West Virginia freeman. (Parkersburg, W. Va.) 1881-1886, 1882-10-18
ONE SATURDAY MORNING.
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.

ing out. Lucy needed a new dress,
a new cloak, number of new books
and a pair of overshoes. Every
thing in the house was beginning
to look dingy and faded. In spite
of numberless gentle warnings and
reminders, the children would
dancedown stairs instead of walking
soberly from step to step, and their
usual method of rushing upward
three steps at time was hard on
the carpets. The one relic of grand
eur in the parlor, the delicate Sevres
vase, that had been to visitors as
patent of the better days the fami-
" had known, a mute but eloquent
certificate of responsibility and for
mer affluence, had fallen from Ru-
bine's hands yesterday, and
been broken to fragments. And
now this morning the cup of mis-.
fortune overfowed. Mrs De Men
ME had the toothache.
The toothache is a miserable af-
Fiction at any time. No malady
so strikes at the centre of ones nerv-
Gus sensibility, so weakens ones
fortitude, and SO overwhelms one
with an agony of helpless detection.
But the toothache is a woe ten
times intensified when one is stared
in the face by the certainty that
one has DO money with which to
pay the dentist.
The De Mennies had been COM
fortably off few yearsago. A sue
cession of mistakes in management
had set them, by swift but i'm
perceptible progression, into that
sort of poverty, which is the hard
er to bear, that it wears superb
cial air of ease, and is unsupported
by the world in general Mr. De
Mennie was out of business, and it
was popularity supposed that his
income, from rents and other vague
ly understood resources, was suffi-
Gent to keep his household luxu-
riously. The part of the De Men
ME mansion, open to casual guests,
looked as dainty and elegantly as
Of old, and though the lace curtains
and damask lambrequins kept in
shadow the deficiencies, here and
there, of carpets and upholstery, a
subdued light was more attractive
than a glare. Only intimate friends
penetrated to the region of the bed
rooms, or were invited to the din
ing-room, and only very intimate
friends indeed knew the straits to
which the family were reduced for
mere getting along. Hand-to-mouth
Is difficult enough, but when the
amount in hand is conspicuouslv
too small for the needs of the mouths
to be fed the situation is well nigh
appalling.
Mr.. De Mennie had gone down
town to see if there were anything
new to be heard of, any windfall of
business which would assist in
providing the shoes, dresses and
school-books which it seemed i'm
perative to obtain. He was grow
Ing old and thin, under the press.
ure OF daily care. 1t annoyed him
to be considered mean, because be
had given up his pew in church,
and to know that his wife and eld-
est daughter had only one pair of
KID gloves between them, so that
both could not go out at the same
time. Still more, it crushed him,
an honest man, honest and honora-
pie TO the core, to have to incur
debt, getting deeper and deeper in
to that maelstrom, and seeing no
way of keeping out. AS he walked
on toward the busy part of the city
ne felt faint and i'll. At home his
wife was equally as sad, and hers
was perhaps the heavier burden,
as she lay on the lounge with hot
salt against her face, a paroxysm of
pain just over, and that nightmare
OF the dentist and the deeper night
mare of paying him, should the
worst come to the worst, obscuring
the daylight from her.
Bonny Elsie De Mennie was do
Ing the homework. Whatever the
parents might be poor in, they
were rich in sons and daughters.
AS Elsie scrubbed the kitchen ia
bleS, and polished the window
OanoS har uoioo o1oo ri y, o,o6 oboari