The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1875-12-23
But the undertaker's skeleton for the


present.
There was never anybody prettier than
Nanny Pallfry. Indeed, it would be
hard to find in any woman's eye more
enchanting light than that which lay IN
Nannette's. Her voice, like the poets
western wind, was sweet and low. She
was as lovely and natural as a summer
wild flower, and so good that sin In her
was no evil.
Mr. Theologian, you would interrupt
me.
] I will explain If she had been more
worldly-w cautious instead of loving,
artful instead of sincere, In short any
thing but the very angel she was. Nam
nette's life would have seemed purer in
the worlds eyes, but not in Gods. l
know that.
Nannette's history is an old story,
told every day. For shame, man ! that
it is told every day. She lived and
loved, and trusted, and that is all of it,
or nearly.
One December night she came in the
snow to her fathers door, and he turned
her away-Nannette, the only thing in
i Gods world he loved with human love.
She did rot weep, she did not even MUIR
muir: she only pressed the hand OF a
child who walked YEARLY beside her, and
passed on.
Her life from that time was so full of
suffering, vet SO womanly and true, that
the angels might sit and listen to mar
ration of it with delight. Nannette went
far away from the city, and In little
town by the sedgy sea-shore taught her
boy to pray.
Year after year went by.
The world went on like great wheel:
men and women and children dropped
off like flies, and Jedd Pallfry's hammer
was busy. Now while shrouds were be-
ing made, and coffins vanished, and the
old world was turning on its axis, Nan
nette died.
The night of her death, just as old
Jedd was fitting the lining to an infants
coffin, g grave grew up at his feet-a
willow and a rose-bush, and he heard
the singing of birds He knew what it
| meant. He knew that somewhere he
could not tell where-there was another
mound lust like the one beside him. O.!
how blithely the little birds sang toJedd.
There was a new heaven and a new
earth for somebody that night, and how
merrily the robins sang about it All
this happened while the snowfakes we're
4 running nimbly over the housetops like
little white mice. @#
r. Every Christmas Eve, at the same
hour, Jedd sees this phantom mound,
with its signing willow tree, and its fairy
birds, fitting here and there, like the
fragments of broken rainbow! And at
night he has fearful dream. He fan
cies that four fever fiends with jaundiced
visage-Brain Fever, shouting delirious-
"; Scarlet Fever, with red-hot eyes, and
their disgusting hands-hiss him on the
mound, till poor Jedd is near going mad
with agony and fear.
Nannette's child was adopted by fish
erman's wife; very badly adopted; for
when poor Tom was not busy catching
fish, he was catching something else.
So, between boating and beating, the
child was not as happy as he might have
been with more of one and less of the
} other, or genteel sufficiency OF both.
Having INDUCED in four years expert
ence in being whaled, he took it into his
head to have hand In the business him
self. "To be or not to be" beaten any
more was his decision; SO one fine morn
ing, without as much as the cognizance
of his beloved mother Amplitude, he
placed his name in the books OF "the
good ship" Maria Theresa, and sailed out
port with light heart, one suit of
clothes, and prospect of hard work,
which is all the "rig out" true sailor
needs, Heaven bless him!
But Tom was too delicately made for a
whaling voyage, and after wasting three
! years of the golden part of his life, he
found himself incur great city one night,
, without money, or friends, or place to
die in. He wandered from street to
; ; street, SO charmed with the mad wran-
Cling of sleigh bells-a new music to,
him-and so dazzled by the shop win
dows that he forgot his hunger and the
& web of difficulties which Time and Fate,
busy monsters, were weaving for him.
But hunger under such circumstances,
like renewed note, only spares one for
little while. It came back to him with
| interest, his hunger, and he grew dis
! consulate.
The city, with all it's strange newness,
= was forgotten in turn. The snow chilled
him, and the happy children buying
TOYS in the grand shops, and the merry
sleighs darting the street like swallows,
, gave him an acute sense of loneliness.
There were no mothers and sisters to
put gay presents in his stockings. In
deed, if there had been, they might have
| bought the stocking, too, for never q one
: had Tom on those cold little feet.
Tom looked in Maillard's window at
, the rare pastry and CONNECTIONS, and his
hunger grew maddening. He turned
: from the heaped deicacies, fearing that
: he might be tempted to thrust his arm
/ through the thick plate-glass and help
, himself. He turned away in CASTRO
nomic agony, did Tomtit, and hearing
/ the children say Merry Christmas =
r wondered what it was and where it could