Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1877-05-18
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 in the grass, watched over by
the old King Charles, who redeemed us
from vulgarity, and it was scene of
domestic comfort, as Aunt Helen said.
Aunt Helen, by the way, became very
pleasant addition to the comfortable ap.
pearance of the scene, as she said it.
She was just as plump as woman ought
to be when her next birthday is maybe
her fortieth. She had 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 seedcorn 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 1t evenly
over her low, level forehead and above
the yet black eyebrows; and we all de-
clared, every day of our lives, that Aunt
IlCiSn was DCdubJs uoCu w W.
she had replied; but that's all gone
now. have put my youth behind me-"
Perhaps she had. But we young
people 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 saw 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 tell you
any-that when Aunt Helen was twenty
years younger she and Mr.. Thornton
were lovers, as they had been lovers ever
since they could remember. They had
built their house at last, and her we'd
ding 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 conf
dence in their power Now what in the
world do you suppose that, with their
house furnished, and the cake baked,
and dozen,years of intimate affection
to bind them, Aunt Helen and Mr.. Thorn
ton found to quarrel about9 She de-
clared she wouldn't keep hens! And he
declared that then he wouldn't keep
housel That was the whole of it, to con-
dense the statement; one word led to an
other, and another led TO more, and final
ly, in towering passion himself, he told
Aunt Helen that she had better learn to
control her temper if she didn't want to
be vixen entirely, and Aunt Helen took
the ring off her finger and laid it on the
table without 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 Mary
Mayhem, an inofiensiye 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
a hen-honse of the most fanciful descrip-
tion 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
60 by the place without meeting flock
of cropple.crown, or partridge Cochin,
or white Leghorn, or black Spanish, fly
ing up on each separate piece of fence to
crow out Mr.. ThOrntOn's tTiumph-re-
versing the old tradition of the Grower,
and crying; No wOmen rule hereP
They say Mr.. Thornton grew very old
in a few years. His inoiiensiye little
thing of a wife turned out to be smart
termagant who led him a pretty dance.
Perhaps she was dissatisfied with her
piece of 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
ana gratiied her every wish, although,
having cared nothing for her In the be-
ginning, ii is doubtful il he cared any
more for her in the end. The end came
after eighteen years, when Mrs. Thorn
ton was killed IN railroad collision, and
her husband was left with four children
on his hands, rude, noisy, ill-faring cubs,
as all the neigbbors said. If Mr.. Thorn
ton had ever impatiently chanced 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 hiD wife had any temper left at all
He grew more bent, more vexed, and
worried, every day, and one would hardly
have recognized, people said, the dark
and splendid Stephen Thornton Of his
youth in this middle-aged, gray-haired
man. and yet, TO our eyes, he was still
quite Temarkable-looking persOn-per.
haps more so from our associating him
with the poetry in Aunt Helen's life, and