Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1883 — Page 6

UNLESS. James Whitcomb Riley. Who baa not suffered does not guess What pleasure is. Who has not' groped In depths of doubt and hopelessness Has never truly hoped.— Unless, sometimes a shadow falls Upon his mirth, and veils hie sight. And from the darkness drifts the light Ofjbve at intervals. And that most dear of everything, I hold, is love; and who can sit With lightest heart, and laugh and sing Knows not the worth of it— Unless, in some strange throng, perchance, He feels how thrilling sweet it is. One ynaming look that answers his. - The troth of glance and glance. Who knows not pain, knows not, diac! What pleasure is. Who knows not of The bitter cut that will not pass. Knows not the taste of love. O souls that thirst, and hearts that fast, And natures faint with famishing,] God fondle you and safely bring You to yonr own at last.

FROM OVER THE SEA.

It is a strange story. I shall never tell it while I live—this story of mine; but perhaps, after lam gone, some who live after me will like to read it They might have thought me mad, or believed me ghm to falsehood; but when they see this paper, yellow with time, and signed by one who no longer dwells on earth, they will take the tale as I mean it. I was named Marjorie Franklin, and was born at Newport over eighty years ago. There I lived till I was seventeen. I had every advantage that a young lady of that age could have, and I was' always taught to remember that I should some day take my place at the head of an elegant establishment—that one day I should be no longer plain “miss", but “my lady,” for I was betrothed to my Engl info cousin, whom I had never seen, and who, as the eldest son of a dead peer had inherited his title as well as his estate upon coming of age. I had heard that my cousin was handsome and talented, and I had no fear that I should not be happy, although I had never seen him; and as the time approached on which his visit was to be expected, for he was "coming soon, and to Stay until we were married in this land of mine, I felt much the sort of lighthearted expectation with which I looked forward to my first party. The day of my cousin's visit drew near apace. We knew that he was to sail in the next vessel that left for New York. At that time there were ncr steamships, and the date of the arrival of a vessel was problematical.

However, he would come—l never doubted that. My wardrobe was replenished; I had robes of all the high, bright colors that became my brunette beauty; I had laces and buckles, gloves, fans and combs, chains and ribbons, kerchiefs and scarfs; and when I.had tried all these things on, and surveyed myself often in the glass, with my hair dressed in twenty different styles, I longed for my future husband’s coming chiefly that I might wear all this finery. Every day I examined the letter-bag for the letter which should tell-of the Osprey's arrival, and that of my titled cousin with her. But the vessel was delayed; the winds had been unfavorable; and though she was over-due, nothing was yet heard of her. We sat together, my mother, my father and I, in the garden one evening. The air was clear, the twilight still lingering, though the moon had risen. We spoke of the Osprey. “Many a gallant vessel has been wrecked” said my father, “Seldom have summer storms been so cruel. I shall be glad to have news that the ship that comes to us is safe.” “God grant it,” answered my mothei. “And bring my cousin Alfred safe to fend,” said I. “I am tired of waiting for * 99 nun. * , **The Osprey is safe,’ said a voice at my •Ibow. “She is in port.” I turned with a start. We all rose to our feet. A'strange young gentleman stood before us. He was as beautiful as the Apollo Belvidere, and as pale as the marble from which that statue is carved. He smiled. It was a sad smile. He bowed low, and seemed to wait for some one else to speak. “You bring news of the Osprey. Then you are ,’’ began my mothei'. “Let me call myself what you called me a moment ago,” interrupted the gentleman, turning toward me. “Let me say I am cousin Alfred." Afterward we all remembered a strange thing. Our warm and courteous greetings were all in words. There was no hand shaking, no touch of any kind. He was the son of my mother’s sister; but ■he did not kiss him, nor did he kiss her. “But how did you come? Where is your baggage?” asked my father in a little while. “I never heard wheels nor the tramp of horse. My dear nephew, how did ya i manage to oome on us so sudMy cousin laughed. It was not a gay

