Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-04-22


see me going there to church."
"My lamb" was her pet exclamation
for anybody she liked, bestowed quite
as often on q dignified and venerable
father in the church as on child.
In her young days Miss - had lived
in wild part ct Pennsylvania, and had
seen great deal of the Indians With
children clustering all about her it was
her delight to sit by the stove at nigh,
and tell wild and hair lifting stories
of Indian warfare, or of ghosts. After
which it was pleasant to go to bed and
lie there in the dark!
Her hair, which was gray, she wore
tightly drawn away from her rough,
rugged. weather beaten face, and done
up in small, hard, uncompromising knot
at the back of her massive head The
pictures of Martin Luther have always re-
minded me of this good dame, who would
have gladdened Edmund Spanglers
heart, seeing that she was woman who
had no nonsense about her.
Another and different eccentric por-
trait in my gallery is that of lady, of a
fair and delicate style of beauty, and
with most graceful and cultivated man
neys, yet who always managed to make a
first impression of oddly. Her atfecta-
tions were as many as the roses in her
garden, or the days in the year, and they
were generally derived from the book
she had happened to read last. To her
own consciousness she was the martyr or
the heroine of the authors page, and so,
to her family and friends, she appeared
like an actress who takes Protean parts
in play, in great variety Of characters.
Sometimes she was Lady Languish and
sometimes Lady Disdain. She would
sail into her drawing room, now with the
stately grace of Queen Elizabeth, and
again with the tripping movement and
the lisping shyness of bread-and-butter
miss not yet out of school. Under these
foolish mannerisms she really held a
hard common sense and almost mascu.
line directness and energy, and when oc-
casion rose she could act with decision
and force. But nine times out of ten all
she made you think Of was:
Little old woman, whittier so high?
and the very natural answer:
To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!
A less pleasing style of her eccentric
ity, as it affected her housekeeping, was
to be found in her frequent changes of
opinion with regard to hygienic consid-
erations. For few days she would be
an ardent vegetarian, and meats would
be banished from her table, as though
they were poison. Beans, greens, pota-
toes, and esculent roots would form the
bill of fare. Next, hot bread would
come under an interdict, and only bread
two days old would be permitted. This
in place where nobody breakfasted
without hot rolls, mullins, or corn bread,
was regarded as thing incomprehensi
BILE, and even the servants resented it,
The cold bread periods, however, were
Intermittent, and the vegetarian intervals
times when the table groaned under the
richest Joints, the most savory buildings,
and the most nutritious soups. Sleep
too came under her sway. There were
days and weeks when she held to the
conviction that much sleep was good for
body and soul, and then everybody was
allowed to lie in bed so long and so late
as he pleased. Presto! A new order of
things was inaugurated; and then what
change came DER the spirit of our
dreams! Early in the morning, in the
gray, shivering twilight of the winters
dawning, bell from the regions below
would ring fiercely, DANGEROUSLY, sternly
"a bell of moods potential and impera-
tive. Breakfast would follow swiftly on
the dying echoes of this resonant rising
bell, and halfdressed, wholly cross and
YEARLY misanthropic people must gather
round the board, or 60 without their re-
past.
Queerer than she, however, was my
old friend, whom shall call the Captain.
The Captain was of plethoric habit,
and had a purple face surrounded, as by
a nimbus, by fringe of tlaxen hair. He
had followed the seas, and had lived in
tropical climates, had eaten curry in Cal
cutta, tasted sherbet in Naples, and had
twice nearly died of yellow fever in New
Orleans. 4 bachelor of seventy years,
he was never suspected Of having been
in love with any particular woman, but
he adored the whole sex. To see him
reverently rise when lady entered the
room, to hear the courteous Difference
with which he spoke to every creature
who wore petticoat, most of all to re-
ceive bow from the old cavalier, who
was every inch gentlemen, was charm
ing experience Sir Walter Raleigh him
self was not reader to carpet the path
for Queen Elizabeth's feet with his costly
cloak than was the Captain to spread
something soft and sweet in the way of
all womankind if he could. He some.
times carried his notions of gallantry to
an inconvenient length for other people.
Thus when nephew, in despair at be-
ing the rejected sutton Of fair lady in
the neighborhood, came to him for
easeful sympathy, he was listened to
with the gentlest attention and coun-
seled to bear up manfully against the
unlucky DEGREES Of fate. But the
nephew's back was hardly turned be
fore the broad bIimmed hat was donned