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

in New Hampshire it must have been q |
mountain. Even now its claims to that |
title we're not to be disregarded. Year |
after year the selectmen threatened to |
labor no longer on q road more and |
more given over to gullies and sudden |
small land-sl' 1es and big stones, which,
appearing n.ysterously 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 Templeton 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 and brake
disputed place with every root of grass,
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 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 a little per
picked and troubled-always gentle and
apologetic, and filling with tears as
quickly as in her silent and sensitive
girlhood. Life held small leisure.
Books we're q waste of precious time,
and more and more butter and cheese
the chief end of woman; and thus Miss
Chloe's sentiment found no outlet save
in the flower bed, which, in spite oi
Miss Dianthy's arguments, held its
, place under the south window, and in
summer filled the little sitting-room
! with perfume altogether out of place
in those upright quarters.
In the old hair trunk, well hidder
between towels and pillowcases, lay Miss
Chloe's chief treasure-a time-worr
copy of Mrs. Hemans, bearing on the
hy-leaf in cramped letters the inscrip
; ton: "To Miss Chloe Templeton, from
{; her well-wisher, Josiah Green"
, Something more than a well-wishe,
|, Josiah would willingly have been, bu
7 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 tn
\ old graveyard. For years Miss Ohio
. kept the little book folded in tissu
q paper and laid away, but with the fune
!. raj took it out as if death gave right
= unclaimable before, and read and wep
n over it at night, the only time whel
q sharp ears and eyes and tongues CAV
= her respite from continuous Observable,
n and direction.
For both Diantha and Althea quarrel
a ing was as their daily food. What en-
q wanted the other did not, and all da
, long the hard voices sounded froI
4 kitchen or pantry, Chloe cringing o
they rose and fell, but silent as yeal
4 had taught her to be. Miss Athea pre-
\ ferred "salt risin's;" Miss Dianthi
n shop east, strongIro the hops" Mis-
"a Althea demanded pumpkin pie withoJ
eggs; Miss Diantha pronounced then
-, in that condition, "not fit for pigs
- Miss Althea demanded Orange Peko
% % stepped; Miss Diantha, Oolong, boilet
~ Miss Chloe in her private mind clung
:, Young Hyson, but would have drum
\ gall and wormwood rather than mai
\ any dificulty-in fact, may be said
y, ~ have done so in any case. Miss Dianth
n as eldest, threw out the Orange Peko
;s rinsed the teapot viciously, with EXPIRE
sions of deep disgust at the fatal blin
10 ness of any creature who would drir
10 10 such stuff; and stood guard over Il
:; stove until the tin teapot gave out Il
- rank steam she loved to sniff.
~ With many desires for revolt, mol
% q had yet come but one morning Mi
h Althea, having watched the operate
mn tn hoilino-point. both for herself al