True American. [volume] (Steubenville [Ohio]) 1855-1861, 1855-03-08


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"Do you keep tuner in the house, my
dear young lady% inquired the General.
If look could have annihiiated, he
would have crumbled into ashes; but he
only returned itwith admiration, thinking,
GLOW astonishingly like her aunt, when
she refused me the second timer"
"And that is fashionable music, Miss
Montford? I have lived so long out Of
England, only hearing the music Of Beeth
oven, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, was
not aware that noise was substituted fol-
power, and that execution had banisheC
expression. Dear me why, the piano ii
vibrating at this moment! Poor thing
how long does piano last you, Miss Mont
ford ?"
Isabel was losing her temper, when for
tunately her aunt-still Miss Vere--camC
to the rescue. The lovers Of thirty years
past, would have met any where else al
strangers. The once rounded and queen
like form of the elder Isabel was shorn o.
its grace and beauty; ofall her attributes
of all her attractions, dignity only remain
ed; and it was that high bred, innate dig
nifty which can never be acquired, and is
never forgotten. She had not lost the
eigth of an inch of her height, and hel
gray hair was braided in full folds over her
fair but wrinkled brow. Isabel Montford
looked so exactly what Isabel We're had
been, that General Gordon was sorely per-
plexed Isabel We're. iftruth must be told,
had taken extra pains with her dress her
niece had met the General the night before,
and her likeness to her aunt had so recall
ed the past, that his promised visit to his
old sweetheart Gas he still called her had
futtercd and agitated her more than she
thought it possible an interview with any
man could do; she quarreled with her beau
tiful gray hair, she cast off her black vel
vet dress disdainfully, and put on blue
Moire ANTIQUE. (She remembered how
much the captain-no the GENERAL, once
admired blue) She was not coquette; !;
even gray hair at ffty-fve does not cure
coquetry where it has existed in all its
strength; but, for the sake of her dear
niece, she wished to look as well as posi-
BILE. She wondered why she had so often
refused "poor Gordon" She had been all
her life of too delicate mind to be hus.
band-hunter, too well satisfied with her po-
sition to calculate how it could be improv-
ed, and yet, she did not hesitate to confess
to herself that now, in the commencement
of old age, however verbant it might be,
she should have been happier, of more con:
sequence, of more value as a married wo-
man. She had to much good sense, and
good taste, to belong to the class of dis
contented females, consisting of husband
less and childless women, who seek to es-
tablish laws at war with the laws of the
Almighty; so, ifher heart did beat a little
stifly, and sundry passages passed through
her brain in connection with her old ado.
rer, and what the future might be--she
may be forgiven, and will be, by those
not strong minded women who understand
enough of the waywardness of human ma
ture to know that, if yOung heads and old
hearts are sometimes found together, so are
young hearts and old heads. The young
laugh to scorn the idea of Cupid and a
crutch, but Cupid has strange vagaries,
and at any moment can barb bis crutch
with the point af the arrow.
"The old people," as Isabel Montford
irrevcrently called them that evening, did
not get on we'll together; they were in a
great degree disappointed one with the 9TH
er. They stood up to dance the minuct
de la cO9r, and Isabel We're languished and
swan as she had never done before but
the General wandered how stiff she had
grown, and hoped that he was not as i'll
used by time as Mistress Isabel We're had
been. At first Isabel Montford thought
1t ''good fun" to see the antiquities bow
ing and curtscying, but she became inter
ested in the lingering courtiness of the lit
tie scene, trembled lest her aunt should an.
pear ridiculous, and then wondered how
she could have refused such a man as Gen
eral Gordon must have been.
Days and weeks flew fast; the Gcner-
al became q constant visitor in the square,
and the heart of Isabel We're had never
beaten so loudly at twenty as it did at ff-
ty-and-fvc; nothing, she thought, could be
more natural than that the General should
recall the days of his youth, and seek the
friendship and companionship of her who
had never married, while he-faithlcss
man had been guilty of two wives during