Democratic messenger., 1881-10-29

h,
pausing at intervals to ejeculate, "Well,
it beats me !"
Half way up Breakneck, so towering
and assertive hill that anywhere but in
New Hampshire it must have been q
mountain. Even now its claims to that
title were not to be disregarded. Year
after year the selectmen threatened 10
labor no longer on road more and more
given over to gullies and sudden small
land-slides and big stones, which, ap.
pearing mysteriously 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
for both men and oxen. For road max
ing in the New England hill country is
simply piling of clods and Jumps and
loose stones down the centre of the
winding way, chance wagons in part dis
tributing it, ard rain and wind soon
returning all to the original position,
ready for the next annual upheaval.
Why Isaiah Templeton had chosen
Breakneck pastures, when river mead
ows fat with corn and wheat lay below,
he never told, but the choice had been
made. half way up the hill. A turn in
the road, and between two rocky pas
lures, where sweet fern and brake dis
puted 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 ell 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 deter
mination, affirming that had every far
mer done his duty half as well, Canada
thistles would have been confined to
Canada, and daisies have become an
extinct species.
Diantha, Althea, and Chloe-strange
names for the three middle aged women
in the weather stained 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 il. 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 determined
females, with faces as hard as the stones
that made up the most of their patri-
mony, and who, through Miss Chloe's
girlhood, had carefully repressed the
tendency to sentiment less sedulously
hidden then than now.
Years had thinned Miss Chloe's hair,
sharpened still more the nose sharp in
the beginning, tipped it with frosty
red, and printed crows feet about the
faded blue eyes, always a little perplexed
and troubled-always gentle and apollo
getic, and filling 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 Chloe's sentiment
found no outlet save IN the flower bed,
which, in spite of Miss Dianthy's argu-
ments, held its place under the south
window, and in summer filed the little
sitting room with perfume altogether
out of place in those upright quarters.
In the old hair trunk, well hidden be-
tween towels and pillow covers, lay Miss
Chloe's chief treasure-a time-worn COPY
of Mrs. Heman's, bearing on the fy-leai
in cramped letters the inscription 'To
Miss Chloe Templeton, from her we'll
wisher, Josiah Green"
Something more than a we'll 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
old graveyard. For years Miss Chloe
kept the little book folded in tissue.
paper and laid away, but with the funer.
al took 1t out as if death gave a right,
unclaimable before, and read and wepi
over it at night, the only time when
sharp ears and eyes and tongues gave
her respite from continuous observation
and direction.
For both Diantha and Althea, quar-.
reling was as their daily food. What
one wanted, the other did not, and al
day long the hard voices sounded from
kitchen or pantry, Chloe crlnging as
they rose and fell, but silent as years
had taught her to be. Miss Althea pre-
ferred " salt-risin's"; Miss Diantha
chop east, strong O. the hops" Miss
Althea demanded pumpkin pie without
eggs Miss Diantha pronounced them
in that condition, not fit for pigs.
Miss Althea demanded Orange Pekoe
STEPPED Miss Diantha, Oolong, boiled
Miss Chloe in her private mind clung tc
Young Hyson, but would have drunl
gall and worm-wood rather than make
any difficulty-in fact. may be said Il
have done so in any case. Miss Diantha
the eldest, threw out the Orange Pekoe
rinsed the teapot viciously, with expires
sions of deep disgust at the fatal blind
ness of any creature who would drinl
such stuff, and stood guard over tn,
stove until the tin teapot gave out tn,
rank steam she loved to sniff.
With many desires to revolt, none hat
yet come but one morning Miss Althea
having watched the operation up t,
boiling point, both for herself and tea
pot, determined upon active measures
and suddenly seized it, ran across th
road and threw it with all her force owe
the fence bordering the "gully WOO,
road, where, bounding from stone t,
stone in the almost sheer descent, it lay
at last in the brook below.
Miss Diantha. for the moment speech