The Newtown bee., 1880-03-10
Grandmother Gresham's Will.

1I anulHOLflSI UFCSildIIl , WIl'
 If said that Grandmamma Gresham was a vain old women, l suppose 1t would not be very reverential. But still, she certainly did take an immense interest in her personal appearance and that with some reason. A tall and commanding figure and portly prtsence, her black eyes glittering in her pale face with nearly the glow of their youth, and not a silver thread yet pointing any contrast with the blackness of her hair there was something startling about her as if she were the apparition of dead youth. She was never visible till late hour in the day, and any one who had the tcmerity to break the rule and enter her apartments would be very apt to find her sitting before the old swinging mirror, " in which her grandmother had dressed to be married, ''as she used to say, and occupied, with the help of old Rose, in twistingin a tress of false hair here, 8 curl there, in darkening an eyebrow, or making cheek more blooming with her little Eare's foot-a curious weird face reflected on her from that glass meanwhile before which she so con stantly practiced these rites, a hand some face when all the work was done. It was not easy for us in the flush and glory of our youth, to realize that she could not bear to acknowledge even to herself the departure of her own, and was but keeping up the sad fiction as she might. There was 8 full-length portrait in its old frame in the great dark hall, the likeness of a graceful, stately girl in her peach-blossom silk, and hood and scarf of black lace, with the great loose ringlets of shadow over her round shoulder, and blowing back from her dazzling brow, with the glow Of expectation in the dark and shining eyes and in the joyous smile. Some times Grandmamma Gresham paused as she passed, and rested upon her cane, and looked at this lovely picture that frightened all the gloomy place; and we none of us ever dreamed that she was thinking what travesty and cari- cature of it she was now, with her patches and powders and paints, and in the velvets and India cashmeres that every night when she took them off were laid away, lest she might not rise to wear them again, in the big chest, for Amelia Gresham.
 But none of us had any of Grand mamma Gresham's beauty. The fact was, she was not our grandmother. We were the descendants of her first hus- band by his previous marriage, and she had married twice since, and if fife were long enough, might have had as many husbands as Gudrun the Beautiful, for ali we knew. She had married our grandfather when she was very young, and on his early death had married soon again, and had let his children drift none knew whither, he having left them each only Q souvenir and a recommen- dation to the young stepmother, to whom in his infatuation and passion he had bequeathed everything else. She had sailed on in her career of sunshine and shadow, losing her husbands and chil- dren, but, with her handsome bank ac- count, never knowing trouble that might have touched her more nearly and now, in her old age, she had been forced by public opinion to take into his house the children of her first husband, left orphans and nearly penniless. She treated us with a gracious hauteur. " Manners like ice cream" Annie used to say; ''such cold sweetness" But although so distantly kind to us, all her love was for Amelia Gresham, her last husbands daughter, pretty minx, who, in return, cared nothing at all for her, and would not live with her in the dingy rat-trap, as she called the dear old mansion house, but made her oome with relatives in gay city, where Krandmamma punctually paid her board, and only returned for a fresh outfit of she favors and fineries with which gTandmamma loaded her.
 It was understood, long before we came to the house to live, that grand mamma had made her will and given all she had to Amelia Gresham, and we never thought of making any effort to have that disposition of things altered; for although it seemed a great outrage, if one reflected on it, the property hay ing originally been our grandfather's, nevertheless it was her own now, and she had right to do as she chose with her own. Moreover, can't say, after all we had heard about her, but that we