Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1878 — Patchwork. [ARTICLE]

Patchwork.

In a pleasant room, full of bright sunshine, a little girl is sitting in her rocking-chair. sewing as fast as she can make ner chubby little fingers fly. Around her are scattered pieces of cloth of as many different hues as Jacob’s coat of old, while in hqr lap she has numerous scraps, from which she takes one, now ana then, joining it to those she holds in her hand. Very often she stops, and with a most expressive frown, rips out some unlucky stitch that has gone astray by means of her own tiny fingers; but never discouraged, she sews on, and if we may judge by the smiles that come and go over hes dimpled, baby face, she is thinking how nice and warm her dolly will be kept through the cold winter, by the quilt she is so busily making. We look again, and instead of the child, we find a young girl of about eighteen summere. Her surroundings are very much like those of the little one, and her thoughts are also straying into the future. It must seem very bright and beautiful to her, for there is such a happy look on heirntoe. of whiah-w© oatch -a glimpse now and then; and her eyes are full of a tender light, as she sews on. We wonder what she is so busily engaged in, and if wp should ask her »he would say:

“ Why, do yon not know that, according to the good old country custom. we must least * dozen quilts before we have a house of our own?” Now, as we look once more, a vary peat change is seen. Instead of the bright little child or the happy young girl, we find an old, old woman, bent over by the cares and sorrows of threescore years and-ten. She holds in her trembling hand a nit of patch work, and M She looks st it, tears fill her eyes; then, as if by magic, a gentle smile finds its way over her furrowed face, and she sees ip the far-away past a little girt sitting in her arm-chair, eawing so fast on her dolly’s quilt; then the loung girl with her happy face, and as er thoughts come back to the present, she lifts ner heart in thankfulness to Him who has arranged the patchwork of her life no wisely, putting a bit of sorrow here and there, making the happy days seem happier and better for the contrast, and who she trusts will say in the peat hereafter, “ Well done, good and faithful servant.”— Golden Rule.