching as when we played At soldiers once, but now more staid; Those were the strangest sights to me Who were drowned, I knew, in the awful sea. Straight and handsome folks: bent and weak, too; And some that I loved and gasped to speak .to; Seme but a day in their churchyard bed, And some that J had not known were dead. A long, long crowd, where each seemed '.*>nely, And yet of them all there was one, one only, That raised a head or looked my way, And she seemed to linger, but might not stay. On, on, a moving bridge they made Across the moon stream, from shade to shade; Young and old, women and men; Many long forgot, but remembered then. And first there came a bitter laughter, And a sound of tears a moment after; And then a music so’lofty and gay That every morning day by day; I strive to recall it if I may. —f Bojton Transcript.

AUTUMN BLOSSOMS.

How was it that I came to be an old bachelor? Not because of hating women, lam sure, for I liked them very much, and never could have spoken to ohe rudely or discourteously in my life. As nearly as I know it was in this wise: My father died, leaving a family of children, a nyife, an( l 811 old father and 'mother, of whom only myself was able to earn a shilling. He had never saved anything. So, after the first great grief, when we had calmed down, and were about to look matters quietly in the face, there was a wretched sort of prospect for us. I was only an accountant, and had a young fellow’s habit of wasting my small salary in a thousand different ways. I had been “paying attention,” too, to Elsie Hall, who, young and childish as she was, had a way of leading her admirers into extravagance. Of all the trials of that never to be forgotten time, I think the greatest was appearing niggardly in those baby blue eyes. I did not mind wearing plain suits, discarding kid gloves, and renouncing the opera; but not to lay those boquets, and books, and music, and dainty bits of jewelery,and multitudinous trifles at Elsie’s feet, was a very terrible ordeal. I passed through, and if ever a man had reason to be thankful I had, for the acquisitive little beauty jilted me in a month for Tom Tandem, who was rich and lavish of gifts, and who ran away from her after a marriage of ten months. I worked day and night, and managed to keep the wolf from the door. Sometimes I used to think how well it was for Elsie that she had not really loved me, for she could have had nothing but a dismal prospect of wearing out her youth in a dreary, hopeless engagement to one too poor to marry. That was until Tom ran off. Then I thought it would have been better for her to have shared our humble home and poor fare, and the love I could have given her, than to be deserted so. And I pitied her as if she had not proved herself heartless. But I never went near her, of course, and I never even’spoke of her to my mother. I grew no younger all this while, and every year seemed to add five to my looks. I had never been very handsome or very merry, and I soon became conscious of a peculiar middle-aged look, which settles down upon some people very early. Strangers, too, began to take me for the head of the family, and once, in a new neighborhood, the butcher alluded to “my wife.” I found out that he meant my mother, and only wondered that it was not dear old grannie. She was 80, grandfather 90, and they died one bright autumn day before prosperity came to us, died within an hour of each other, for grannie said: “I think I’ll just Me down a bit now, Lemual don’t need me. I’m very tired.” Then she kissed me and said: “You’ve been a good boy to your grandpa, Edward, you’ll have that to think of.” And when next we went to her she was dead, with her cheek upon her hand like a sleeping child.

So two were gone, and we were sadder than before. And then Jean, my eldest sister, married at 16 a physician, who carried her off to Hindoostan in her honeymoon. And we could none of us feel the wedding a happy thing. But prosperity did come at last. I had worked hard for it, and anything a man makes his sole object in this life he is very sure to attain. We were comfortable—easy. Ah, what • word that is after years of struggle! At last we were rich. But by that time I was five-and-forty—a large, dark, middleaged man, with a face that looked to myself in the glass as though it were perpetually intent on figures. The girls were married* pick had taken to the sea, and we saw him once a year or so; and Ashton was at home with mother and myself

—the only really handsome member of our family, and just two and twenty. And it was on his birthday, I remember, that the letter came to me from poor Hunter—that letter which began: “When these lines reach you, Ned Sanford, I shall have my six feet of earth—all I ever owned, or would had I lived to be a hundred.” We had been young together, though he was really older than I, and 'we had been close friends once; but a roving fit nod seized him and we had not met for years. I knew he had married a young Kentish girl, and knew no more, but now he told me that she was dead, and that his death would leave a daughter an orphan. “She is not quite penniless,” be wrote, “for her mother had a little income,which, poor as I was, I was never brute enough to meddle with, and it has descended to her. But I have been a rolling stone, gathered no moss all my life,and we have never stayed long enough in one place to make friends. Will you be her guardian? It is a dving man’s last request ” And then he wrote some words, com‘r»g from his heart, I know, which bein of myself I could not think that I de served them.

