Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-12-11
NO. 2s7.
Tales and Sketfhes.
THE WRATH OF THE WINTHROP MAN.
SION.
CONTINUED FROM THURSDAY. I


This had all been in her very youth but
somehow she had conceived the notion
with which the stern doctrines of heaven
and hell, she had learned by heart, at her
peril, strangely enough. had nothing at
all to do-that, after hard and thankless
lives, they had gone to receive the reward
OF infinite rest, where they might sleep
late of the mornings, if they would, and
have no more oceans, and shipwrecks, and
Sabbath instructions, to confront. If they
had ever done wrong, thought little Pru-
dence, it must have been very, very
wrong if they can have no good times here
or there T.!
The ninth son, her own twin-brother,
child with her of their parents old age,
Prudence and the keepin'-room had not
seen on his way to the unknown
His ship was lost in those northern seas
But Prudence knew that, where the ice of
an eternal winter locked up all vestige of
his fate, his rest was just as unbroken and
as grateful to the tired man as if he had
been laid with his brothers in the grave
yard up in the old High Street of Ipswich
Town
On the evening of the 10Th of October.
then, Prudence Heard sat with her rugged
husband and her rosy boys in the glow of
the freight. One of the lessons of her
homely life had been that no waking hour
should go unemployed; and so. though
she had but just put away the traces of
their support, she was busy with her knit
ting, following the stitches with one eye,
and with the other the nodding motions
of the relies in the chimney shadow, lest
they should tumble in among the fire
dogs, and end their homespun days in an
apotheosis of combustion.
There was a furious storm at sea that
night. Harry Main had never howled so
hoarsely in a twelyemonth. For won
der, whether from awe at the hurtling
tempest that stirred every easement in the
old mansion (Which, however they ratified.
for matter of one hundred and sixty
eight years or more), or whether from
pure physical sleepiness, the shock headed
urchins were quiet, and Ezekiel, being
noiseless sort of parsonage, was sitting,
as was his wont, staring at vacancy, and
dreaming ofnothing. Prudence had men,
tai leisure for once, and her thoughts,
leaping beyond her conscientious Puritan
control, were idling and summing them
selves away back in the days when she
was child.
She remembered her first eight brothers
as strong, horny handed men, who had
perhaps laughing and wondering at the
freak which had sent them a sister younger
than their own babies, and questioning
the righteousness of further fruitfulness at
an age when the parents should be only
mindful OF their dawning latter end-tak-
en- little note of her. But her last, her
own brother, who had nestled with her
close up under their mothers heart, ere
they had been born; who had been her
playmate in the stolen hours when they
could play-fOr Puritan mothers stitied
the prattle of their children and checked
their pastime ere their feet could roam
Qor were they not beings, those babies,
with souls to work out their own saliva
ton with fear and trembling, and, if the
righteous scarcely were saved, could they
be about their task too soon ?)-she re-
membered as the only chance lover of her
youth, and now, as the breakers rOared,
she thought of him.
Suddenly there came shock OF the tenn
pest it shivered every easement in the
house at once. The freight for an in
slant seemed to turn of pale blush hue.
Her eyes seemed raised, by no will of her
own, to the shaking windows with the
ocean outlook. She saw face looking
into hers.
Prudence had heard, until she knew by
heart, the stories of the "Magnalia"
1t was one of the seeming anomalies
and paradoXes of the religionism in which
she had been educated that, with all their
iron practicalities and stern, dogmatic
materialisms, the supernatural seemed al
ways very near and very familiar.
SO Prudence had always expected some
day to see a gost, and 50 she was not
greatly startled. Of course in the Puritan
education there was no precedent tor a
swoon. But she shivered She did not
stop to reason. Her husband and her
boys were asleep, but thief ace was intent
ly watching her.
1t was the face of her brother. She
knew its features well enough, haggard,
and worn, and intensive as they WERE
The frank, manly look of her sailor-boy
was gone. The clear-blue eye still clear
blue, but it was startling, ghastly blue.
1t was no gost; it was indeed her brother
She rose with a tottering step. and ap.
preached the window.
Somehow the face, without growing less
distinct, seemed to recede in the direction
of the ocean. She threw up the window
The face was still regarding her with
sad and wistiul look, but it now seemed
out among the white breakers.
In the ghostly tirelight-for their frugal
household used no illumination other than
from the source which gave them heat as
well-with the tempest beating and raging
wthout-she was thinking Of her twin
brother.
Philosophers have coniectured that twin
lives are nearer together than other lives;
that from the same throe of maternity,
even to their graves. they bear the same
SOUL and that their mysterious sympa-
thies not even death itself can break.
Prudence knew nothing of philosophy.
She only knew her duty, which was sim
pie routine enough. She knew to what
cares each of her days was allotted. and
that, after all, she should be cared for by
her own children until the monotony OF
life should melt away into rest. She
would have liked to 60 to heaven, because
it was right and proper thing to do, the
parson said, and Prudence's whole life had
been striving to do what was right and