The Newtown bee., 1881-01-05
AT FIFTY.

es. hfty IS great aGe--peopIe seem to think it is, half century. I have felt 1t as l looked back upon the years 1 have felt 1t as ! looked before me In the glass; nave felt in the society of Belle and her mates; have felt it when people treated me with the cool politeness due the.r own self-respect, and, that done, have fed to the charms of little Belle and Alice; and if | had any common-sense ! should not have felt 1t with the regret l did.
 But I hated all along to be growth 2 toward fifty. I hated so see that I could not sit out doors of aa evening without little shawl; that could not take the old rambles and Tides of my youth un. less tatigued; that instead oI thrilling freshly in every nerve to the beauty oi sunset and scenery SIS I used to do, quiversd only ii remeln bering how used to thrill.
 Ard then, too, dreaded to be old thir4king if some day-some day-Mask. el- 5n should see me, and pass by without FAnowing me, or, if knowing me, know ing only to suffer mortal shock at the sight; never thinking that Maskelyr also was growing old. An, perhaps should have dreaded it all the more if / had thought the years were setting lips in the smooth olive of that face, Wre dimming the fire of those great ses, were whitening the darkness og the locks that fell across that brow T his, were impairing the music of thayvo1ce never did think it. To me h{ had a sort of immortality. And now-now l am fifty years old, as l was ySterday {; but it IS not bitter any more, IS 1t was yesterday, with that old biferness of vanished strength and intetst; for l love life. I feel the blod bounding warmly in my veins; cath, seems farther away than ever--Iis only bitter now because l have nqnlng but this old flee, this old heart these used-up fifty years, to give Maselyn.. It is bit ter, too, lest people 5hould smile at r1askelyn-
 1 my wears ssr st that day. Aftsr all, it seemed E but the day before thatI had sat there with the delicious odG of the honey | suckles blowing all aSout me in the l dusk, and Maskelyn sa at my side, and | the very air we breathd famed to and | fro in tue fragrance kull of the dark 1 sweet mystery of Iovs It seemed as Il all the world had Ben made just to l come to blossom in hat evening, stars and winds and vauts of heaven, the ] evening that he firsisaid in words tha he owed me, althotgh our lives nas 1 grown together so fG years that we nae each known the thought of the otne without speaking, md knew that fher] were no others on earth that could eve come as close to either of us as the othe did.
 But this crovnd the whole with eel tainty, and we looked in each otherl faces in the gleans of the starlight asls we were the two only people on tls planet. Alas, we were not!
 For Maskelyn was still very younI and as the traveller for commerce house he had his way to make. It the morning after that night in the dS 2
 and the dew and the honeysuckle off
 that he left the ring on my finger. fa
 went off on one of his journeys. n
 was to 20 down the river to New 2
 leans before hereturned, and he took !
 stea r CT BeauxteMps at St Louis--fJ !
 it was thirty years before l heard E 2 him how it happened. But the VI 2 full of tongues, and heard 1t. all z same, on the four winds that blon one knows whither. n
 There had taken passage on that S
 steamer 8 wealthy planter of Louis ,.
 with his wife, an invalid French E
 nd their young daughter Adele. r , was lovely little thing, this AdelI c
 she sang like 8 bird. Maskelyn
 her singing one evening, and pa Q
 ately fond of music, he soon mad D
 acquaintance, and was singingk Il :, her. She was as child-like, too D
 was young and pretty; she had n
 confided to him all her affairs. q, It
 secure in his plighted love, andr o1
 dreaming of misconstl uction or t, sf
 became her hourly associate. atz ee
 pleasure in her innocent ccmfv ln
 ship. .L as
 One afternoon they sat in theip- "
 toned seat, reading, as it chanc{ni