The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-01-14

lJN'ANAs
"Children, this wordy warfare must
stopW cried their mother, as she hur-
ried the younger children away.
"Mr. Andrews" ;" she continued, speak
ing aside, in whisper not intended for
the invalid's ear, but more audible in
reality than If her tones had been
pitched in a louder key, "your wife is
very dangerously i'll. She has requested
me to write to her mother, and shall
do it. How the letter is to reach its
destination is not clear. You will par
don me, but you are not as kind as you
ought to be-"
"Rind, ehS Don't I always give her
an the young ones enough to eat
Haven't worked like a g<hey slave to
git 'em sheLters And don't 1 expose
myself every day, in all sorts of weather,
to git a farm open? haven't a bit o.
patience with a whinin', sickly wife ~
After Jason Andrews had slammed
the rude door and departed for his la
bors, taking with him the ak and gun,
he strove earnestly to justify his con-
duct with excuses.
~ always have tough time Of it,
and never was known to grumble," he
muttered.
But somehow the vision of Mary
Parker as she once was-only seven
years ago; she was fourteen then, quite
large of her age, and gave promise of
being very beautiful-a vision of the lit
tie vine-embowered cottage where she
and her widowed mother had lived in
ease and comfort before he had entered
and enticed away the one eve lamb; a
spectacle of the pale face and fast-falIing
tears of the lonely mother, who, being
bereft Of her lambkin, was bereft in
deed; in spite of himself the contrast be-
tween Mary's former life and her pres
ent one of illness, privation, and dis
comfort, was In no wise flattering to his
vanity.
"Hang it all v' he exclaimed, aloud,
''if she'd only fOrgit that she ever had a
MOTHER"
Ah, Jason Andrews, you are only one
man among score Of thousands of
mistaken ones, who have foolishly i'm
agined that few words spoken under a
contract, bound by the strong arm of
human law, was necessary to bring
you present and abiding happiness, de-
spite the violation of a natural law,
which designed that the holy ties of
consanguinity should never be broken
in this world or the next.
Strange that you and the thousand
others like you do not realize that hu-
man beings of fourteen or fifteen sum-
mers are necessarily just as immature,
when the gender is feminine, as they
are at the same unripe age when the
gender is masculine. The average we'll
kept woman of forty appears quite as
youthful as does the average well-kept
man Of the same age; and yet men con-
tinue to make the blunder, over and
over again, that mismates them at ma
ture years with fledglings from the ma
ternal nest that are yet children, vainly
imagining that by so doing they can
ever after depend upon legal restraints
to imprison spirits that, because of vio-
lated natures laws, will necessarily fret
their weary, bruised wings against their
cages, the poor prisoners themselves Of
ten unaware Of the causes of their dis
content.
What, good sirs, would you think of
q woman of forty who should inveigle
boy of fourteen into matrimony =?
Would you not say, when the boy had
grown to manhood, and consequently
had outgrown the premature fancy of
an unfortunate precocity and become
unhappy under the yoke Of an unnatu-
raj union, that the fates had served him
right? If you are unhappy, you deserve
your misery, for you have committed a
great indiscretion, and are only reaping
as you have sown.
Mrs. Andrews, for . few weeks after
her marriage, had been in a delirium of
excitement. The endearing words by
which her husband had wooed and won
her were repeated daily until the nov
city of the honeymoon was over, and
then, the husband forgetting that his
wife was yet child, had failed altogether
in the manifestations of an affection for
which the child had married him, al
though unwelcome maternal cares came
thick and fast to worry her.
The little house was once more cleared
Of noisy occupants, and Mrs. Morrison
seated herself beside the bed to renew
her epistolary exertions.
"Do you want to confess that you
wronged your mother in disobeying her
wishes while child, and that you long
for her forgiveness and blessing ?n she
asked, kindly.
"Oh, dear, no; Jason would never for
give me. You needn't write at all.n
"Why?"
HE said I mustn't; and promised
to obey him, you know. I am going
soon to meet my God, and don't want
to braak His commandments"
'Then 1 must insist that you obey
the command to honor your parents,
dear"
"But you remember the command to
wives, don't you? Thy desire shall be