The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1876-11-22

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lonely bed as soon as her tired head
touched the pillow
Her home was no better nor worse
than B. street.; she had come here
because the rents were reasonable, and
it was a place where no questions were
asked, and where people troubled each
other for no particulars.
All kinds Of life throbbed on about
and beneath her: A widow woman
with q horde of children, kept the
laundry on the floor below !; a drunken
man lived next door, who knocked his
cook stove and his wife over alternate
ly !; across the hall was Il thin, Wild
eyed artist, who painted delicious lit
tie bits Of still-life scenery--dark for
ests in which you could almost see the
leaves tremble; shady midsummer
pools where cattle came to drink de-
lightful ponds full Of water-lilies, and
blue sky and yellow grain-felds.
lie had lived in the country when a
boy, and only painted from memory,
poor fellow as he was too poor to have
had a breath beyond the city streets
for years.
He hadn't egotism Oh bravery enough
to face the world with his really skill
full pencil.
Sturdy little Glare. planning state
costumes and attitudes next door, had
more courage than he. *~-.'-.>, s.~~
There was a crazy old man in the
building opposite: across the narrow
street, who sat aloft in his window
and played g long tune, each day, upon
an old violin-something about his
going out and finding a rose all fresh
and blooming upon a bush; but, on
picking it, he found Il canker in it, and
threw it away.
Many day Glare raised her window,
leaning out, with her elbows on thu
sill, listening to the old mans song.
Whatever else he plaeyd, he always got
back in the end to this one about the
rose with the canker in it, and it
began to be q part Of Clare's life
and surroundings.
Take it as she might, Glare soon
found an ACTRESSES life to be no pastime,
and will get over it myself as fast as
possible it was one case .ess round of
the same thing-dressing, shivering
in {; cold green-room. blinded by foot
lights and sidelights, deafened by
orchestra scrapings, and stared by the
gorgonlike crowd, rousing in the morn
ing with start to get ready for the
mornings rehearsal at ten, in calico,
fixing over taWdry and limpsy stage
dresses all the spare time she could
get-ironing out their misplaced folds
while studying her part with her book
on the corner of her irOning-table.
1t would have been {. lonely life,
bat luckily she had 10 time to be
lonely.
The night my story commences,
Clare was to play ''Undine," and was
going to the opera-hall alone, in the
rain and darkness, with no fear in her
breast, for God kept step with this
poor child in all her walks, and she
picked her way over the long, dark
bridge, whose dim lamps We're shin
ing in the rapid river below, with
the white dress, covered with tinsel
stars, she had been making, and her
wreath and crown and sceptre, in d
basket upon her arm.
The streets were unusually quiet. A
haggard, painted woman was walking on
ahead OF her. and Clare thought she had
never seen SO long and so truly awful a
wig OF curls before, even upon the
stage. She wore a bright velvet over
dress above gay silk skirt, and buff
boots, that were getting the worse for
the mud and wet, and Glare looked at
her with a sort Of awe-stricken Won
der. -: :: l.: =.
just where the gas light shone full
| c4nn1
the railing, looking into the water--a
tall, dark man, with grave, self-con.
tanned face. 49,.
Clare looked at him also, and wished
she had dared looked longer, for there
was something in his face that made
her think of the artist pictures, and
the old violin-player's melody.
He looked at the gaudy woman in the
buff boots, and at Clare, in her old
waterproof, with her innocent face,
with the little rings of hair about it's
forehead, and looking down into the
water, seemed to see his young wife's
smile, the cherry bloom of whose
cheeks the earth had covered for five
long years; q breath from the past, like
that of faded flowers, came over him,
and he turned and walked absently
after Clare. who was springing along
as only youth and health and happy
heart can do.
She felt unusually exhilerated when
she entered the green-room that night,
and put on her shimmering gauze dress,
and, once Oh the stage, she played bet
| ter than she ever had before perhaps
it WAS because, she was floating off on
the lake i'll the moonlight scene with
Knight llildebrande, she caught sight
Of the stern quiet man, whom she had
DaSSIl he ll.idare Sitti1a1c ,1n1.11 l.