Litchfield enquirer., 1876-11-23
IITCHFIELD CONN, THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 23 1876.

O4 A1S Ild1 dSdlus Oub NNAAtA1 O4IA AOO OC0 l 1t. Ellen Bond uttered one of those pleas ing little sophisms that choke one with their dusty sweetness, like buckwheat 1 honey. aaasvs ,ne ''But we are not angels yet, my dear; we poor women aren't all as good as you; | we need somebody to look up to and sup | port us; every body is not as independent as you are. Gratia.,' ..... | Gratia did not answer. Her face re- turned to it's deep quiet in the moonlight. Mrs. Ford yawned and consulted her tiny glittering watch. -s-ss..~ ...
 ''Ten o'clock, I declare! I am matron of the party and send you all home direct l ly. To think of sitting here discussing love by moonshine to this hour!-really 1t | is stupid. I have been asleepi'
 Mir. Steele offered her his arm. Mr Vernon helped Ellen Bond from her posi- tion on the rocks, called by small shrek she uttered as her foot tried to slip ! in descending. He was nearer than I,and reached her first; indeed, I did not hasten. Giatla had lost her handkerchief, and 1 looking for it among tfr9 stones, and wrap- 1 her. delayed us a little, so that we were last of all our party on the hard and sea- scented shore. She held my arm as few women know how, for real aid, and with l the unintended fattery of reliance and trust. Neither of us spoke on the way l home except once, when we caught the I cadences of Ellen Bonds pure soprano voice floating high and clear in Latin hymn, arranged from one of Mozart's masses-part of her artillery against the minister
 "Why do you never sing with Miss Bond?" said I. et' en
 Our voices do not chord at all, said Gratia.
 ] left her at the door of the house, and having myself an out-lodging in cottage, where my room boasted piazza-6oor of it's own and a n1ght-latch, I went over and lit my lamp, hunted for a cigar, put on my slippers, and being anything but sleepy, repaired to the piazza, where I tilted myself up against the wall in con- fortable armchair to have smoke as we'll as self-catechizing.
 l It is not the modern custom for senti- ment to develope itself in sentimental surroundings. If had been Strephon I might have perched myself on a,damp rock, with pipe (not of tobacco), and tweedled my feelings out in music; but as was only John Hamilton Tanning. ''a Massachusetts citizen of the nineteenth century, preferred good cigar and an easy seat when I was going to th1nk of my lady love. For I suppose I was in love with Gratia Henningsen then. I thought was. had known her we'll for three years after she first came to my fa- ther's house to live, an orphan with some small property; a tall, shy, sensitive girl of fourteen, neither pretty or plain, gen. tie, intelligent, kind-hearted, but always odd, eccentric, and singularly independ. ent of aid or counsel, especially from me, student at Harvard, coming home to 1 Boston whenever I pleased, and never once the oftener for any attraction of Ora tia's; for she did not attract me. Boys either worship poised and developed tall ent in a woman their senior and superior, or extreme physical beauty, and that was not Gratia's gift. When I graduated, at | twenty-one, she was seventeen, left home for foreign university, extended my leave of absense to travel, and after five years returned to find my fathers ward woman, cultivated, attractive, magnetic; not beautiful, but of the Her. | mione order:
 'If it be, as they said, she is not fair. Beauty's not beautiful to me-"
 In short, fell in love with her, after the fashion of young men, not enough to risk all for all, but enough to make me bal ance the chances of refusal before I dared ask. Gratias manner was pecu- liar to me. To almost every one else she was cordial on sudden meeting after ab- sense; real delight danced in her large eyes and thrilled her voice. When came home she was shy, grave, speeches., ap- parently impasslve. She rarely asked me to do anything for her; but was always seeking out and dolng some little thing for me; nothing obtrusive, either from the manner of it's doing or it's importance, but a quiet supplying of small wants, 8 sort of gracious dew of ministration, such as mother sheds on childs daily life. She knew and remembered all my tastes, and altogether unconsclously guided her. self by them. If expressed wish, or rather liking that she should sing or read any thing, it was sure to be done; but if l told her to do thing with the slightest assumption of authority, such as spoiled children sometimes will use, she rebelled at once, fired with pride and wrath, resisted every wish suggested as compromise, and treated me literally de haut eaa bas, till I altogether submitted and begged her pardon, when she gener- ally broke down into the most fervent hu- mility, and asked me to forgive her for being so cross and contumacious.
 Did she love me? The question might have baffled wiser heads than mine. I resolved to watch her carefully while we staid at Hill Beach, for my mother had come to spend SIX weeks there, and Ora. tia, of course, with her. So, with that sole resnlt of my midnight meditation, I went to bed, and rose in the morning to l put my intention into action. And d1d watch carefully, feeling more and more every day how much depended on the re- suit, and more and more how little I could depend upon anything I saw for en- couragement.
 Gratias manner never changed. She was calmly civil to Mir. Vernon: gracious and genial to MT. Steele, who, 1 should have said before, came to the Beach with his sick wife. As for the other gentlemen, they fared according to their dues; for she was as candid in action as in speech. | Frank Ledyard was one of the few people | to whom she was habitualIy cool and proud She could not endure afectation, 1 and his was peculiarly. offensive. A harm less, kind hearted little creature, with the poetic faculty gracefully developed as his only remarkable point, he thought 1t fine to be wicked; and only made himself dis gusting. Gratia dropped him when she could. and extirguished him when he forced himself upon her. s. ..-.. 1 It was a match making summer at the Beach. Before it's close Mrs. Ford was engaged to Gaius Clark Ledymd ofer- ed himself to Marian Hall, and was taken into consideration. This was unexpected to all of us; yet, on looking at it calmly, after the first anusement passed, 1t was not so strange. She was the only woman | l@~ l. believed in his being a great and wicked poet-a high Byronic man,. quite out of her simple comprehension; and it would have pleased almost any man as much as lit intoxicated our whiskery little friend to be followed by a pair of such soft eyes wherever he went, or whatever he did, 1 with awful admiration; to have his utter ances received as oracles by the prettiest sea-shell ears; and his arrival hailed by rosy signals futtering on face always
 garlanded with peach-blosson and pearl. ! oy,anio1