Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1879 — A Sweet Scene. [ARTICLE]

A Sweet Scene.

The June day was just dying—dying of the very ecstacy of living. Gentle twilight was ministering tenderly at her death-bed. Away to the west the heavens were lit up for her coming. Over Fourth • street a sweet peace had settled. The hum of the city sounded faint and far. The houses sat back cool and queenly among the trees. A few prettily dressed children dotted the vividly green grass. The matrons sat calmly in the doorways. Near by lounged their lords with book or paper. Between the snowy curtains of a window wa*rlhe bright face of a maiden looking out upon the scene, herself the fairest part of it all. Out on the lawn a man with hose in hand was lazily sprinkling the street. The girl glided through the window, and smiling and blushing she took the hose half doubtingly from him. Ah, what a picture she made, clad in something likp woven moo nlight or soda-water foam, to which her shapely shoulders ana arms len t a rosy glow; with eyes sparklingand lips half parted in childish pleasure, one little foot advanced before the other and peeping from under her caressing skirts, and two dear, dainty hands clasping firmly the happy hose. Aye, indeed, what a picture! No need to go to leafy country and pastoral hill for poetic inspiration. Even then we felt the stirring of higher things within us. Some beautiful poem, probably the Great Effort of our Life, was about to be born, and perhaps it would have“bee» born if the young lady hadn’t—accidentally we hope — turned the nozzle in our direction and squirted all the starch out of the bosom of our last clean shirt.—[Courier-Jour-nal. I

The idea of looking upon the monster vice in its own hideous mien was not original with Dr. Talmage. Archbishop Hawley in England went with Mrs. Fry in her visits to Newgate; Dr. Chalmers saw Glasgow by night very much as Dr. Talmage saw York; the late famous Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, the greatest preacher of the Free Kirk, studied life in the great cities in the same way, and even Dr. Cuyler visited a Chinese theatre in San Francisco, and some say in a disguise of a Spartan virgin looked in amazement upon the can-can and the Spanish waltz in a New York theatre. Perhaps Talmage is being tried by his brethren because he has been behind the scenes and seen more wonders than they have. Talmage lives in a four-story, corner, brownstone house, with a cupola oii the top. He has his study in the fourth story, where fie is a recluse from the whole world. He amuses himself by exercising his wind power on a cornet. (Arbuckle being his teacher, and he has learned a few tunes. He tries to keep his home full of mirth, and his wild laughter rings through his dwelling. He keeps a short, fat negro, as sleek and Diack as a Nubian slave, whose natural minstrelsy affords much fun to the eccentric pastor. —[St. Louis Republican Letter.