The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1881-01-28
The Old Blue Chest.

| One day last week i've or six women with
serious faces and hushed voices were gather
ed in a room in house on Fort street east.
| For two years poor old woman had lived
there, not exactly q beggar nor an object of
| charity, but certainly in want. SHE had Il
| husband when she first moved there--a poor
| old man whose days could not be long but
one day he was missing. Hemay have fall
en- into the river or he may have wandered
out into the country and died. This left the
| the old woman alone and there were days
| and DAYS in which no one went near her or
addressed her The other day when she felt
the chill of death approaching her she wanted
some one with her. She had lived alone but
she could not die that way. She wept as
tender hands clasped her and kind voices adj
dressed her. Death had already placed its
mark on her face, and the women could do
nothing. While their tears fell upon her
wriniled hands, she passed away as child
sleeps.
There was but little in the room beyond
an old blue chest-battered and bruised and
splintered, but yet holding together. 1t had
seen strange times, that old chest. 1t had
held silks and broadcloths perhaps--it had
surely held rags. 1t had been moved from
house to house and from town to town. 1t
had listened to laughing and heard sobs and
means. 1t had grown old no faster than the
woman whose hands had so often lifted its
| lid 1t had doubtless kept the company of
good carpets and furniture and crockery, and
laughing, romping children had climbed over
| it and hidden in it, 1t had faded, and its
hinges were rusty and weak, but it had out
| lived its owner.
The women looked about for garments in
which to enshroud the dead. Nothing was in
sight. One ofthem lifted the lid ofthc old
| blue chest, and called the others to help drag
| it out from its dark corner. 1t held treasure
such treasure as men could not buy nor
poverty steal away. There was dress of
| fine material, cut after fashion oflong years
ago For twenty years the chest had been its
| guardian. 1t would have sold for a few dol
lars, but though the cravings of hunger
had come often and the cold had fought lis
way to her marrow that poor old woman would
not part with that relic of better days. 1t
may have been link to connect her with
wealth and love. Beneath it was treasure
still more priceless. Carefully wrapped in
paper was silver dime more than fifty years
old. A weeks fast would not have sent her
| to the bakers with that relic. A child, dead
| in its young years, had worn that dime in its
neck as a gift or talisman. There was
| child's mitten, stained and worm but nit
ten knit by proud young mother for her
child. 1t could not speak to tell the dim past
but it had power AS the women saw it
they covered their faces with their aprons
and wept.
There was boys cap and girls hat, both
so old, faded and time eaten that they had to
be tenderly handled The women looked from
them to the poor old white face on the bed
and whispered
"None but good mother would have
treasured these relics. She was old and
poor, but her heart was pure"
Deeper down, as if to battle the search of
time itself, was familiar toy-a chids
dumb watch. Hands were broken and gone,
face scratched and case battered, but the wo-
men handled it as if a touch would shivef it.
There was n dolls heada boys fish-line,
some toy chairs, n yarn ball and other things to
show that in the long ago that dead woman
had felt the soft kisses of children, heard
their good nights" and thanked God that
she was blessed. Each relic was wept over
each was replaced with fresh tear stains.
They asked the old blue chest no questions.
Its relics might have been voiceless TO man
but to a woman and mother each one had n
tale in words as plain as print. They shed
more tears as they bent again over the poor
old dead, and they said to each other:
IF she had only told us of this how we
would have loved her and sought to light
en- her sorrows"
But she had gone. She had come and
gone as a mystery, and but for the old blue
chest in the corner few would have cared,
and none would have sorrowed