The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-08-25
Our Lady of Good Fortunes

The Colonel (whom we mentioned the 9TH
er day as man noted for his general inior-
mation) has sent his wife this summer to a
small watering-place in Virginia. You would
be sure to meet her at some place of summer
resort, for she likes crowd. She has no rel
ish for canning out in the lonely Adiron-
dacks,.is not in love with ssolitude, secretly is
of opinion, we suspect, that Mother Nature is
a grim old woman whose acquaintance she
cares to make only in kitchen garden. She
has all the babies with her; she and the ba-
bies are always ready for a jaunt; or, if they
are not in trim, the ready-made clothing
stores supply all she reeds. Wherever they
go, to fashionable hotel or clearinghouse or
quiet farmhouse, the weather brightens the
morning after they arrive; people discover
that the bathing is better than at the Branch,
the coffee is really good, and the butter en-
durable. The ColonePs cousins from Bos-
toni who accompany his wife are beyond
measure annoyed at her unthr.fty happy-go-
lucky ways; her lack of aesthetic tastes, her
indifference to those fine distinctions of char
acter which mark people off into classes.
They 1.-THE Misses White Of Boston) possess
instincts'so keen that they can feel as by the
rising of a spirit thermometer the presence of
alien natures to their own. All the boardeis
are alien natures; how could it be otherwise
when there are two Market-st. clerks from
Philadelphia with not an idea beyond the
hardware they sell and the sham jewelry they
wear; New York sugar-trader making 'scon-
nections y two or three Southern matrons
and their husbands, TO whom they assign the
Incidence and lack of education which the
Boston people attribute to those interior
races; and the usual mob OF silly girls On the
lookout for husbands, and utterly without ca
reers in life.
The young women from New England, del
icate, thoroughbred representatives of good
old stock, are forced to turn to their ferns and
sketching and rowing for solace and outlet.
They are used to this; they generally lit
their fastidious brows slightly with sad re-
gret when they speak of ''people," meaning
the world outside of their clique, but always
add, with generous affability toward the
other half OF Gods creation, that Mature
never disappoints u.s." Their cousin, who is
a Western woman, with a dash of Southern
blood, knows everybody at ''the Springs" by
dinner-time. Something in her soft voice,
the sparkle of her eyes, her light-hearted
laugh when with the babies, draws first ore
and then another to her. She tells the
amused New Englanders in day or two bits
of personal history Of this one and of that,
comical and pathetic, but which seem to have
touched her to the quick. The gaudy Mar
ket-st. clerks have an old mother for whom
they have bought a little house and furnished
it, ''and they are going to fave their home all
together now. / intend to call and take tea
with them when go through Philadelphia y
she adds. One of the stupid New York mer-
chants is an energetic temperance reformer,
and another followed the Sanitary Commits
sion through the war with his gifts and labor,
and the third has blind wife, who remains
in her room, and he is devoted lover to her
still in her gray-haired old age. The tender.
JrO oil fha
with their old-fashioned courtesy and Older
opinions, the pretty young girls well read in
Elzabethan literature and the cookery book
they were all fresh pages OF charming boos
to the little fat woman. She brought them
together. She made them acquainted with
no fussy managing, but just as the odorlesS
| oil blends dozen different unpleasant scent;
| together into one exquisite perfume.
| The story was the same last summer and
| will be next. Into whatever house she goes
! she finds good many tired people who have
stepped aside out of the work and heat o
their daily lives TO rest little while. She ha:
no learning and no talent of any sort, only q
cusious insight, which reveals to her whatev'
er hurt they may have carried with them
| from this daily life, a curious tact which
brings her close to them. The little woman
under her gay. happy temper, has infinite
| pity, and great trust in Christ and in the
healing power OF human sympathy. She can
| not preach to her ailing and tired compan
ions. DR.. Broadhead does that in the parlo
on Sunday, an old sermon delivered ponder
ously and well. She does not deal in tracts
which Miss Smith sends out TO the heather
taking the pennies from the children 20 de
fray the expenses. But she makes them al
friends together, putting her Christianity in
to merry oyster-bake, or dance in the bail
Into thousand commonplace, hearty
friendly words and ways which nobody count
or notices. When September comes, the.
will all disperse and go home, this way anC
that. They will feel themselves curiously re
freshed and strengthened, and will hav'
made some good friends perhaps for life, bu
will remember our nameless little woman on
ly as "a pleasant person whom they woul
willingly meet again." just as we forget tn
spring in the woods, which quenched ou
thirst aud sparkled gladly in the sun, with
out money and without prce.-New Yor
, Tribune,