The Wyandot pioneer. (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1853-1868, 1868-05-21
An Old Woman's VIII.
BY MARY KYLE DALLAS.

/ Sometime in her life, they said,
Mrs. Gringe had been belle and a
beauty. 1t must have been a long,
long while before, and it was hard
to believe when you looked at her
yellow and shrivelled and bent-as
it is hard to believe Of many an old
dame, of whom old men say-s'she
was pretty girl when I first knew
her"
That she had stores Of handsome
clothes, such as girls wore when she
was girl, was plain, for she wore
them still. AT seventy she used to
come out Of her house to collect her
rents in threadbare brocades, short
wasted and scant skirted, with
belts once woven IN rich tinted flow
ers, snl a full inch wide fastened by
tarnished buckles in a bonnet like
a coal scuttle, with moulting Par
a1ise, with one feather in its tail, on
the crown; and in slippers, with
buckles and sharp toes, tapping
slipshod and tattered as she walked.
She was immensely..rich, but she had
never bought q garment for long
years, and lived on stale loaves and
weak tea, all alone in the poorest of
her own houses.
Nay, not quite alone. One friend
and companion dwelt beneath her
roof-a great, green parrot, with
one eye, who swung solemnly in her
ring, without word all day, but
said at dusk, in it's dismal, cracked
and grinding voice:
''Gringe, Polly wants to go''
and was covered up for the night in
darkness, with shawl; and who on
being uncovered to the sunshine,
invariably remarked:
f'Good morning, Gringe, Good morning.,
There it's store Of knowledge ended,
for Mrs. Gringe, fearful of being ex-
travagant, had never taught it to ask
for crackers.
Mrs. Gringe had, it seemed, out
lived human love. Her husband she
only spoke of as rather a dishonest
person, who, when he died, owed
her dollar. Her daughter she al
luded to as '.jade, who married
man without penny"
Of her earlier friends she never
even thought, but she loved Polly
the parrot. A malevolent, one-eyed
faded stupid old bird it was, but so
great treasure in Mrs Gringe's
eyes, that she never saw rag-man,
wandering tinker or vagrant boy
in her street, without feeling sure
he was on the watch to steal poor
Polly.
So, while she did without tea and
sweetened the coffee, she could not
do without molasses. She kept in
the closet a little bowl of lump
sugar, for the ravenous beak of poor
Poll, and doled out a lump a day,
with heartfelt sigh, and a conf
dent belief that at last her love for
Poll would be her ruin. She made
no secret Of her feelings; all her
tenants knew it-all her neighbors.
1t was joke with all who knew
Mrs. Gringe, for to one and all she
had said
II know no man or woman worth
one Of Polly's claws" and said it too
in sober earnest.
One person took it seriously-a
shoemaker in third floor, of which
Mrs. Gringe collected the rent
monthly. He was a man with a
large family, little custom, and a
mighty love for beer-but, despite
the latter falling, rigid Methodist.
Often he discoursed eloquently on
the waste of affection. Once-alas |!
it was when he had spent the price
Of pair Of CATERS in ale-he insis-
ted on praying that "the heart of
old Mrs. Gringe might be turned
from parrots and was only deter.
red by the vehement declaration of
his wife, that ''to speak of parrots
in prayer, was sinfur' and at all
times he regarded the misplaced like
ing with sort flholy horror.
He had even said to Mrs. Grinoe,
awful as are landladies in poor men s
eyes 45