And the result of that letter, and of another from the lawyer who had Annie Hunter’s fortune in charge, was that one soft spring day found me on board a great steamer which lay at rest after her voyage in the protecting arms, of Liverpool, with two little hands in mine, and a pair of great, brown eyes lifted to my face, and a sweet voice choked with sobs saying something of “poor papa” and how iquch he had spoken of me, and the lovely voyage, and of the green graves left behind, and I, who had gone to meet a child and found a woman, looking at her and feeling towards her as I had looked upon nor felt to any other. Not Elsie to HalL It was not the boyish Love dream come again. Analyzing the emotion, I found only a great longing to protect and comfort her, to guard her from every pain and ill; and I said to myself: “This is as a father must feel to a daughter; I can be a parent to George Hunter’s child in very truth.”

And I took her to the old house and to my old mother. I thought only of those; somehow, I never forgot how she brightened the sombre rooms. How, as her sadness wore away, she sang to ns in the twilight! How strangely a something which made the return home, and the long hours of the evening, seem so much brighter than they had ever been before, stole into my life! I never went to sleep in church now; I kept awake to ■ look at Olive Hnnter—to listen to. the pure contralto,as she joined in the singing. Sometimes I caaght her eye—her great unfathomable brown eye—for she had a habit of looking at me. Was she wondering how a face could be so stern and grim? I used to ask myself. Ashton used to look at her also. He had been away when she first came to us, and when he returned she was a grand surprise to him. “Oh, how lovely she is!” he had said to me. “She is very pretty,” I replied. Ashton laughed. “May I never be an old bachelor if it brings me|to calling such a girl very “pretty,” he said, and I felt conscious that my cheek flushed, and I felt angry that he should have spoken of me thus though I had never cared before. They like each other very much—these two young things. They were together a great deal. A pretty picture they made in the Venetian window in the sunset. He is a fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxon looking youth, she so exquisitely dark and glowing. \ Every one liked her. Even my old clerk Stephen Hadley used to say her presence lit up the office more than a dozen lamps, the nearest approach to a poetical speech of which old Stephen was ever known to be guilty; and ! hever knew how much she was to me until one evening, when coming home earlier than usual, I saw in that Venetian window where Ashton and Olive had made so many pleasant pictures for me, one that I never forgot —that I never shall forget as long as I live.

She stood with her back to me. Ashton was kneeling at her feet. The sound of the opening door dissolved the picture; but I had seen it, and I stole away to hide the stab it had given me. I sat down in my own room, and hid my face in my hands, and would have been glad to hide it beneath my coffin lid. I knew now that I loved Olive Hunter; that I loved her not as an old man might love a child, but as a young man might love the woman who ought to be his wife —better than I had loved Elsie Hall; for it was not boyish passion, but earnest, heartfelt love. ' lin love? I arose and looked in the mirror, and my broad-shouldered reflection flashed before my gaze. The spring time of my life had come and gone, my summer had flown, and in the autumn I had dreamed of love, bud and blossom. I knelt beside my bed and prayed that'

