The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1881-12-07

IN New Hampshire 1t must have been O
mountain. Even now it's claims to that
title were not to be disregarded. Year
after year the selectmen threatened to
labor no longer on road more and
more given over to gullies and sudden
small land-sl' les and big stones, which,
appearing nAysteriously in the way,
could never be accounted for save by
diabolic agency. Year after year the
two or three farmers who tempted
Providence by permanent wrestle with
the thin layer of soil barely hiding the
granite below, gathered to work out the
road tax, the patient oxen painfully
marking out the deep furrow on either
side, and pondering why human beings
should make so much evidently useless
work both for men and oxen.
Why Isaiah TempIeton had chosen
Breakneck pastures, when river mead
ows fat with corn and wheat lay be-
low, he never told, but the choice had
been made. Half way up thehill. A turn
in the road, and between two rocky
pastures, where sweet-fern land brake
disputed place with every root of grass,
a strip of land, every stone long ago
laboriously removed, and entering into
the well-built wall on either hand. On
the pasture side raspberry bushes
and wild grapes and rambling vines
in general had it all their own way,
but Isaiah Templeton's lifelong fight
with weeds had not been unavailing,
and Diantha, his eldest born, pursued
them with an even greater vigor and
determination, affirming that had every
farmer done his duty half as well
Canada thistles would have been con-
fined to Canada, and daisies have be-
come an extinct species.
Diantha, Althea and Chloe-strange
names for the three middle-aged women
in the weather-stalned house with
sloping roof, where MOSES grew in
spite of Miss Diantha, and on whose
sides a faint red still fingered, though
sixty years had passed since it first
showed bright against the dark wood
behind and above it. Whatever latent
poetry in the rusty little farmer had
prompted the names had died with him,
Watts hymns being the nearest approach
to such frivolity tolerated by either
Diantha or Althea, two grim and deter
mined females, with faces as hard as
the stones that made up most of their
patrimony, and who, through Miss
Chloe's girlhood, had carefully repressed
the tendency to sentiment less sedu-
lously hidden then than now.
Years had thinrcd Miss Chloe's hair,
sharpened still more the nose sharp in
the beginning, tipped it with a frosty
red, and printed crow's-feet about the
faded blue eyes, always little per-
picked and troubled-always gentle and
apologetic, and filing with tears as
quickly as in her silent and sensitive
girlhood. Life held small leisure.
Books were a waste of precious time,
and more and more butter and cheese
the chief end of woman; and thus Miss
Ohloe's sentiment found no outlet save
in the flower bed, which, in spite OF
Miss Dianthy's arguments, held its
place under the south window, and in
summer filed the little sitting-room
with q perfume altogether out of place
in those upright quarters.
In the old hair trunk, well hidden
between towels and pillowcases, lay Miss
| Chloe's chief treasure-a time-worn
copy of Mrs. Hemans. bearing on the
fy-leaf in cramped letters the inscrip.
tion: "To Miss Chloe Templeton, from
her well-wisher, Josiah Green"
Something more than well-wishel
Josiah would willingly have been, but
| Miss Diantha had set her face against it,
and Josiah, after a short period of de-
lection, married pretty Sophy Downer
and slept now with his fathers in the
/ IL Mics NhInk
kept the little book folded in tissue
paper and laid away, but with the fune
raj took it out as if death gave right
unclaimable before, and read and wept
over it at night, the only time wher
sharp ears and eyes and tongues gave
her respite from continuous observation
and direction.
For both Diantha and Althea quarrel
ing was as their daily food. What onI
wanted the other did not, and all da,
long the hard voices sounded from
kitchen or pantry, Chloe cringing q
they rose and fell, but silent as year
had taught her to be. Miss Althea pre-
ferred salt risin's;' Miss Diantha
chop east, strongFo' the hops" Mis-
Althea demanded pumpkin pie withou
| Chboy 4A1oD O4ahe4tA PAOAOuAOC0 bAaOAi
in that condition, "not fit for pigs
Miss Althea demanded Orange Pekoe
stepped; Miss Diantha, Oolong, boiled
Miss Chloe in her private mind clung t.
Young Hyson, but would have drum
gall and wormwood rather than max
any difficulty--in fact, may be said t
have done so in any case. Miss Dianthf
as eldest, threw out the Orange Pekot
rinsed the teapot viciously, with expires
sions of deep disgust at the fatal blind
ness of any creature who would drin
such stuff; and stood guard over th
stove until the tin teapot gave out th
rank steam she loved to sniff.
With many desires for revolt, non
had yet come but one morning Mis-
Althea, having watched the operatio
up to boiling-point, both for herself an