“That is my little seciet. I will puzzle you with it for a while," he said. “At present confess that you do not know whether I dropped from the sky or came floating through the air.' I felt too anxious to see my cousin, my betrothed wife, to wait—to be brought in the regular fashion.” He had made a little pause before he said “to be brought.” He made another after it, and I saw him shudder. “Are you cold, cousin?” I asked. “AU but my heart,” he answered. “And you must be weary,” said my mother, “and hungry, too. I will have supper prepared at once. Meanwhile come in doors. My dear, we may like to sit outside here, but perhaps our guest may not" “Certainly, certainly,” responded my father. He stepped forward as he spoke, and pushed open the long windows that open, ed from the drawing room to the veranda. ‘•Come in,” he said. “Come indoors nephew.” At that moment my mother called him She needed the keys of the wine cellar, and his aid in the choice of the wines,and he left us. “Come in, cousin Alfred,” said L “Cousin Marjorie,” he answered, “do not ask me indoors. The evening is too beautiful Will you not walk with me this onoe under the moon? You are not afraid of me, are you Marjorie. I laughed a little. “Why should I fear you?” I asked. “You are no stranger. I have always heard of you. I will walk with you gladly.” I walked beside him. I looked down. He looked at me. We passed from the garden and turned toward the beach, and came at last to the ruins of the old building over which there had been so much talk lately. Then we called it the old mill. “They say it is centuries old,” said L “And so many lives have run their course and ended in the tomb,while these stones still remain," he said sadly. “Man dies, and these insensate things outlast him. Yet, while he lives, what a glorious thing to be a man!” He paused. His eyes glittered in his beautiful white face. “Think of it, beautiful Marjorie,” he said. “Think of me, your cousin Alfred —young, strong as a giant, rich, powerful, and with you for his bride. You,yon bright young thing, think of a man like that with all before him, and suddenly all is gone, and death leads him he knows not whither." His glance, his voice, his words frightened me. “Cousin Albert, are you ill,” I asked. ‘Terhaps we had better go home.” “You shall go home,” answered my cousin. “You sweet, young, living thing, I see fear in your eye. You tremble. Give me one moment more. It is so sweet here on earth under the moon—with* you and love. And you have all life before you; give me one moment more.” “My beautiful cousin is certainly deranged,” I said to myself. “I have not yet saluted you, Marjorie,” he said. “May I not kiss your hand, I your betrothed husband?"' Oh, his sad voice! I let him take my fingers in his own, and he bent and pressed his lips to them. As he did so I felt no touch of human flesh and blood, but through all my frame thrilled strange electric flashes, I could not speak or stir, but as I stood, turned, as it seemed, to stone, I saw the beautiful form before me fade away. It did not move from the spot where it stood, but even as I regarded it I saw it change into a white vapor and slowly melt into the air. ******* I knew no more for hours. Then I was aware that they had borne me into the house and restored me to myself, and I lay on the great chintz-covered sofa trembling with the memory of what had passed. Out in the darkness, beyond the windows, the servants went to and fro with lanterns, searching vainly for the man who had come and gone so strangely-r----for none believed my story. „ But now there was heard the clatter of a nurse’s hoofs, a man alighted at the gate, asked for my father, and was shown into our presence. , A seafaring man,' tall and bronzed, wearing a look that spoke of no good tidings. He took a seat offered him, and addressed my father. “Sir, I am the second mate of the Osprey, and I come to you with evil tidings. I regret to bring them, but I have no choice." “Proceed, sir,” said my father. “The Osprey has met with some disaster?” “No, sir,’’replied the sailor. “The Os prey is in port, unharmed by all the evil weather she has encountered on her voyage; but when she sailed she had on board a passenger, a young nobleman who was crossing the ocean, it is said, to visit his affianced bride. The name recorded on our books is—Alfred, Lord Hardinge.” My father bowed his head. “My wife’s nephew,” he said, “and betrothed to my daughter.”

