Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1901 — SUE LYLE’S SORROW. [ARTICLE]

SUE LYLE’S SORROW.

/pa UE LYLE was the village hermit. For twenty years she had never been outside her own gate but twice, and those two times were when she followed her old father and mother to their last resting place among their kindred dead. Once she had been the village belle, and no more light-heart-ed, sunny-faced girl could have been found in all the country side than just Jretty Sue Lyle, the wood-carver’s only aughter. In these bright, halycon days she had many suitors; but Sue was no coquette, and she smiled only on one —handsome Luke Hamilton, the young artist. Luke was a poor orphan boy, and had his way to make in the world, but Sue loved him, and the morning before he went to the army he put the engagement ring on her finger. It was a full year before she looked Into his dear face again, and then his furlough lasted only three days. But Luke was a good correspondent, and every week brought her a cheery letter. There came a time —a Saturday morning in the month of May, 1863 —when Susan turned away from the little country postofflce without her accustomed letter; and before the day was over she learned that there had been a great battle on the Chancellorsville ground, and that her noble lover had been left dead upon the bloody field. The blow almost killed her. For days and weeks she went about the house like one in a dream. She could not shed a tear, and no complaint escaped her lips, but her heart was broken, and her pale face and hollow eyes appealed most eloquently to the hearts of all who came to express their sympathy. After the first keen edge of her sorrow wore away, she arose from her stony grief, put out of sight all the sweet tokens of the precious dead, and without a word went back to her daily household duties. But she was never the same girl again. Her loss seemed to embitter her life, to make her hard and exacting oven with those she best loved, and after a while her young friends, hurt by her indifference, ceased their efforts to keep a hold on her heart. She never went outside of the gate, not even to church, and after her parents died, weeks and weeks would pass without her even exchanging words with a single soul, except the grocer’s boy who came every Saturday morning to deliver her week’s supply of groceries. Sometimes the neighbor women would run in with their knitting and budget of news, and sit an hour or so with the poor lone woman, but the welcome they received was not cordial enough to invite a. speedy return. So the years rolled away, and Susan Lyle drifted further and further away from human love and sympathy, and ths villagers, when they spoke of her at all, sighed over the wreck of a life which had once been so full of fragrance and beauty. Though the little cottage was kept as neat and trim as hands could make it, and the fence around the lot in the best of repair, the severe plainness of the home, outside and in, was so marked as to be positively painful. From the morning when with aching heart the disappointed woman had locked her piano and banished from her sight all the pretty adornments which had given such bewitching charm and grace to the home, it had iseen her studied care to see that not a trace of beauty should over creep in to brighten the gloom she considered so fitting to her shattered life. There was one thing, however— the fose bush which Luke had brought her from tIK Sunny South—that she had not the heart to banish from her sight. He had been at great pains to procure it, and had carried it all the way home in his pocket, Then, too, it was his hands that had planted it, and she could not pluck it up by the roots, although it grieved her to the heart to see it growing so strong and thrifty, right at her very door, while poor Luke was lying in an unknown grave, with not even a rose bush to mark where he was buried. She had promised him that he should have the very first rose that bloomed. But

before that time came ’round he had sealed his patriotism with his life. The bush grew and twined all over the side of the little cottage, and every year its wealth of blossoms made the whole neighborhood fragrant; but the roses all withered and dropped off when they had given out their sweetness, for Susan never had the heart to pick a single one, after the promise she had made to Luke. Though at first it pained her to look at this last gift of one so dearly beloved, as the years came and went she learned to love that bush as if it had been a living thing, and to look forward eagerly to the coming of the summer months when she could feast her eyes on the only friends that had any claim upon her affections—Luke’s roses. One cool evening in May, more than a score of years after all the sweetness had been crushed out of Susan’s life, a deli-cate-looking boy came slowly up the walk which led to her door, and timidly asked shelter for the night. Susan was not in the habit of entertaining strangers, but before she had time to send him away, the boy, who really was ill, staggered forward a step or two, and then fell fainting on the very threshold. Instantly there flashed into her mind a line of that old war song, “Brothers fainting at the door,” which she and Luke had sung together the very morning he had gone away for the last time; and right eloquently did it plead for the sick stranger at her door. “Poor boy! I should not wonder if he were starving, his face looks so white and pinched," she said, as she brought water to bathe his pallid brow. As soon as he recovered from the swoon she helped him into the house and laid him on her soft bed. Though it vexed her that he could not eat a morsel of the dainty food she brought him, she lay down hoping that by morning his appetite would have returned and he would be able to continue his journey in safety. But in the morning he was not able to lift his head from the pillow, and many mornings came and went before he was able to tell his name, or where his kindred dwelt. All this time Susan kept him in her house, and cared for him tenderly as if she had been his mother. Perhaps she would have sent him to the hospital that first morning had not a small gold locket she found suspended around his neck touched the one tender spot in her heart. She had seen that tiny locket before, and even before she opened It she knew that she held in her hand a key

