The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1878-08-01
gables Qepartmrnt.
BETH.
ROBERT son NONUN.

bDii l hllc"- lIlt aAh.
the squire's wife before She died. and
she said | had had everything in the
world. and / reckon had. | remem-
Der the measles very we'll. / know her
son, Master Tom. caught them from
me. and there was Il dreadful time at
the farm.
..Pshaw, YOU little Iiottentot, | mean
have o ever hoped for or dreamed 81
better thingS-never looked
To a nobler life than doing chores here
i'm this horribly dull old house, wash
inp china. making beds and summing
Yourself on the garden gate through
the long ~uneventful summer days,
looking up and down the dusty road
and running after vagrant butterflies
in the swamp: You know, child, that
this can't go on ~forevcr-this manner
of living. | mean
ooh, | don't know ma'am," said
Beth. setting away the old blue-rilnmed
dishes in the upper right hand corner
of the oaken cupboard, put INTO the
wall ~katty-corned to suit the old squire.
and to offset the ponderous loud voiced
clock clacking away night and MAN
in the opposite corner.
Il often think il might be worse. |
think, too, that it might be that some
day this life would seem happiness it
sell 10 me. when | have gone out of
the old house orever. | ave no
right to think that it can go on, |
don't belong here. The Squire is very
Kind to keep me. and the least | can
40 is To keep everything in good order
and see that the old dishes don't get
clipped. | always attend to them
myself. Mrs. Harriott entrusted
them to me, and it doesn't seem right
for any II else to touch this part of
the house.
Good gracious. child. you talk like
a little old woman said Miss French,
STOPPING for her ball of yarn, lying
within an inch of the speckled kittens
pink nose. How old are you, Beth"
Fourteen last Tuesday
"Humph-you're just at a thinking
aye. You have solved the whole bus
mess about Santa Claus, l suppose,
long ago
Never heard of him that | know
Of" said Beth, like a benighted little
heather that she was. Who was
he :"
Miss French groaned aloud, and
looked spitefully at the brown spar
rows who were pecking gingerly at
black ants on the moldy window sill.
'.Merciful powers Here's mission
ary work. Do you mean to say,
Elizabeth Murford, that you never
hung up your stocking and sat by the
forty panes looking out at the stars.
the moon and the great snowy hill
glit'ering with i~cicies. watching for
St. Nicholas and his reindeers: Why.
child. any barbarian knows who Santa
Claus is"
Miss Harriott often said l was a
great sight worse than Re, and it
amt no use to tell me things"
Poor Helen Ffrench shuddered more
before Beth's grammar than she would
al a horned beetle or tadpole.
The most fastidiouS soul that ver
lived, she had scornfully thrown over
the only man she had ever loved. or
who had ever loved her, for hat mat
ter. because he had dignitied his love
with a big Il" and demeaned himself
with a little - This she never,
never.could forgive. 1t was long ago
longer than she wished to think it
and he had never come back. A fresh
cruel disappointment came on her day
by day, as the tender dream came
back to her in the new experience of
other loves. She had just begun to
realize that she had lost the man she
loved i~rretrievably. Miss Ffrench's
worst enemy, if she had had any such
an one, would never have dared to
deny hat Miss French had had a
great many chances to make some
man a good. practical, large-minded,
hopeful wife. She might not have de-
served it of time, but time had treated
her more than fairly. considering the
many years her kindly gray yes had
lN,l-,l ont ON thn world ThnIr
lights had never gone out, though
sometimes they may have grown a
tritie DINNER from the foolish, intru-
sve tears, which Mis- 5 French would
dash from her cheeks, in guilty %
fusion, looking hastily over her
shoulder. Her check had not betray-
ed the traces of these tears, and the
soft lark hair seemed gloSSier if any
thing. She could not remember the
hour when II had passed from being
a light-hearted girl, with all the gay
world before her, into the rather
stilled woman, who stood alone on the
summit OF her hill, and, turning back
ward, could see that her brightest and
best lay there.
There a come no Sadder hour to
woman than the one in which she
finds herself pushed aside from the
SHRINE ana throne she had occupied
and another in her place.
Every girl has her throne, no mat
ter how humble, and there are limo
e n delights and trivialities which it
grleves her to give up to another.
Married or single, time inevitably
brings the day when she has brushed
the down from the wing of the but
terfiy-the mist from the grape-and
is no longer young.
Man thinks of the transition in him
self as a matter of course Woman
thinks of it with a burst of tears and
a spasm of envy toward all younger
IN She begins to shuh grave
colors, and to feel applicable pangs
when men praise the fine teeth and
complexion of other She
cannot bring herself to think that
curls and love-locks no more become
her or that her former air of insouci-
ence is ridiculous now. She remains