Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1872-08-23
HOW ALVIN CAME HOME,
BY AUGUSTA LARNED.


IT was dreary work cutting carpet-rags
night after night, with her boy away in
the army, and long lists of killed and
wounded filling the newspapers. She had
cut up Alvin's little coat 1t was the first
coat he ever had, and she remembered
how proud he had been of the buttons
and pockets, and it went to her heart to
shred it into Sits.
The room where Patience Tanning sat
was very small and humble. 1t was the
first room she had furnished with things
eked out and scraped together by the
hardest toll. For more than twenty years
she had lived in the old, dilapidated gray
farmhouse, in narrow round of duties
centering at the cradle of her child, and
later about the bed of her sick husband {;
and yet she had tasted keenly most of the
joys and sorrows that belong to woman's
lot. Her sphere had never seemed mean
or inadequate to herself, for holding her
child in her arms she felt that she possess
ed all the honor and dignity earth has to
bestow.
But the tears would drop sometimes
now, as Patience sat alone at her work in
the slender ray of the candle. There
were vine shadows where the row of
potted plants had been, for it was spring,
and the geraniums and heliotropes were
out in the little door-yard beds, and she
rested in the longer twilight, and lived
over the life she had led first as wife, then
as mother afterward as lonely widow
with her boy away at the war Patience
had always lived in others. 1t seemed
as though her heart had no separate ac-
tion of its own, and received its pulsations
from the beating hearts of those she loved.
When Washington was threatened and
danger menaced the Pennsylvania from
tier, Alvin had grown moody at home be-
cause she opposed his wish to join the
volunteers. 1t was the dark hour of her
country's peril, and Patience had wrestled
and struggled and prayed until she gained
strength to let her boy go out of her arms.
She had given her eve lamb; she sat
alone.
Her farm consisted of few acres of
rather stony land that lay close to the
house where she lived. Her husband had
been COOPER working at tubs and bar
rels off and on the busy time of the year,
and Alvin had learned the trade too; but
the little shop was closed now, and the
fields were let out on shares, and ever
since he marched away in the coat of army
blue, her boy had sent back his pay to the
widow, and her cruise and basket were
never empty Abiah Williams, who
lived in the next place, had banked up
her house in the fall, and dug and stored
her winter vegetables, and in the spring,
as soon as the ground grew mellow, he
came with his OK team to plow her gar
den. By carpet-making and odd bits of
sewing, Patience was able to supply all her
slender wants. Not penny of her boys
earnings had ever been touched. That
money was sacred. Patience had al.
ready spoken to Enoch Holbrook about
putting it out at interest In the long
winter evenings, when she only heard the
SLOW tick of the clock in the corner, or
the sough of the wind in the pine trees,
her brain was busy with plans for her
boys future.
Deacon Spicer brought the paper in
every third day, after he had slowly
spelled it over for an hour or two at
home. The news had Travelled two or
three hundred miles by rail and stage be-
fore it came to her hand; but Patience
watched for it with beating heart. The
account of a bloody battle generally drove
her to bed with bad headache, caused by
the harder aching of her mother heart.
Rachels sympathies were mainly on the
mothers side; she did not think so much
of the stricken wives or desolate young
maidens mourning over their dead. She
had one of those intense but narrow ma
lures which Puritanism develops, with
little imagination, but strong and fervent
feelings. Her mind was so deeply religi-
GUS that the whole of life was invested
with a sort of sacred ardor; even her JOY
found expression in some grand old Gov
enanters hymn, that seemed to fill the
pauses of the wind in the forest grove
near at hand.
Patience had looked forward many
times to the possible harm that might
come to Alvin. She had thought of her
loneliness that perhaps might end only
with the grave; and how, in some dis
tant autumn day, when the crickets were
chirping in the stubble, she might feel
glad that she had plucked out her heart
and given it to God, remembering that
he who would save his life must lose it.
But there were other days when So
Der gladness colored her mood, and the
sublime old hymns that told of persecu-
tion and victory over death came rolling
out on her rich voice. Then ii was easy
for her to believe that Alvin would be
spared, and she thought of his home-cOm-
ing as of a second birth, when the Lord
would again put him into her arms as a
free gift, With her deep heart, that took
such eager hold of what it loved, kindling
and warming as it held, she pictured the
life that they would lead together, and
slowly pieced out a story of exquisite
kind in that little white-w washed room,
where all his history had written itself.
A certain narrowness OF vision, as we'll as
tbV absorption Of her love made Patience