The Potter journal and news item. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1872-1874, 1873-08-20

hHOlI. mere Is q spring OF running
water somewhere under the place
of course there is. There it comes,
trickling out Of the rock, you see.
And lightning always makes for a
hidden spring Of running water like
a child for its mother"
"Nonsense, my DEAR" l answered
her. "Yeur father was an inventor.
and the imagination is large in you.
All this is pure construction"
ooh don't talk to me that way
she cried. Il see what is before me.
/ never shall have an hours peace
on the place till l leave it for the
mad-house; and never expected to
have" And she turned to go in and
help straighten out the confusion of
our unpacked possessions.
Don't be 50 thoroughly unreason-
able, Hester,' | urged, following her.
ANY one would suppose, to hear you,
that thunder storm was the end Of
the world"
II dare say it will be of mine," she
responded. "Nobody ever had such
a horror of anything for nothing;
and YOU have brOurht me into q very
nest Of them"
"Pshaww l exclaimed. "Don't
be a child, entirely. An occasional
shower during a period of three
months need harm nobody. And
I've no doubt we can make the
house a delightful place for our
friends to visit"
"The housew cried Hester, sweep
ing her arms, in tragic gesture Of
exhibition. ct is a hovel! 1t is
tumbling down. Look at its immense,
its intermmable rooms, black with
CRIME, blistered with dampl Listen
to its rats! Breathe its moldy at
mosphere. It has held a century and
a half Of squalor. Nothing but fire
can purify it. Oh! it needs the
sure enough" And then
she threw her arms around my neck,
and hid her face and cried, and pres
entity ran away to hinder the passing
of more words; for she felt that even
/ was rs angry as she was dissatis-
fed.
But Hester was one of those wom-
en- who, after having said their say,
try to make the best of things and
do their duty with painful fidelity.
She had brought down, despite all
our gibes, some huge bundles of
kitchen wallpaper, that she had pur-
chased for less than & dime a roll;
and she found the means to mix
enough paint for her purposes, and
soon, with her own hands and the
help Of the other women, she had
cleaned and painted the inside Of the
house from top to bottom, and had
hung it with the kitchen paper, put
on wrong side out, 50 that the plain,
gray surfaces Of that wrong side
made uniform tinting to all the walls
as pleasant to the eye as something
twenty times costlier might have
been. Having done this she proceed
ed to paint and yarnish some Of the
floors in imitation Of tiles and nIaid
woods, to put down the few carpets
saved from the wreck, and establish
the books and pictures. Meanwhile.
the farm and the mills needed me
and l thought the more
Hester had to occupy her and the
more demands the place made upon
her the more she would see its capa-
bilities and become interested in it.
And 50, in course of time, Hester
gave the house a homelike, happy
look; and any stranger coming there
would have thought that we had
made for ourselves a little Eden in
the wilderness.
But it was no Eden to Hester. |
She said hardly anything more, but
she used to sit at her window, with |
a far-away look in her eyes; and /
knew she hated it and felt all but |
buried alive. At least, might have
known so, if | had taken the pains to
observe or spared the time to see.
But l was young man then, deter
mined to retrieve my fortunes and |
recover my place in the world; and |
my whole soul was getting to be /
bound up in the place and its posi-
oilities. | had no eyes or thoughts
for anything else; for | saw an i'm
nense fortune in it if | had but the
skill and the patience to unearth it.
had invented, indeed, an air COM
machine, to be run by the
tide, that twice a day set up and