The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1877-05-17
From Harper's Magazine.
ROMANCE OF A BARN-YARD,


ROMANCE OF A BARN YARD.
We were all sitting on the piazza, ex-
cept those of us that were swinging in
the hammocks among the trees; the sea
wind was blowing over Us, the birds
were darting low here and there, and
the bantams and the spring chickens and
the big black COchinS were clucking and
picking III the grass, watched over by
the old KING Charles, who redeemed US
from vulgarity, and it was a scene Of
domestic comfort, a. Aunt Helen said
Aunt Helen, by-tho-way, became a very
pleasant addition to the comfortable APP
Peirance of the scene as she said it, She
was Just as plump a. woman ought to
be when her next birthday is maybe her
iortleth. She had Il soft flush on her
cheek, where the dimple was vet as fresh
as when she was a girl, and the flush
deepened sometimes into a real damask;
her teeth were like rows of Seed-corn for
whiteness, and her eyes were Just as
brown as brook water; only her hair
that was quite white Lovely hair,
though, for all that; she parted it evenly
over her low level forehead and above
the yet black eyebrows; and we all de-
clared, every day of our lives, that Aunt
Helen was Il beauty :" used to be-"
She had replied; "but that's all gone
now. | have put my youth behind me.
Perhaps She had. But we young peo-
pie used to think differently when we
saw Mr.. Thornton coming up the road.
and Aunt Helen's eyes rcsolutely bent on
her work, bat her color mounting and
mounting, till the reddest rose that ever
burned in the Sunshine was not 50 rich.
Mr.. Thornton was it too, no doubt, for he
always looked and looked intcntly all the
way by. But the truth was-I shall
have to tell you all about it if | tell YOU
any-that when Aunt Helen was twenty
years younger, she and Mr. Thornton
were lovers ever since they could remem-
Der. They had built their house at last,
and her wedding dress was made. If she
was beauty, he was every inch her
mate know he was, because he is to-
day-one of the men it does you good to
see, who look as if they could hold up the
world if need be, and inspire you with
confidence i'll their power. Now what in
the world do YOU suppose that, with their
house furnished, and the cake baked, and
a dozen years of intimate affection to
bind them, Aunt Helen and Mr. Thorn
ton found Il quarrel about? She declared
She wouldn't keep hens. And he declar-
cd that then he wouldn't keep house !.
That was the whole of it, to condense the
statement; one word led to another. and
another led to more, and finally, in a
towering passion himself, he told Aunt
Helen that she had better learn to con
troll her temper if she didn't want to be
4 vixen entirely, and Aunt Helen took
the ring off her finger and laid it on the
table without 4 word and sailed out
of the room, and refused to see him when
he called in the morning, and sent back
his letter unopened, and cut the wedding
cake and put some of it on the tea-table
and sent the rest to the fair. Perhaps.
or the whole, Mr.. Thornton might have
been right. Exactly one week from that
night Mr.. Thornton was married to Mr..
MAYHEM, and inoticnsive little body who
would have married anybody that asked
her, and she went into the house that had
been furnished according to Aunt
Helen taste; and Immediately afterward
ton OF architecture. with gilded yancs
and scarlet chandeliers bristliug all over
il. rose on the hill behind his house. full
OF fancy fowl, and the little lawn was all
alive with its overflow, ana YOU couldn't
90 hy the place without meeting flock
OF eroPple crown, or partridge Cochin, or
Leghorn, or black Spanish flying up on
each scparatt piece of fence to crow out
Mr. lhornton's misunderstanding the
old tradition of the Grower, and CRYING.
No women rule here
They say Mr.. Thornton grew very old
in a few wears. His inottensive little
thing of 4 wife turned out to bc a smart
tefmagent who led him pretty dance.
Perhaps She was dissatisfied with her
piece of 4 heart; but then She knew that
was all when she took it, He treated
her always gently--perhaps feeling he
had done her some wrong in marrying
her-and gratified her every wish, al
though having cared nothing for her in
the beginning, il is doubtful if he cared
any more for her in the end. The end
came after eighteen years, when Mrs
Thornton WAS killed in railroad col
lision, and her husband was left with
four children on his hands. rude, noisy,
ill-faring cubs, as all the neighbors said
1T Mr.. Thornton had ever impatientlv
CHANGED 10 think that his punishment
had lasted long enough, he thought now
that II WAS just beginning, when he
found himself alone with those children
tie wondered that his wife had had any
temper left at all. He grew more bent
more veXed. and worried every dav. and
and would hardly have recognized, peo-
pie said, the dark and splendid Stephen
Thornton of his youth in this middle
aged, gray-haired man; and vet. to our
eyes, he was still quite remarkable
looking perSon-perhapS more 50 from
cur aSsociating him with the poetry in
Aunt Helcn's life, and making him an
object OF wonder rs to whether or not
now they would ever come together again.
But there was little chance of that.
We had met Mr.. Thornton elsewhere.
hut he had never come across our thresh-
old since the day he went out with his
brides ring. And Aunt Helen's pecu-
harity was that she never forgot Could
she, then forget the words he had spoke
10 her IN his anger? Gould she ever for
Set ms marrying another woman in less
than week? 1t had been in that week
and few following that her hair had
turned white. She had suffered inex-
presSlbly; she had never slept night:
but she kept up gay face. Pertains
she would have suffered longer if it had
not been for our growing up about her
Her life was thus filled, every moment
Of it; She had but very little time 10 be
lonely, to brood, or mourn. She forgot
herself IN Us. 1t gave hera quiet happi-
ness, and kept her comedy. And then
she was too proud whenever the thought
thrust up its head she shut the lid
down, as you may say, and sat on it.