“Sir,” continued the sailor, “when we reached port that nobleman was no longer with us. I must tell the tale. He was drowned in mid-ocean, swept overboard *by a great wave. We warned him of his danger, but he would not remain below.” “How long ago did thia happen? ’ asked my father in a feint voice. “A month ago,” replied the second mate of the Osprey. Then he drew from his bosom a minaturs set in diamonds. “This,” he said, “had been placed in Captain’s care. It was to be presented to his bride, Lord Alfred’s own portrait I sprang from the couch and eaught it from him, and I saw the face that had faded into the air in the moonlight beside the old mill. And I knew it was the spirit of my cousin that had come to me. But we said nothing to the honest sailor. He was well entertained, and went his way again. And we three kept our secret well As for me, that ghostly kiss left by my dead betrothed upon my fingers was the only one that ever touched them.

THE STATION AGENT.

His Ways and Manner*—Peculiarities «f the Man at the Junction. Peck’s San, Men who travel a great deal never cease to wonder how it is that the Grossest depot agents that can be found are nearly always located at the junctions, where there is nothing but a depot and a store and a saloon, but such is the ease. A traveler gets to a junction and goes into the depot to find when the next train goes and the ticket-window is dosed. He looks around and finds that the agent is helping io unload freight, or is upon a side-track coupling cars, or is over across the track helping a farmer kill hogs, or has gone to the adjoining town with a team to carry some passengers. Or, if the agent is in the office, he has got more business than the general manager of the road. You speak to him, and ask a question, and his brow corru gates, andhe goes on counting a pile of one-doller bills,and acts as though he thought he had a dim idea that he had been spoken to, but he waits until he gets the money in the safe, and turns the knob, and then he answers you so short that you almost condude to walk to the next station, and then he bustles ent of office and locks the door, and you think he has gone to attend, to some important business upon which depends the fate of the road, and you go out and walk on the platform, and pretty soon you see him helping his wife to ring out clothes, or you see him out in the back yard hanging clothes on the line, or splitting railroad ties for wood. You may be a millionaire, and you may pay your hostler more than the junction agent as a salary, but he looks upon you as a three-card monte man, and locks the stove door for fear you will put in a stick of wood or steal the lining out of the stove. The agent is in his element when a train is a few hours behind, and he sits at the telegraph instrument working as if the work rested on his shoulders. You listen to the constant click of the instrument, and you would give a $lO note to know what is going on over the wires. Oocassionally he will laugh at something the instrument says, and when you think the news of the woYld is coming over the wires and is stored in that massive brain, j the agent turns to a country galoot, who has on n blue drilling roundabout, and his pants in his boots, and who wipes his nose on his mitten and says: “There is going to be a dance at the hop-yard at Johnston Siding to-night, and they want us to come up on No. 4.” Then you realize that the agent all these long hours that you have been watching the varied expressions of his calm mysterious face has been chaffing with the female operator at the next station, and as the country galoot takes a chew of plug tobacco and says he will go and brush up a little and put on a clean shirt before No. 4 comes, and the operator says they will have a daisy time at the dance, you go out on the platform and try to get acquainted with the fellow Who runs the horse-power wood-sawing machine. There is no man who knows more than the junction agent about every thing if you can draw him ou*. Though only four trains a day stop at his station, and they only stop for a minute to let off some poor devil who has got to get off there, the agent is in his element for a brief moment. He addresses the conductor as “Jim,” or “George,” or “Billv,” and asks, with a show of interest as deep as a division superintendent would have, where he passed “No 1,” and if “No. 6” is going to be on time. He may ask something about the railroad stocks, and you imagine that he is bulling the market when the chances are that he hasn’t got sll left from his last month’s salary. If he was polite,and did not seem to own the road, you would like him, but when he snubs you, and treats you as though information was worth more than your ticket, you hate him, and if you should hear there was’talk of promoting him to a station where there were six houses, you would want to prevent it There may be some rule by which the erossest man on the line is given an isolated junction.

JUDGING BY APPEARANCES.

