The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1875-06-01
MISCELLANY.
An ALOE BLOSSOM.

~ IL OAC VI tu0 ulSCTdOlC t11luSS III l1lc
that there are people to whom the gift of
expression is denied. We pity those
whose bodily speech is wanting, but no
one pities the spiritually dumb. Their
affection is incomprehensible to us, and
we treat its victims as though in some
way they suffered through their own
fault. No cruelty is meant by this. 1t
is next to impossible for frank and out
spoken persons to comprehend that all
cannot speak, and that much suffering
sometimes lies locked in this enforced
silence.
Helen Miles was one of these speech
less souls.
As child she was pale and still. The
aunt who brought her up, and did not
love her, suspected her of ''slyness," ard
openly quoted the proverb about ''still
waters.' At sixteen she was called ''shy,"
at twenty-five stigmAtized as cold. Tall,
with good figure and features,
thick light brown hair without the
least gloss or curl, fair,
colorless skin, graceful hand and
arm, she was entitled to pass for pretty
woman. In fact, women no prettier rank
often as Bellies. But she was not beauti.
full enough for statue, and as a statue
her acquaintance persisted in regarding
her, which certainly was not fair. She
had some dim consciousness of this, and
it made her uncomfortable. Her eyes
looked out at times with pitiful, inquir-
ing look-the look we see in dogs eyes
ora does; look we cannot quite read.
Nobody read Helen's. Two or three
people, attracted by this odd face, made
little experiments, fumbled at the lock of
her impossible reticence, but it was in
vain; all the lamentations, the ''open
sesames,' failed; nothing came of it.
''Cold as stone, my dear!' women said
of her, and by general agreement she was
set down as a person without enthusiasm,
faithfully faultless, icily regular
person who said little because she felt
nothing, to whom generous impulse was
unknown. With such judgment are
some women judged, and will be to the
end of the world.
just one erevice existed in this armor
of ice, THROUGH which at times the real
Helen looked out and revealed herself.
Did say that she sang? Her voice was
low and rich, rather soprano than con-
tralto; its range was limited to few
notes, but it possessed an extraordinary
pathetic quality. She sang no songs that
other people sang, but took scraps from
this poet and that-Arnold, Tennyson,
Rossetti, Landor--and set them to weird
little harmonies Of her own composition.
Nothing of the limit of her own nature be-
longed to this unique musical faculty, ex-
cept that she could not always sing, or to
all people, and that there were persons be-
fore whom she could not sing at all. or
course this only made every one more
eager to hear her. Happy and light
hearted people find certain luxury in
being made miserable. It was fashion.
able excitement to sit in the twilight and
have Helen Miles break your heart with
her pathetic voice, and she was greatly in
request; in fact her music constituted
her chief hold on society.
. Reginald Thurston remembered long
afterward the night when he heard her.
Mrs. LIE Clerc's drawing-room was dim
with freight as he went in-the light of
a Pickering wood fire, which sparkled on
the sofa where Rosalie LIE Clerc lay, and
sent long sudden shadows across the
floor. From the inner room came the
sound of singing.
If now you saw me you would say,
"Where is the face used to prize %
And would answer. "Gone before,
It tarries yelled in Paradise"
When once the morning star shall rise,
When earth with shadow fees away,
And we stand safe within the door,
You shall lift up the veil that day
Look up, look on for far above,
Our palms are grown, our place is set;
There we shall meet as once we met
And love with old familiar love.