The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1861-07-04
THE YoUNGSTER.

The young surgeons house was at the other
end of the town; it was close to a region of
haltbuilt streets-for Carlingford was pros
porous town-where successive colonies were
settling, where houses were damp and drainage
incomplete, and good practice to be had with
pains. The house had a genteel front to the
the road, lamp over the door, and a little sur
gerry round the corner, where it gave forth the
sheen of its red and blue bottles across whole
half-fnished district. Mr.. Rider had come tired
unaccountably tired. He had kicked off one
boot, and taken cigar from his case and for
gotten to light it. He sat plunged into his
easy-chair in drear bown study--a brown
study inaccessible to the solaces which general
y makes such state of mind endurable His
cigar went astray among the confused proper
ties ofhis writing tables the book he had been
reading last night lay rejected in the fartherest
corner of the room. He was iasensible to the
charms of dressing gown and slippers. On the
WHOLE he was III a very melancholy, sullen, not
TO say savage mood. He sat and gazed fiercey
into the fire, chewing the cud of fancies, in
which very little of the sweet seemed to mingle
with the bitter He had been the medical at
tendant of Mrs. Thompson on Grove street, and
had assisted this afternoon at her funeral, and
you might have supposed he had fastened the
advent Of that melancholy day. had you seen
his face.
On the whole, it was a hard dilemma in
which the poor young man found himself. He,
too, like Nancy, kept realizing the interior of
that other little house in Grove street. Both
of them, by dint of that acquaintance with their
neighbors, which everybody has in small CON-
mUnity, came to moderately correct guess at
what was going on there. Young Mr. Rider
sat in heavy thought, sometimes bursting out
into violent gestures, which fortunately no.
! body witnessed; sometimes uttering siehs
which all but blew out his light-impatient, ur-
gent sighs, not of melancholy but of anger and
resstauce-the signs of yonng man who found
circumstances intolerable, and yet was obliged
| to confess, with sore modification and humb-
| ling, that he could not mend them, and was
obliged to endure. The visions that kept Gid
| ing across his eyes drove him half as wild as
| poor Mrs. Christian; enc moment pretty
young wife, all that the new house wanted to
make it fully tenable; but he had scarcely
brought her across the threshold when a ghast-
ly figure in chair was carried over it after her.
up stairs into the bridal apartments, and anoth-
er woman, soured and drawn away by pressure
of poverty, constitutionally shabby, vehement,
and high-tempered, pervaded the new habita-
ton. No use saying pshaw and bah mo use
swearing bigger oaths, no use pitching unof-
Tending books into the corners,o breathing out
those short deep breaths of desperation There
was in reality the state Of affairs. Midnight did
not change the aspect it had worn in the morn
! ing. Pondering all the night through would
bring no light on the subject. Nothing could
change those intolerable circumstances The
poor young surgeon threw his coat off in the
heat and urgency of his thoughts. and pitched
| it from him like the books. There was no com
fort or solace to be found in all the world of
fancy Only this morning sweeter dreams had
| filed this disordered apartment. In magma
ton, he had helped his Bessie to minister to
the comfort of her poor sick parents in Mrs.
Thompsons house. Now he knitted his brows
! desperately over it, but could find no outlet
Unless some good fairy sent him patient in
the middle of the night, The chances were that
the morning would find him pursuing that same
interminable brown study, Of which nothing
could come.