The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-04-25
ONE WOMAN'S LIFE.
A Story of Tn-dnK.

AStOry OF To-day.
Eleanor Collins was the youngest
child and only daughter of Judge Col
lins of COllinsville, Mass. The Collins
family belonged to the genuine Now
England aristocracy; that is, they
bOasted that they could trace their ped
igree in a direct line from one of the
pass engers who crossed the Atlantic IN
the Mayfower, on her first trip to
America It might have been a task
attended with some difficulty for the
present generation of Collinses to pro-
Guce documentary evidence to support
this assertion, but they could at least
lay Just claim to quite a goodly array
of grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and
t-great-grandfathers. Not only did
the faded pages of the family record,
in several old Bibles, prove this genoa
logical point, but sundry ancient family
heir-looms, to wit /: dozen or two of
battered old teaspoons, bruised and
lOng-suffering teapot, an ugly shaped
little sugar bowl, and queer old tank
ard, all of silver, though rather thin
and quite decrepit from age, still exist
ed as tangible proofs that the ColliDses
of the past had been respectable, that
Is, well-to-do-folks in their time.
But the Collins family did not need
to look back altogether to prove their
claims to consideration. If they could
boast of having among their fore
fathers and near relatives doctors of
divinity, professors in Yale college, at
tOrney-generals, one senator, and one
governor, the old Judge was every wit
as good a man, in his own and his
townsmen's esteem, as this best Of the
race, and of his three sons, the eldest
was n lawyer and a rising politician,
who bade fair to be a senator himself in
time the second was a doctor in good
practice, and the third had recently
graduated at West Point, and was sta
toned on the western frontier.
1t was tradition that the girls of the
family had always done their part by
judicious marriage to build up the for
tunes of the COllinses, and there was no
reason why Eleanor, the judges young
est child, should not marry as well as
the daughters of her house was wont to
do. She was a slender New England
girl, whose forehead was too high,
whose nose was too large, and whose
mouth was too wide for the strict can
ons of beauty; but she had a trans
parent and blooming complexion, large,
soft, gray eyes, such a wealth of bright,
auburn air; and, above all, so vivacious
and changing an expression, which IL
lumined and transformed her face when
she spoke, that if her claim to real
beauty might be Justly disputed, that
she was most attractive and charming
was indisputable. She was intelligent
and tolerably well educated she could
read little Virgil she had been
through algebra, though she never ex-
actly knew how she did it ; she had
parsed Millions Paradise Lost; she had
studied chemistry and natural philOso-
phv, and "knew enough about them for
all practical purposes" her father was
wont to say, and did not dispute the
statement. since she could not, by the
widest stretch of imagination, conceive
of an emergency in her everyday life,
where she should be forced to apply
these sciences to actual use. She play
eJ the piano tolerably well, and sang
the old songs her father loved, to please
him, and a few of the new to please
herself, in a sweet though unframed
voice She was skilled in all matters
pertaining to the household. She could
bake cake, sweap, dust, iron, and, as for
sewing, with her that was a fine art.
Needlew,rk was her delight, and her
deft fingers we're equally at home In the
shaping of the commonest of garments,
or the daintiest arrangements of fine
laces and ribbons. She was a CHEEKY,
sunny-tempered girl, the idol of tho
household, and a favorite with all who
knew her. Everybody predicted great
match for her. and. in fact, wOOers
were not lacking. Before she was Is
she had refused two of her brothers
cadet classmates by the time she was
20, the list of her rejected suitors was
increased by n clergyman, doctor, and
two merchants. In true New England
fashion. her father and mother had
looked on quietly at this procession of
aspirants for the post of their son-ln-
law, neither interfering with the wooIng
rs it went on, nor with the summary re-
lection of each suitor IN his turn. There
was time enough for Eleanor to settle
hv and by, was their unspOken thought,
and surely they were in no haste to lose
her bright presence from her child
hoods home. At % Eleanor was still
unmarried, but that year brought a
great change into her life Her father
and mother died within three months
of each other, and at the same time she
lost parents and home.
The Judge had lived generously,
though not extravagantly. His income
had never been large, and the education
and establishment of his sons had alb
sorbed the greater part of his small
economies. When the estate was set
tied and divided between the children,
Eleanor's portion was a mere pittance.
The change was bitter to her. Her
brothers, who were bOth married, offer
ed her a home in their families, but, al
though she liked her sister-in-law very
well, she who had been used to the in
dependence of an only daughter in her
fathers hOusC, could not, without an in
ternal struggle, take the new place of
surcrnumcrary in her sisters house
hold.
To ask her father for the money she
had needed for her expenses had SEEM
ed easy and natural, but to ask it of her
brothers was simply intolerable. They
were both struggling to achieve indie
pendeuce. but as yet neither of them
was rich, and each had quite as much
as he could well do to support his own
family, withoIt an additional burden.
Not one word of this sort WIS spoken.
She was treated with the greatest kind
ness bv both her brothers and their
wives. and she did her part toward less
euinr tine burden of her pecuniary sup
port by her diligent and skillful needle.
She sewed for the children, she made
rdesses for her sisters, which fitted
exquisitely; she made hats as dainty
and tasteful as ever entered the fancy,
or left the hands of a French milliner;
she tended the babies, whom she idol
ized; she took her part in the light
household duties, in which the ladies
Of the New England family do not
scorn to busy themselves, end vet she
felt, rather than knew, that her stay in
her brothers homes was considered by
them as merely a temporary one. They
naturally expected her to marry and
have a home of her own. At intervals.
eligible sUitors had presented them
selves. but had been refused. Each in
turn she had tried to like-she was
really anxious to love some one of them.
She read and understood the pleased
smile of hope that frightened her sister
in-laws' faces at each fresh appearance
of a suitor, and their blank and disap-
pointed air at the disappearance OF the
rejected lover. It stung her pride that