News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-11-23
MISS J0E'S EXPERIMENT.
A THANKSGIVING STORY BY ROSE TERI
COOKE.

'Say, Clorindy Miss Hough's dead ?
''The mercys sakes ! you don't say
so, answered a thin, shrill voice from
the chintz-covered rocker which helC
Miss Clorinda Mills lean figure and faded
chalky face.
Miss Joe put her arms akimbo and
looked at her with her habitual expires.
sion of endurance. She was thin, too
but muscular, strong and energetic. Hel
black eyes snapped with vivid life, hel
scant black hair curled with crisp force
close to her head
She was "clear grit" as her neighbors
said, but she had all her life, since he1
girlhood, been oppressed and depressed
by this weakly, ailing, whining, impair
tial sister. Clorinda had all the COM
plants any mortal frame could entertain
according to her own showing.
"Clorindy is greatly afflicted ?" muir
INJURED fat, kindly Mrs. Potter, the new
minister's wife, when on her tenth call on
the ''NIills girls" as Stafford people
called them.
Lord, yes ~ snapped Joe. ''She's
had everything on the face of created
airth, save an except smallpox an CON
Them is to come"
With tiny house and garden of their
own, the interest of two thousand dollars
and Miss Joe's tailoring, the two women
contrived to live, with no luxuries but
Clorindys patent medicines, and no
amusements but Methodist meetings and
''posy-bed."
The neighbors were kind, but when
sympathy becomes chronic it ceases, like
other symptoms, to be acute and as
long as the sisters bought every new pan
acea that was advertised at the drug
store, and came to church and class
meeting in decent clothes, they were not
considered objects of charity. Yet their
needs increased, as all needs do, with
age.
Mrs. Hough, well-to-do farmers wife
who lived near by, had been one of their
most faithful and considerate friends.
She not only sent them potatoes, apples,
and choke-pears in their season-with
now and then a jug of butter-milk or
half-a-dozen eggs-but every Thanks
giving she gave them plump chicken
for their ceremonial pie; half a squash
for pies and quart of cranberries from
tue swamp ON the upper farm.
1t was real calamity to them when a
severe attack of typhoid fever took her
out of her ground-foor bedroom musty
for want of sunshine full of damp odors
from the cellar where potatoes and cab
bages decayed peacefully from year to
year, and from whence her successive
children had gone before her-to the dry
and sunny graveyard, gay with daisies,
asters, golden-rod, and the heaven blue
gentian. 1t seemed like a pleasant
change to the spectator but her loss
was felt in all the neighborhoOd
FWell, do say it, rejoined Miss Joe
whose baptismal name of Josepha, the
nearest approach to her fathers name
that could be thought of at her post
humous birth, was always shortened to
'tJoe"-''she's ben and had the typhoid
bad. And she want real strong. Land!
we shall miss her awf'lly."
''She had ought to hev took Rawle's
Red Receipt right along; l told her so.
II else IIldb SIONCL L
used to take for a spell. I told her she'd
oughter doctor for them faint spells, .
moaned Clorinda, rocking harder than
ever
'I don't know about that, Clorindy.
Sometimes I think them things haven't
done you no great sight o good, and you
hev took about all the was to take, GER
tin"
"Why, Josephy Mills You do know
how bad | should ha' ben eff [ hadn't hev
taken 'em. Like enough L should ha'
ben lyin' in my grave this ten year eff L
hadn't ha' doctored."
'"Well, that's SO mabbe We would,
Miss Joe, with calmness that
limited at her capacity of resignation I'M
der such an event.
Truth to tell, Miss Clorinda had never
found out that human nature holds but
small reserve of sympathy. Chronic
trouble exhausts it very soon, and it Is
well that we cannot all make our own
lives a well of coincidence and tears, for
the sake of few dear sufferers. Would
that they could all learn that cheer and
courage in sickness or sorrow endear
hem far more to those compelled to live
If groans, crying, lamentations or pa
,aded agonies of grief.
Miss Joe could and would, indeed she
lid. work for and wait on Clorinda con-
but she fed into the shed and
BANGED the'pots and kettles whenever her
lister began to moan about her poor
weak back; her feeble digestion; the
neurology in her knee; or the "sciati-
Zy' in her hip. Just now, however, they
we're both absorbed in Mrs. Hough's
leath.
"We shall feel it dreadful, come Thanks
,ivin', 4" sighed Clorinda, whose infirm di-
,estive organs never quailed before
rood dinner.
ssWeII. l hadn't thought of it in that
lint of view exactly" said Miss Joe.
heerily, though she fiercely brushed off
little shining symptom of sorrow from
Ter eyelashes, and gave sweet smile
or she had not only azquick sense