Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1878 — Maud Muller. [ARTICLE]

Maud Muller.

Maud Muller, as Whittier drew her, was a comely young woman in a briarkirn dress and ragged hat, innocent as to shoes and stockings, who helped her father during the busy havingtime, hired help being scarce and high. This was certainly commendable in Maud; though as she paused in hetwork, and, leaning on the rake-han-dle, glanced to the far-off town, she couldn’t help wishing that Fate had cast her lot different from a meadowlot. and that she was a clerk in a nine-ty-nine cent store, or something like that. She asked herself whether the life of a female book-canvasser was so very hard, and wondered if any lady clerks were wanted in the Postoffice. While she is thus reflecting, the Judge comes riding slowly down the lane. Whittier doesn’t tell us what he is judge of, though we conclude he is a tolerable good judge of rustic beauty, for he drew his bridle (at some church fair) and asked the maid to bring him a draught of w«>ter from a convenient spring, although it was far into the summer at the time. This she did, and blushing deeply as she recollected that her shoes and stockings were “up to the house,” handed the cup to the Judge, who gallantly remarked that “ A sweeter draught, From a fairer hand was never quaffed." Maud courtesied and said that her father considered her a pretty fair “ hand in the hayfield.” The Judge lingered as long as he could, talking about the weather, the Silver bill, the pastern question, chances of his re-election to the bench, etc., etc., to all of which she simply replied, “Yes, sir,” “ te-he,” or something like that, and when he couldn’t make any more excuses for lingering, he rode away. Maud looked after him and sighed as she thought, “ The Judge is just the kind of a man I’d like to tie to. Dress? I reckon not! I’d have a new gown every day, and two on Sun.day. And dad should wear store clothes; and Brother Sam should have a helmet hat” How about the Judge, as he rode away? Was he filled witn »“ vague unrest?” Certainly he was. He wanted to adjourn court sine die, amPalthough a little past the hay-day of his youth, go a-haying with Maud from that time out. But his feelings Mauderated when he thought of his sisters, who were society ladies, and what they and the fashionable world generally would have to say about it. So he kept orrjhis way, and he opened court that afternoon, same as usual, only the lawyers smiled as they caught him humming an old love-song, “swinging in the Lane.” The Judge got elected to the bench again, and then he was elected for life in another way—he married a wealthy but cold-hearted lady who moved (every spring) in the first circles, and who onlyaccepted him because she thought .t would sound well to be spoken of in the society-column of the newspapers as “Mrs. Judge So-aitd-So.” Ana sometimes when the Judge was taking a drink of old rye 7 ail by himself du his study, he wished that Maud could step in with a little of that meadowspring water to mix with it. Maud got married, too. She married the hired man in a check shirt whom the Judge saw mowing in another part of the field. True, she loved the Judge more than she could any mower she ever saw, and would continue to until time should be no mower, but as she couldn’t have him and was fearful that there would be nd mower offers, why she clinched on to the hired man. But Maud wasn’t happy, either, for she couldn’t help thinking how different her life would have been as Mrs. Judge. She thought so much oil the subject that she came finally to.believe that the Judge had really proposed To her and she nad refused him. And when she got into a row with her husband she would throw it up to him. saying: “ fi 1 hadn’t married you nnd got stuck in thia pen, I’d been much better off, for / might a had Ben.” Which was the Judge’s front name. —Cincinnati Saturday Night.