The Penn's Grove record., 1882-04-29
Coming Back.

SOlAliliS Do(As
Up in a city garnet, on q hot June
day, a weary woman lesned back in
her chair, and pressed her fingers
against the eyes that refused longer to
see the stitches in the shop work over
which she had toiled from day-bIeak
till o four O'Clock in the afternoon.
From the street far below her, q
voice had only that moment scared
upward, calling stStrawber eesl ripe,
red, strawberr. eesln
And, as II by magic, her thoughts
turning backward hsd carried her to
Depdene, the home of her youth, and
to . certain lovely June day In her
sixteenth year, when she had stood i'd
the stra wberry pasture on the Blessing
Farm, with the red berries pertaining
the air, and said the words which sew
cred her fate from that Of Maurice
Blessing, and made her life what 1t
was on this day, almost hopeless and
q csaseless struggle for bread won at
the needles point.
How it all rose up before her. The
green pasture sloping upward to the
darker green woods, whose tops seemed
to touch the deep blue sky, sloping
downward TO the gray stone walt,
with the cold spring leaping out
through q wooden trough among its
lower stones.
Andbelow the Observation-Disclosures
moving spread out. ike an immense
emerald velvet carpet. with the two.
story cream cclored house lifting its
p~iazzaed front at the extreme end Just
where the shaded lane began, and led
from the Blessing farm out into the
village road. I
"She, the poor orphan girl, had been
offered this comfortable home; and
she had refused it-for whata For a
dream rof fame which had left her
toiling in this hot garnet while in the
black trunk yender, the book which
was to have made her fortune, refused
one publisher sfter another, was
lying tin che could find courage to
thrust it into the fire.
scarcely two years I" she sighed,
rocking herself to and fro. "And
Maurice has sold his old farm and
gone to Colorado; and ! am here,
lonely, disappointed. old before my
stime. Oh.sif I could only live that
day over again and be as wise as I am
now ] For nowI know that I love
him now, when 1t is forever too late!"
Sickening With 3 sort Of calenture
among these hot scitv streets for one
glimpse of her early home, Hester
May rose and went to the desk where
her worldly wealth was stored. ASH
BY the closest economy, she had
managed to lay aside q few dollars, for
the 81 ,omy purpose OF paying the ex
pense of her own sickness and death,
when the time should come for her to
die amoag strangers.
From this sacred hoard she counted
out a sum sufficient to take her to
Depdene.
"I will stay only one day." she
thought "And will work all the
harder after I return, to make up this
sum again. But see Depdene, now
that 1t is fairly in my mind, / must!
And now / will take one more look at
the dear old farm before 1t Is in the
hands Of strangers, and so altered that
I shall not know it,"
The next day saw her on her way.
The two years of her absence had
been years of. change to the little
country village.
A railway wisked across the hill
| road from Torrington. Once she would
have made the journey 10 a yellow
.'.tage" drawn by four horses, with
John Colney the crossest and most dis
agreeable of earthly Stage drivers, on
| the box.
The village, too, was smartened and
freshened up-new houses, new fences
q new iron fence around the small
oval park that graced the centre of the
town; new names above the gilded
fronts Of the shops; new set Of gig
Cling misses, on their way'to the new
brown stone Academy, which stood
where she had once thought 1t an
honor to attend the district school, In
a plain one story structure Of faded
brick.
No doubt all these alterations were
for the better but they made her hear
ache with a sense Of loss unspeskable
And she turned into the shaded lans
that led only to the Blessing Farm
dresding to see the old home desecra
ted by the strangers hand.
No; there it stood, as she had Away,
known 1.-THE very picture OF homs
comfort, the centre of all those modest
luxuries that q we'll to-do farmer OF al
other men most easily commands.
But although the dear old house was
unchanged, its inmates were new and