Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — Laporte Correspondence. [ARTICLE]

Laporte Correspondence.

Editors Rensselaer Union: One day at the postoffice I found The Union and held my box key in my teeth half a dozen blocks to save the time of putting it into my pocket while reading the paper. llow like a talkative companion are its local columns ! A friend is married; hope she 1 will find a lasting prize, instead of the worthless blank which is sometimes drawn in the matrimonial lottery. Another has moved from town. No; has not moved, but bas been moved—to Weston Cemetery. On the doorplate of that silent home we find engraved beside the occupant’s name the chilling word died! Nor noonday beams, nor loving words can fill with warmth the cold, still heart within ! The rippling Iroquois may glide along its rooky bed ,at will, and moon may tarn its waters into liquid silver for her own pastime, and night birds moan for loss of summer’s w r armth and bloom; but ripple, lisrht, and wail alike unseen, unheard must be ’till the Allwise shall will to quicken sense of sight and sound in worlds immortal. School is in session —my school—and I not there! Dora, Lizzie, Deatie, Nora, Lida, Lellie, and all of them will learn to love their new teacher—just as they ought to do—but still they are my pupils, even when they grow to be r useful men and women. I thought of the old school room, and the happy little faces there; of the broad and narrow woods between them and me, and then I saw a score of faces just as happy running to meet me from my present pleasant room, and sighed for omnipresence.

Last week was Fair—not the I weather, but the agricultural society’s. Dust and wind seemed the style until the closing, when the ordinance of baptism was received by assorted hats and store duds in general. Was the Fair a success? If acres of vehicles and teams, and the sight of almost everyone you ever knew constitute success, it certainly was such. If failing to draw even a cornsheller in the prize-ticket arrangement be the' means ot determining, then to many it was a contemptible failure. Two Sundays ago the noted Dr. Robert Colyer preached to a large and interested audience, at the Indiana Avenue church. . He holds to the Unitarian faith, and is, I am told by his friends, a man of great sociability, and earnestness in welldoing. The North Carolinians expanded lilly (?) throats, and opened wide their ruby lips at this place, ere they flitted away to gladden other ears and years with sweet Nillsonic vocalries. County Superintendent James O’Brien has taken himself to Plainfield to oversee the Reform School. (Th q field seemed plain enough here, but perhaps the salary was not.) LaPorte county teachers mourn and refuse to be comforted because of this, inasmuch as he is a general favorite among them. Maple City is just now draped in miles of scarlet and gold, whose magnificent beauty we to-day admire, but which shall to-morrow be trodden under foot or consigned to the flames. Last evening I witnessed an Octqber sunset among the Laporte lakes. B. F. Taylor in his “January and June” has called them “fragments of nature’s mirror which she dropped in her haste to view the undulating prairie’s flower dotted surface,” and prettily classes them among her jewels. The sun, a seeming ball of flame, sank through the hazy atmosphere until the placid waters ot these lakes were stained with a glowing, fiery crimson, broken only by the mirrored outline of skirting autumn foliage. For awhile, as when art portrays upon the stage, the scene was one of enchanting loveliness; then it deepened, then paled, and then faded out as all earth’s beauties do, and will so long as day and night seasons eome and go. Read this evening in the Union the little gem entitled “Deb” until vision was obscured by happy tears, then ran down stairs to pass the story round the circle that all might be reminded, by its teaching, of the true pleasure an unselfish act can give. To sleep now, and hope that dreams will notbe broken, as on last night, by the weird clang of fire bells, rattlingieart and hurrying feet, without even the poor consolation of knowing where the conflagration may be until the issue of the next paper. October 50. Fresh attraction atthe roller skating rink to-night. Superintendent O’Brien examined and bade adieu to some two dozen teachers to-day, preparatory to his final departure to Plainfield. Crape on the left arm for thirty days. Consolation: Our loss is his gam.

Yours in affliction,

SAND BUR.