The Worthington advance., 1876-11-23
THE ROSE AND CANKER.

singing, she forgot the crowd and all
else but therendering of her own plain.
tive voice.. r~,>,~>
Sweet faces in the audience smiled
at her brilliant women looked on with
approval men raised their opera.Qlass-
ca. and leveled them; in admiration 1T
the sparkling, piquant face and pearly
shoulders.
She was small for the stage, q round
ish, girlish figure, but it looked quite
queenly in her trailing, shimmering
white dress, covered with silver stars.
How had Glare come here
How does the wind sometimes blow
. leaf out of the forest, and carry it
far out into the city streets!
Had she parents! Yes and no.
She had drunken father, who had.
years ago, ran away from her mother,
and as to whose whereabouts Clare was
not particularly anxious to ascertain
her memories of him not being very
salutary.
Her mother had been, for some time,
safe from her troubled life asleep
''under the mools," as Clare's Scotch
ancestors had taught her to call it.
Had she relatives Yes.
She had her full share of uncles,
aunts. and cousins but Clare had early
learned that, of all classes of people
who expect the most from, and do the
least for us, it is those towards whom
we bear this degree of kinship.
She came to the city, and having
starved on sewing for few weeks, and
wilted in the inky air of a printing.of-
fee for a while, she was one day pass
jog the manager of this theatre, and
asked him if he would try her on sec.
Onda:y parts for a while. The man.
ager was used to all sorts of applicants,
all sorts of girls, and all sorts of faces,
from the brilliant star actress to the
jaded, second.class danseuse.
There was a winning sweetness
about Clare that made her creep into
peoples hearts, and he hired her as
much for fancy he had taken to her
face as to any skill she might possess.
Clare began on very low wages, but
putting 50 much of her heart into
everything she did, she soon began to
be quite a necessary acquisition.
She had good luck, which is only a
fancy name for the success that comes
to us, for being always at our post and
ready to do our duty.
She managed to live comfortably on
what she earned, although not belnga
great woman, she never toook a great
part or received great pay.
She wasn't a great singer, but she
had sweet voice, and often came in,
as she did tonight, to sing some sim.
pie ballad amid quite shower of ap-
plause. Part of the time she was
mermaid, sailing around in a mimic
sea, in a pasteboard boat. At the
matinee, in the afternoon, she would
be one of the ''Babes in the Wood"
The next night she would be an angel
flying off in thin space, with glamour
Of pink and blue lights over her. In
fact, Clare was so many things in such
a small space of time, that she had
begun to gro" unsettled in her mind
as to what she really was but all this
time she had kept her life as white
and clean as an unwritten page, never
forgetting, among all her temptations,
the teachings of the mother under the
''mOols.'
"She is woman, therefore to be
won,' the habitues of the theatre
thought, who considered that women
who earned their bread and knew what
temptation was must be. very easy
prey but they did not know the reso-
lutte fiber in little velvet Glare.
She had grown used to suspicion, and
although it had, at first hurt her to the
hearts core, she had grown to glory all
to herself in her purity, as secret that
no one else would credit. She never
took wine or oyster suppers with the
rest, but, as soon as her part in the
play was ended, put her waterproof
over her stage dress and went home
alone in the dark, falling asleep in her
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 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 a horde of children, kept the
laundry on the floor below drunken
man lived next door, who knocked his
cook stove and his wife over alternate
ly; across the hall was a 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.
He had lived in the country when a
boy, and only painted from memory,
poor fellow as he was too poor to have
had . breath beyond the city streets
for years.
f. He hadn't egotism or bravery enough
to face the world with Ills really skill
ful pencil.
Sturdy little Clare; planning state
costumes and attitudes next door, had
more courage than he.
There was crazy old man in the
building opposite, across the narrow
street, who sat aloft in his window
and played long tune, each day, upon
an old violin something about biz
going out and finding rose all fresh
and blooming upon bush but, or
picking it, he found a canker in it, and
threw it away. 81 s. ##
Many a day Glare raised her window,
leaning out, with her elbows on the
sill, listening to the old mans song
Whatever else he plaeyd he always got
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