J. JL MAOOX. Yen may notch it on depalin’s as* mighty reeky Plan. To make your judgment by de elo’se dat kiven apwman. For 1 hardly need to tell you how you often oome serose A fifty-dollar saddle on a twenty-dollar hoes. , An’wagin'in de low groan’s, yon diskiver as yon go Dat de fines’ shack may hide de meanee’ nubbin in a row! x I never judge o’ people dat I meets along de way By de places whar dey come fam and de houses whar dey stay; For de bantam chicken’s awful fond o’ roostin’ pretty high. An’ de turkey buuard sails above de eagle in de •ky; Dey ketches little minners in de middle of de ■ea. An’ you finds desmalies’ ’poseom up de biggee’ kind o’ tree!

A LITTLE SPICE.

A fellow feeling that doesn’t make us wondrous kind—the pickpocket. Common motto for New Jeisey bank officials—Let us all learn to respect each other’s convictions. A young lady of Syracuse, N. Y., being asked the time last Sunday evening, replied: “Five minutes of Smith.” The Reno (Nev.) Gazette says there is in its office a pet crow that chews tabacco. A ease of quid pro crow, as it were. A story writer has finished a sketch called “Lifted Out of Herself," Probably the heroine went yachting and got seasick. Mr Dayton has been arrested in New York for stealing a volume of poems. It is supposed that he took them to read to his mother-in-law. “But my dear children, why do you carry that open umbrelly in this fine weather?” “Because when it rains we can never get it, mother takes it then.’ Fliegende Biatter. A henpecked husband read an account of an Illinois clergyman who dropped dead as he was about to unite a couple in marriage. “Ah,” he sighed, heavily, b “the minister who married Bailie and me postponed his death until after the ceremony.

The Bad Boy as An Early Riser.

Peck’s Son, “What was it about your folks getting up in the night to eat? The hired girl was over here after some soap the other morning, and she said she was going to leave your house.” “Well, that was a picnic. Pa said he wanted breakfast earlier than he was in the habit of having it,and he said I might see to it that the house was awake early enough. The other night I awoke with the awfulest pain you ever heard of. It was that night you give me and my chum the bottle of pickled oysters that had begun to work. Well, I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I would call the hired girls, and they got up and got breakfast to going, and then I rapped on pa and ma’s door and told them the breakfast was getting cold, and they got up and came down. We eat breakfast by gaslight,and pa yawned and said it made a man feel good to get up and get i eady for work before daylight, the way he used to on the farm, and ma she yawned and agreed with pa, cause she has to or have a row. After breakfast we sat around for an hour, and pa said it was a long time getting daylight, and bimeby pa looked at his watch. When he began to pull out his watch I lit out and hid in the storeroom, and pretty soon I heard pa and ma come up stairs and go to bed, and then the hired girls they went to bed, and when it was all still and the pain had stopped inside my clothes, I went to bed, and I looked to see what time it was, and it was two o’clock in the morning- We got dinner at eight o'clock in the morning, and pa eaid he guessed he would call up the house after this, so I have lost another job, and it was all on account of that bottle as pickled oysters you gave me. My chum says he had colic, too, but he didn’t call up his folks. It was all he could do to get up himself. Why don’t you sometimes give away something that is not spiled?” The grocery man said he guessed he knew what to give away, and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery that he had made on wrapping paper with red chalk, which read: i “Rotten eggs, good enough for custard ' pies, for eighteen cents a doz-n.”

Odd Stories from Far and Near.

Houma, La., has a thirteen-year old , girl with a light brown beard two inches long. At Snapps, in Woodruff county, Ark, a well flows water that is as sour as vinegar. Spurgeon has been jailed in Nelson ■ county, Va., for stealing the feathers from his neighbors’ geese. A very large snow-white heron was killed recantly at Meacox Bay, L. 1., by Wm. Squires, Jr., of Bridgehampton. A ticket tw*enty years old was tendered , and accepted recently on the Consolidated road for a ride between Hartford and Boston. * A man employed in the comb works at