which would unlock the mystery surrounding her lost grave. As soon as the boy was able he told her that the locket had once belonged to a soldier —a dark-haired young man who was mortally wounded at Ghancellorsville. After the battle was over his mother, who lived near the battle field, had ministered to the dying stranger, and though he equid not speak nor give his name, the poor young man had put the locket and a package of pictures into his mother’s hands; but as there was no address on anything left in her possession, it had been impossible for her to return the property to the friends for whom it intended. He told her, too, that his mother had buried the dead stranger under a large elm tree in sight of the battle field, and that every Decoration Day she covered the solitary grave with the most beautiful flowers she could find.

Susan listened with dimmed eyes to the touching story, and just as soon as the boy, whose ryime was Willie Rae, was able to travel, she cut the finest of the roses, and went with him to his home to learn all that his mother could tell about the stranger she had ministered to before Willie was born. Among the pictures she found her own —an oldfashioned ambrotype, stained with poor Luke's heart-blood, and, as she looked upon It, for the first time in a score of years tears came to her relief. There was no doubt about the grave’s being her own; so Luke’s roses were tenderly laid upon it, and Susan, after rewarding the poor widow for her kindness to the dead, took Willie with her, and went back to her Northern home in time to keep Decoration Day by sending a wreath of Luke’s roses to lay upon every soldier’s grave in the village cemetery. “What a mistake I have been making all these years in shutting out from my life so much human love and sunshine!” she said to herself, when she saw how gratefully her tribute to the dead was received. “I have certainly been very selfish in my grief, never thinking that other hearts might be as heavy as my own. With the help of my Father in heaven, the remainder of my life shall be spent in helping others.” And she has kept her vow. Once a year she takes Willie back to see his mother, and lays, a wreath of roses on Luke’s grave; but there are always enough left to decorate the sixteen graves made for the boys in blue who are sleeping in the old cemetery near her home. -

A Sacred Day. Memorial Day will not fall into disuse. Indeed, it is more enthusiastically and actively celebrated each year—by the school children and the papers. More and more is a specialty made of Memorial Day stories and poems, to say nothing of other articles for the occasion. Special issues are got out in the case of our largest weeklies, filled with appropriate matter. Those who are not school children, .parents or teachers, •rid do not take an active part in the celebration — even such commemorate the day in their hearts when, in seclusion, their eyes fill with tears on reading reminders of the terrible war time, and their hearts with reverence for the men (on whichever side) who gave or risked life to defend the priciples they represented. These men and women, youths and maids, may not go to the church or walk in the procession; they may even go to a circus or picnic, but —they celebrate the day. The little band of old soldiers, leading the procession to the distant graveyard, eyes swimming with memories of dead comrades and cruel battles, look askance at the merrymakers on ball field and picnic ground, and perhaps bitterly think: “They don’t understand, they cannot appreciate our services for them!" There’s not a young man or woman on the Northern or Southern play or picnic ground but thinks his or her country the greatest the sun shines on; proud of the result of the great struggle and would do the utmost to preserve the Union of which they are the heirs. Those who enter actively into a part at least of the exercises of this day may well feel that on them depends the perpetuation of the solemn and inspiring purpose for which it was set apart. But let us be just and considerate in our judgments towards those who don’t show their patriotism exactly as we do, on this day, when not •only the North and South, but the different sections of one’s own village as well, should (and do at heart) feel a united brotherhood in the cause we hold so dear —a free and united country.— Exchange.