Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1859-02-18
THE OLD KITCHEN.

ne Is AFRAID OF losing hlS identity.
THE OLD KITCHEN.
sYou will find the old house great,
changed Cousin MilIie, when you come t
see Us in the fall,' wrote Mrs. Rood, tn
pretty lively wife of a whole half year.
'We're having all the back part tore down
and we're having a new sitting room and
new bedroom, and a real new fashione
kitchen, and we shall have the house heate
with furnaces, and all the modern improve
ments. We shall retain the front becaus
it is built of stone, but we're to have Ions
windows, and new portico, and dear ok
grandpa would hardly recognize his olt
home, if he could sit down on his favorite
seat under the old cherry tree, and see il
again. II does seem SO sacrilegious to gc
to tearing down and pulling up SO soon af
ter his death, but Harry wants everything
ready for winter, so we have had to com.
mence at once; and dear Milie, you'll find
everything SO new, SO nice and comfortable
/ when you come to see US, that Pm in hopes
you wont know how to leave us at all!'
And Mildred Race closed up the letter of ber
lively cousin with, a sig n and leaning back
in her chair, old memories came throbbing up
through the halls of her heart, and filled her
eyes with tears. those eyes like the eyes of
spring hidden in the deep woods, when
the summer moonshine futters down in its
deep blue heart.
Il don't mind the rest of the house, mur-
INJURED sweet Mildred Race, fbut the old
kitchen with its great, old-fashioned fire.
place, don't know how to spare that.
| sAh me, what brave times used to have,
| away down in my childhood, on those visits
to Grandpa's! can see it all now, just as
though b | had been there last night, the
group gathered in the long autumn evenings
round the chimney. There were the CRATE
and irons; with their lions feet, and their
brass tops and the pile of birch sticks built
up almost to the jamb, and all our faces
would glow in the light of that fire, that beat
in the ruddy SCOT ol the black chimney.
Grandpa always sat in the corner, and
his hair white as the year is when it settles
in December. The great silver bowed
spectacIes rested low on his nose as he
slowly read the newspaper, and shoUk his
head and said: Things didn't use TO go on
SO when | was young man. And grand
ma sat on the other side with one of the
whitest caps and pleasantest smiles, toeing
off woolen stocking and pausing to show
some of her grand children how to count
apple seeds, Just as they did at the iroiics
when she was girl.
The frost was at work at the windows,
marvellous and cunning artist that frost was;
etching with silent, mysterious fingers all
sorts of landscapes and figures, which we
should read in the morning with as much
eager curiosity and interest, as travellers
read this day, on ole stones and ruined pal
aces, the hieroglyphics OF Ninevah and
Egypt. There would be suggestions of
wondrous landscapes, of mountains and val
Ieys aud rivers; of gardens OF B16ylon.-
There would be Westminster, Versailles,
and St. Peters all done in single night; !;
there would be fountains of running waters
and palms of India, and somewhere in the
corners some of US would find the old barn
and long well-pole at grandpa's.
sOh, repeat it, they were brave times
never to return, round an old kitchen fire,
that hung in crimson flags over the birth
logs, while we pared apples and counted
seeds; and poor Clirlie cracked walnu.s-
poor Charlie! the stars look down on his
lonely grave in California! But | see him
now with the great brick on his lap, with
| his hammer going crack, Garck, but some
how it didn't disturb one of the saIlies of
fan and outbursts OF laughter around that
temple.
| And there was the clock-the clock that
belonged to my great-great aunt, and tn at
had licked away the lives of five generations
| in one corner, reaching from the floor to the
/ ceiling, with the half-moou on its face. -
What history, what biography that old
clock was, there in the kitchen corner: thai
had watched such bright hair turn to snow,
such fairy young foreheads grow dark and
wrinkled under the burden of years!
'And at last, when the hour had crept up
to nine, grandpa would take his old-fashion-
ed bible, and the laughing eye and merry
dmples would settle into gravity, as he read
those blessed words once read over his era
die, and that would soon be read over his
grave. And following this, came the pray er
that seemed to draw all hearts nearer to the
gates of heaven!
so that when all this was over, grandpa
would take the iron shovel and heap the
grey ashes on the glowing cone of fire jus
as the years heaped the ashes on the glow
ing hopes and joys ofyouth; and grandma
fold up her stocking, and stick the needles
into the ball of yarn and say
Come children, it is time for honest peo
pie to go to bed.'
'And going back there shall miss then
all; grandma's white cap, and grandpa's sill
yer hair, and the cluster of bright young fa'
ces round the fire in the autumn evening;
but if they hadn't torn down the kitchen
/ could have gone and sat by the birch fire
and dreamed my old dreams and brought
them all back to me; but now its all gone
all gone-even the old kitchen and fir,
placer and Mildred Race bowed her hea
on her hands and wept.
The old kitchen fireside!' the fireside
where our grandfathers read, and our grand
mothers knit, are growing less Throughout
the land. Grim ghouls, in the shape Q
stoves and furnaces, are everywhere takin
their places, and the reign of andirons an
birch wood fires is growing less every year
Yet blessed be the old kitchen and man
tletree and iamb! and blessed, too, tn
, dreams that were builded out of those oil
brentwood fires--fair palaces and pleasan
gardens, and that all beautiful country, tn
Future, and which have all turned, like a
old kitchen fire--to ashes