Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1877-05-23
From Harper's Magazine.
ROMANCE OF A BARN-YARD,

IlUIIhNUk VI a DHlllv tHlIUl
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 in the grass, watched over by
the old King Charles, who redeemed US
from vulgarity, and it was a scene of
domestic comfort, as Aunt Helen said.
Aunt Helen, by-the-way, became very
pleasant addition to the comfortable APP
pearance of the scene, as she said it. She
was just as plump as a woman ought to
be when her next birthday is maybe her
fortieth. She had a soft flush on her
cheek, where the dimple was yet 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 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 resolutely bent on
her work, but her color mounting and
mounting, till the reddest rose that ever
burned in the Sunshine was not so rich
Mr.. Thornton was it too, no doubt, for he
always looked and looked intently all the
way by. But the truth was-I shall
have to tell you all about it if I 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 a beauty, he was every inch her
mate-I 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 in 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 a quarrel about? She declared
she wouldn't keep hens! And he declar-
ed 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
a vixen entirely, and Aunt Helen took
the ring off her finger and laid it on the
table without a 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,
on the whole, Mr. Thornton might have
been right. Exactly one week from that
night Mr. Thornton was married to Mr..
Mayhem, and inoffensive little body who
would have married anybody that asked
her. and she went into the house that had
been furnished according to Aunt
Helen's taste; and Immediately afterward
hen-house of the most fanciful descrip-
ton of architecture, with gilded vanes
and scarlet chandeliers bristling all over
it, rose on the hill behind his house, full
of fancy fowl, and the little lawn was all
alive with its overflow, and you couldn't
go by the place without meeting flock
OF cropple crown, or partridge Cochin, or
Leghorn, or black Spanish flying up on
each separate piece of fence to crow out
Mr.. Thornton's riumph-reversing the
old tradition of the Grower, and crying,
HNo women rule herer'
They say Mr.. Thornton grew very old
In a few years. His inoffensive little
thing of wife turned out to be smart
termagent who led him pretty dance.
Perhaps she was dissatisfied with her
piece of a heart; but then she knew that
was all when she took it. He treated
her always gently-perhaps feeling ne
had done her some wrong in marrying
her-and gratifed her every wish, al
though having cared nothing for her in
the beginning, it is doubtful if he cared
any more for her in the end. The end
came alter 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.
If Mr.. Thornton had ever impatientlv
CHANGED to think that his punishment
had lasted long enough, he thought now
that it was just beginning, when he
found himself alone with those children.
He wondered that his wife had had any
temper left at all. He grew more bent,
more Vexed, and worried every day, and