The Sentinel. [volume] (Trenton, N.J.) 1880-1882, 1881-11-19

after year the selectmen threatened t,
labor no longer on a road more ant
more given over to gullies and suddel
small land-sli des and big stones, which
appearing nysteriously in the way
could never be accounted for save b,
diabolic agency. Year after year the
two or three farmers who tempted
Providence by permanent wrestle will
the thin layer of soil barely hiding tn,
granite below, gathered to work out thu
road tax, the patient oxen painfully
marking out the deep furrow on eithe,
side, and bordering 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 ha6
been made. Half way up the hill. A turn
in the road, and between two rocky
pastures, where sweet-fern Eand brake
disputed place with every root of grass
strip of land, every stone long age
laboriously removed, and entering into
the well-built wall on either hand. Or
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 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 girlhood, had carefully depressed
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 o 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 filed the little sitting-room
with perfume altogether out of place
in those upright quarters.
In the old hair trunk, we'll 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-
ton: "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 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 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 quarrel
ing was as their daily food. What enc
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,
shop east, strong 70 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 chung
Young Hyson, but would have dr,aak
gall and NORWOOD rather than zG1e
any dificulty-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 expires.
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 Selling 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 ray at last in the brook be-
low.
Miss Diantna, for the moment speech.
u