I might not hate my brother—that I might not even envy him. His touch upon my door startled me. He came with something in his manner not usual to him, and sat down opposite me. For a ■few moments we were silent Then he said, speaking rapidly, and blushing like a girl: “Ned, old fellow, you—you saw me making a fool of myself just now I suppose?” “I saw you on your knees,” I said. “And thought me 8 silly fellow, eh? But you don’t know, Ned. You can’t understand—you’ve been so calm and cool all your life through, you know. She’s driving me mad. Ned, I do believe she likes me, but she won’t say yes. I’d give my right hand for her love. I must have it, and I think you can help me, Ned. From something she said, I believe she thinks you would disapprove; perhaps you are one of those old fellows who want every one to marry for money. Tell her you’re not, Ned dear old fellow; tell her yon have no objection, and I’ll never forget it, indeed I won’t" “Tell her I have no objection,” I repeated mechanically. “You know you are master here, and as much my father as if you really were one, instead of my brother,” said Ashton. “If I did not know how kindly you had always felt to us both I should not confide in you, for it’s a serious thing to be in love, Ned, and yon may thank heaven you know nothing of it" Know nothing of it! Ah, if he could have read my heart just then! “I’ll do what I can, Ashton,” I said at last. ‘Til try my best.” And he flung his arms about mein his own boyish fashion, and left me alonealone with my own thoughts. He had said truly; I had been like a father to him. I was old enough to be her’s, andjno one should know my silly dream. I would hide it while I lived. As I said once: “I’ve only the old folks and the children,” I said then, “I will only think of mother and Ashton. Let my own life be as nothing; I have lived for them—if needs be I will die for them,” But I would not see or speak to Olive that night, nor until the next day was quite done. Then, in the twilight I sat beside her and took her hand. “Olive” I said, “I think you know that Ashton loves you. lam sure that he has told you so. And you—can you not love him?” She drew her hand from mine, and said not one word. “I should rejoice in my brother’s happiness. I should think him happier in having your love than anything else could make him,” I said. “I told him I would tell you so.” , And then she spoke. “You wish me to marry Ashton?” Reproach was in the tone— reproach and sorrow. “If you can love him, Olive,” I said. She arose. She seemed to shrink from me, though in the dark I could not see her face. “I do not love him” she said. And we were still as death. Then suddenly Olive Hunter began to sob. •*You have been very kind to me. I love you all,” she said, ‘.but I can notstay here now. Please let ma go some where else. I must—l cannot live here.’ “Go from us, Olive?” I said. “Nay; we are no tyrants; and assured you do no love him, Ashton will—” “Hush!” she panted; “hush! Please let me go away! Please let me go away!” The moon was rising. Htt new born light fell on Olive’s face. Perhaps its whiteness made her look so pale. She leaned against the wall with her little hand upon her heart, her unfathomable eyes full of pain. How had I hurt her so? A new thought struck me. “Perhaps you love some one else, Olive?” And at this she turned her face from me and hid it in her hands. “Too much—too much. You might have spared me that,” she said. “Let me go away, I wish you had never brought me here.” And I arose and went to her. I bent over the woman I loved. I touched her with my hand; her soft hair brushed my cheek. “Olive,” I said, “If coming here has brought pain upon you, I wish I had not I would have died to make you happy.” And my voice trembled and my hand shook, and she turned her face toward me again and looked into my eyes. What she saw in mine I do not know—the truth, I think. In hers I read this: I was not old to her —not too old to be loved. I stole my arm about her; she did not untwine it I uttered her name, “Olive” huskily. Afterward I told her of my struggles with myself, not then. I said: “Olive, I love you but it cannot be that you care for me. I am old enough to be your father.” And again I saw in her eyes the happy truth, and took her to my heart But we kept our secret for awhile, for we both loved Ashton, and both knew that his wound was not too deep to find a balm; and within a year, when the boy brought home a bride, a pretty creature

whom he loved, and who loved himj claimed Olive. And she is mine now; and the autumn blossoms of my heart will only fade on earth to bloom again through all eternity n Paradise.

Hints for Love Making.

First catch your lover. r Hold him while you have him. Don’t let go of him to catch every new one that comes along. Try to get pretty well acquainted with him before you take him for life. Unless you intend to support him, find out whether he earns enough to support you. Don’t make up your mind that he is an angel Don’t palm yourself off on him for one either. Don’t let him spend his salary on you; that right should be reserved till after marriage. If you have conscientious scruples against marrying a man with a mother, say so in time, that he may get rid )f her to oblige you, or get rid of you to oblige her, as he thinks best If you object to secret societies md tobacco, it is better to come out with your objections now than to reserve tlem for curtain lectures hereafter. If your adorer happens to fancy a certain shade of hair, don’t color oi bleach to oblige him. Remember your hair belongs to you, and he doesn’t Be very sure it is a man you B'e in love with, and not the clothes he weirs. Fortune and fashion are both so fckle that it is foolish to take a stylish suflt for better or worse. j If you intend to keep three servants after marriage, settle the matter beforehand. The man who is making love to you may expect you to do your own washing. Don’t try to hurry up a p oposal by carrying on a flirtation with tome other fellow. Different men are nude of different material, and the oht you want may go off in a fit of jealousy and forget to come back. f If you have a love letter te write don’t copy it out of a “Letter Writer.” If your young man ever happened ts consult the same volume, he would knov your sentiments were borrowed. Don’t marry a man to oblge any third person in existence. It is four right to suit yourself in the matter. But remember at the same time that love is blind, and a little friendly advice from one whose advice is worth haviag may insure a life time of happiness, prevent one of misery. In love affairs always keep your eyes wide open, so that when- the right man comes along you may see him. When you do see him you will recognize him and the recognition will be mutual. If you have no fault to find with him personally, financially, conscientiously, socially, morally, politically, religiously, or any other way, he is probably perfect enough to suit you, and you can afiord Believe him; Hope in him; Love him; Marry him!

A Masked Bar in Maryland.

Charleetown News. In the hearing of one of the whisky cases last Wednesday a singular contrivance for evading the local option law was brought to light. Three witnesses testified that at Hall’s Hotel, in the old bar, a corner is penned off, having a fronting of tin or sheet iron; that they have rapped upon this tin screen and called for whisky or lager, and immediately a drawer was pushed out containing the article; they drank, dropped in their money and the drawer disappeared without any one being seen. In defense, Mr. Hall stated that the room in which this masked bar was kept was not under his control; that he rented it sometime in May last to a man named McGuire, and received a stipulated sum therefor. The Court, however, failed to appreciate Mr. Hall’s defense. Judge Wickes said his explanation was not satisfactory; his little arrangement was a mere evasion, and as this was the second time the gentleman had been befoee the Court on the charge of violating the law, he imposed a fine of SIOO and costs in each of the three cases against him —footing up a sum of about S4OO.

