The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1874-04-23
A STROKE OF LUCK.

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT sPoFFoRD.
PERHAPS there are few families poorer
i'm this worlds goods than we Feather
stonehaughs were, not that we were par
ticularly better off i'm the other worlds.
Still, as people 90, we were good people,
and why we had such misfortune was a
puzzle. The family had gone into decay
when father and mother married. What
they married on goodness knows; they
could have had little but tradition of for
mer glOries. To be sure, they had the an
cient Featherstonehaugh house, a many
chimneyed mansion that roared and rum
bled and ratified so appallingly that a new
clean cottage with two rooms would have
seemed paradise to us children. Now and
then the hail shattered some window;
then the shutters were pulled together to
hide the damage-it was never repaired.
Now and then the lightning tumbled some
bricks off the chimney; if they chOked
the flue, it was forsaken, and fires were
built in another room.
And so we lived; for father-having
been born i'm the latter days of the family
prosperity, having been weaned, so TO say,
on the legends of its former state, cutting
his teeth on the crust of the Featherstone-
haugh grandeur, and putting on his first
robes while a score of servants kowtOwed
at his little bidding-never, even now that
the whole was dust and ashes, could get
over the feeling that it was all temporary
adversely. that the king in exile was royal
still; the idea of nObIeSSe obLige held a stiff
rod over his head, and he couldn't do this,
and he must do that, because he was a
FeatherstOnehaugh So father could re-
sort to no business or trade; the Feather
stOnehaughs having inherited their money
for generatiOns-very likely, Rob and /
thought, from some old highwayman in
the beginning-could not condescend to
soil their white hands, or to have small
transactions in merchandise. they whose
transactions had been in the hundred
thousands! And father had no profession,
and he had no faculty.
Mothers aunt left her a sum that just
held our heads above water. Father ney-
er reiished it-perhaps because mothers
aunt had kept a haberdashery; but he
worked in the garden as prince might
turn over his paternal glebe, and cOntrived
to scratch something out of that. | al
ways have thought, as | remembered
fathers air of patient expectancy, that
he looked forward to some public resti-
tuition of the wealth that had been lost.
Why, l don't know, except that some half
the Government seized in the great en-
barge because il had been in forbidden
port-had been, of course, ignorantly;
and though false papers could have been
taken out, as they were taken by many
another ship, the Featherstonehaugh
would not have had a captain in their SER
vice who was capable of the act. So the
truth was told, and the Government laid
its heavy hand on the great ships, and
though years afterwards it surrendered
them. they then were rotten hulks, and
the Featherstonehaugh supremacy had
gone into decay with them.
No longer. then, did the Featherstone-
haughs give their balls in the house whose
hospitable chambers held hundred guests
overnight; the dining-hall no longer rang
with the clang of glasses and the festivity
of mighty banqueting; sides of venisOn
no longer hung in the buttery, nor great
turtles SWAMI in the tank, nor wines mel
lowed i'm the double cellars; ladies, lovely
in powder and paint and patches, stiff in
costly brocades. glittcring in antique jew
els, no longer crossed the waXed floors !;
the parlOr suites were closed, the stables
empty, the Jewels and gold salvers sold,
the Featherstonehaugh beauties had sunk
into decline. and were lying in the family
vault, and the old FeatherstOnehaugh was
dying in his chair.
He had been fierce partisan, that grand
father of ours, and had taken his country s
side so zealously that when his neighbors
doubted the worth of the Continental cur
rency he had proudly and angrily bought
il by the stack-barrelful after barrelful we
little beggarly Featherstonehaugh had to
plaV with i'm the attic: mother would have
turned an honest penny sellingi it for waste
paper, but father held it as a sacred trust
perhaps i'm his heart of hearts he vet be-
lieved the nation would redeem it, Just as
he believed it would pay the French
claims, of which he held an unknown sum.
Just as he believed that if he parted with
the old mansion, the buyer would be sure
to find the gold that fierce old Feather
stonehaugh had buried the night the Brit
ish landed on the point five miles away.
Bitter nOnSense!" mother said once,
when we children asked about the story q
garrulous old neighbor told. =" He had nc
gold to bury"
"A great mistake, Marian father an
swered-the plebeian sound of her real
name annoyed him so that he always en-
phonized it thus. "He had gold, great
amount-he had been drawing it into bis
own hands for months. My mother knew
of it. He heard the gun fire, and saw the
rockets that signaled the landing of the
British, and he bade his wife lie still-she
would no more have stirred than If the
hand of death had been on her-and he
went where that gold was, and she heard
him lifting out the bags. He was gone
several hours: when he returned, his
clothes were covered with the soil. but he
burned them. And then the British were
quartered i'm the house. And that golC
has never since been seen"
THE British took it, of course" saiC
my mother.
Il don't know. The next day, excite
ment perhaps, and the unusual labor,
think, and the great passion of his fiery
anger with the British. did their work or
him, and he was strnck with palsy"
And she had not asked him where III
buried it:'' we cried.
Nobody asked questions of old Gener
al Featherstonehaugh,' said my father.
Nv mother gave a contemptuous sniff
she hated this old Featherstonehaugh as i
he had ruined her husband by rearing hin
as he did, and by leaving him nothing Il
sustain the fabric reared. "He would
have remembered something of it himself
/ ALWAYS saw" she said; she had hi
senses"
I'm fashion, poor fashion,"
His affections were lively. BE talkei
about the little ones he had laid away,
said nv mother. II have heard hin
And. in my opinion, the idea of his havin
buried treasure came from that, every b
of it. He was living his life over, an
that was touching part, and paralyhc
are easily touched"
" Account" said my father, in the sam
way. then. for his always having his chai
in the great dining-room, and havingit b'
side the cellar door there, and allowing n
mortal to pass that door, sitting an
wringing his hands for the babies he ha
buried down there, as he would cry oui
Not that imagine there is anything in tn
cellar-I have examined every inch of i
But with that gold," he sighed, Il shoul
be man again, and my children coul
take their place."