Wappinger’s Falls, N. Y, converses and writes in seven languages. Heia in roduced drenmstanoee. A loaded gun fell from the ceiling where it hung in a house at Engfesville, Pa., and a child playing in the room was instantly killed by its accidental discharge. > In Cass county, HL, there is not a parson of color, and there n°ver was a ballot cast in the county by a negro, nor a seat oocpied in a school roem by a colored child. A fox pursued by hounds was sees coming directly for the house of Mrs George Kingsbury, of Chaplin, Conn. She opened the doors front and rear, and shot it as it bounded through. So overwhelmingly in debt is Pickens county, Alabama, that property can hardly be given away. A few days ago 885 acres of fine timber land and a mill in good condition brought but $2lO. On a Vicksburg church spire a large hawk perched itself upon the cross, and it remained five days. Then some one shot it. The hawk had no sooner fallen than another took its place. It still sits there, to the disturbance of ths superstitious. L On the back of Miss Delia Moqcrieff, of Boston, is burned in by lightning a representation of the large elm tree which stands within a few feet of a plaza where she was sitting when the house was struck by a thunderbolt She suffered no injury whatever-

Billiards for Girls.

Two girls of this city having heard that Elizabeth Cady Stanton advised billiards for girls, concluded to profit by the advice of so wise a counselor, and the other day when the men folks were all down town the girls in question adjourned to the billiard room to have a game. “What shall we play?” asked the elder. “Why, billiards, of course.” “I know, you silly thing, but there’s different kinds of billiards. I mean what kind shall we play. There’s discount, and hundred or nothing, and pin ball,and fifteen pooL” • “Oh, I don’t know; which is the nicest?” * “Hundred or nothing’s easy; maybe we had better begin on that’ “All right” « “Well, why don’t you get your pole and shoot? it’s your first shot” , “No it ain’t either; we have to choose for shot’’ “That’s so; well, here; ock-abock-a —bon-a—crock-a—ock-a-BocK-A—TUBE. There, it’s your first shot” “Why, you mean thing! Tain’t ho such thing.” “Don’t you call me a cheater, or I’ll tell ma you take pickles to bed. with you." “Well, I don’t care; ocka-bocka ain’t fair; you know you always said it wasn’t in ketcher.” “Weli, do it yourself, then.” “One err-y—orr-err-y— ick-or-y ann —fill-i-son —fall-i-son—nick-o-las —John. Que-vy—qua-vy—English—navey—stink-urn—stankum—BUCK! There, now, I told you so; you have to shoot” “Well, I’ll shoot but tain’t fair. What are you laughing at you little fool?” “Te-he-he. You ain’t got no chalk on your stick; you know a heap about billiards, you do.” ‘You think you’re smart now, don’t you? Well, you ain’t. You dasent put chalk on only when you maka a run, there! I guess I've seen pa a hundred times.” ‘ Oh, you big story teller, I saw pa put chalk on his stick a thousand times in one game and he never made more’n two in his life. George says pa’s a chump in, billiards.” ‘You horrid, nasty thing! What did ma tell you about being slangy? If I don’t tell on you, I’m a goat.” “Whatoh you doin’ yourself ! Bettor mind your own self. Goody! goody!, Now see what you’ve done,” as the other made a lunge at the ball with a tipless cue and tore a forty inch slit in the cloth. “Well, you made me do it;” then she pulled »he other s hair, they both cried, and the tournament was over.

Saved by Clutching a Horse’s Tail.

Salt Lake Tribune. Albert Dougherty, one of the driver between Green River and Big Sandy,who was caught in the storm on Wednesday evening and lay out in the ice and snow forty-eight hours,was brought in to-night by Dougherty was unable to mount the horse after abandoning the stage, and the way he succeeded in traveling was as follows: He took hold of the sagacious animal’s tail and let it drag him. When his hands became so benumbed that he could no longer retain his grasp, the animal would stop and come up to him and patiently wait until Dougherty would again entwine his hands in the tail, when the horse would resume the journey. 8,500 sewing machines were lost in the flood at Newport Columbus Junction claims to be the horse metropolis of east lowa.