The Community in Danger.

San Francisco Chronicle. A Ban Joaquin farmer recently advertised that his wife had left him without just cause. The wife retorted with a card in a Stockton newspaper, stating that one of the reasons why she left him was “personal uncleanlinees on his part, he ing acknowledged on one occasion that he had not bathed himself for over five weeks.” The states that-she has other reasons, but does not give them. If disinclination to bathe can be set up as good ground for divorce, we .may look to see a lively lot of litigation, especially in the dry season. Th Persian cldaks are sold for half the price they brought last spring.

FARM NOTES.

Has an account of the crops, stock implements, grain, meat, etc., been taken yet? It is a good plan to know exactly how one stands at the beginning of the new year. - A “footnote” in the New York Trib une recommends to coal tar the wood work of a stall of a gnawing horse. Thorough saturation with kerosene is also said to produce a permanent cure. The basket willow will grow around the mill-ponds and along the margins of the water-courses. It is an article whieh is always salable, and should be made to take the place of the unsightly briars and bushes that often prove so troublesome in such places. An exchange gives the annexed recipe for colic in horses, which it claims is one of the best known, and is well worth preservation by horsemen: Laudanum, belladonna, sulph. ether chloroform; each two ounces; dose, half tablespoonful in a half pint of water. If fowls are fed more than they will eat up quickly they become too fat, and will ase laying. Give them as much as they will eat eagerly, and no more. Scalded meal, bran and mashed potatoes form an excellent meal for the morning feed. The feed of corn or other grain should be given at night A pure Italian bee should have three distinct yellow bands or rings across the lower part of the abdomen, and brigUh yellow hair over the body. The Albino bees are a strain of the Italians, having with bands and hair. The latter are the finest workers of the two, and are easier handled. The Scientific American is'quoted as saying that “copal varnish applied to the soles of shoes and repeated as it dries until the pores are .filled and the surface shines like pollished mahogany, will make soles waterproof and. last as long as the uppers.” One of the best things we have seen for farm boots, is an outer sole, or tap, of wood thoroughly dried, soaked in linseed oil and screwed to the bottom of the boot. It isn’t elegant, but it does keep the cold from “ strikeing through” tlte bottom of the boot Complaint has often been made that grapes grown in the vicinity of gas-works posses the disagreeable taste and odor of gas-tar and it has been supposed the fruit absorbed this volatile substance from the air. Recent investigations prove, however, that the odor and flavor of the grapes are due to the fact that the sap of the vine absorbs them from the soil, If disagreeable odors may thus find their way into the, grapes, why, by similar artificial process, may not grapes, andlndeed, other fruits, be possibly flavored to suit the taste, however varied and whimsical. An English leather horseshoe has been tried in Brooklyn which lasts a month longer than iron shoes made by blacksmiths. Their is a suspicion that blacksmiths use lead in the iron of which horseshoes are made. Put a pair of new shoes on a horse wih steel corks and drive the horse five miles and the corks will be worn down so the horse will slip on a wet pavement What it wants are corks made of the kind of steel burglars’ tools are made of, or' leather. If English leather is more tough than the blacksmith’s iron the leather should come in general ‘use ard let blacksmiths get poor and shoemakers get rich.

Nilsson’s Kindness.

Sacramento Bee. The railroad conductors and employes who were on the train that boie Mme. Nilsson away from the Pacific coast are enthusiastic in their praise of the great singer and excellent lady. Independent of her sweet singing, they were chanfied with her gentle manners, generosity, and kind consideration shown to every one, and to the public. Realizing the fact that the people of the interior could not hear her except in this way, she freely sang wherever people assembled. She did it, too, without condescension, and her face showed her happiness in being able to please them. She bowed with as much grace at the applause, and seemed as much delighted as if singing to a fashionable audience in a crowded theater. While crossing the straits on the ferry the passengers gathered about the car, and she sang to them. She treated Sacramento the same way. Rocklin was similarly favored, and the residents of Reno heard the famous lady. The the road were welcomed to her car, and she sang for them willingly. She expressed herself as delighted with Californiaand its climate>and theenthusiastic reception she met with, hoping some day to be able to return and view the wonders of which she heard' so much. All who saw her seemed to have fallen in lo»e with the lady.

A Sure Cure for Neuralgia.

Laramie Boomerang. An excellent liniment is made of sassafras, oil of organum, and a half ounce .of tincture of capsicum, with half a pint of alcohol. Soak nine yards of red flannel in the mixture, wrap it around the head, and then insert the head in • a hay stack till death comes to your relief.