The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1881-11-17


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 eand 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 Oldest born, prreued
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-sta1ned 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 girllpod had carefully repressed
the tendency to sentiment less sedu-
lously hidden then than now.
Years had thinrcd Miss Chloe's hair,
shsrpened still more the nose sharp in
the beginning, tipped it with frosty
red, and printed crow's-feet about the
faded blue eyes, always 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 were 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 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, we'll hidden
betwe en- towels and pillowcases, lay Miss
Giles chief treasure--a time-worn
copy of Mrs. Hemans, bearing on the
hy-leaf in cramped letters the inscrip-
tion: "To Miss Chloe Templeton, from
her well-wisher, Josiah Green"
Something more than well-wisher
Josiah would willingly have been, but
Miss Diantha had set her face against it,
and Josiah, after 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 fune-
raj took it out as if death gave right,
unclaimable before, and read and wept
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 qnarrel-
ing was as their daily food. What me
wanted the other did not, and all day
long the hard voices sounded from
kitchen or pantry, Chloe cringing as
they rose and fell, but silent as years
had taught her to be. Miss Althea pre-
ferred "salt risin's;' Miss Diantha,
8" hop east, strongg.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,
steeped Miss Diantha, Oolong, boiled.
Miss Chloe in her private mind clung to
Young Hyson, but would have drunk
gall and wormwood rather than make
any difficulty-in fact, may be said to
have done so in any case. Miss Diantha,
as eldest, threw out the Orange Pekoe,
rinsed the teapot viciously, with express
sions of deep disgust at the fatal blind
ness of any creature who would drink
such stuff; and stood guard over the
stove until the tin teapot gave out the
rank steam she loved to sniff.
With many desires for revolt, none
had yet come but one morning Miss
Althea, having watched the operation
up to boiling point, both for herself and
teapot, determined upon active meas
ures, and suddenly seizing it ran across
the road and threw it with all her force
over the fence bordering the "gully
wood road" where, bounding from
stone to stone in the almost sheer
descent, it lay at last in the brook be-
low.
Miss Diantha, for the moment speech
less, poured out, as breath returned, a
torrent of rage on the triumphant Miss
Alth ca, who took down an earthen tea
pot from the shelf and proceeded to
scsld it.
GAS sure as I'm living sinner, I'll
break it if you put it on the fire." said
Miss Diantha, a new grimness in voice
and eye.
"Try it," said Miss Althea, defantly.
81 calculate you'll find more'n one kind
O. tea kin be drunk in this house. I've
stood you some years too much, an as
fast's you break, I'll buy. You hain't
forgot the will, an that all expenses
has got to be equally shared by the
three, or as many as lives. 1t III be a
Ieetle hard on Chloe, but then she's
used to your imposin' on her, an grain
more won't make much difference"
"Sisters," Miss Chloe began, in an
agony of tremulousness and apprehen.
sion, "for mercy's sake Oh, dear |!
how can you? Why don't We each have
teapot, an why didn't I think of il