The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-04-21
TWO OLD LOVERS.

Leyden was emphatically a village of
cottages, and each of them built after one
of two patterns; either the front door
was on the right side, in the corner of a
little piazza extending third of the
length of the house, with the main roof
jutting over it, or the piazza stretched
across the front and the door was in the
center.
The cottages were uniformly painted
white, and had blinds of bright spring
green color. There was little flower
garden in front of each; the beds were
laid out artistically in triangles, hearts
and rounds, and edged with box; boys
love, sweet-williams and pinks were the
fashionable and prevailing flowers.
There was a general air of cheerful
though humble prosperity about the
place, which it owed, and indeed its
very existence. also, to the three old
%atR arose tssfHaahn1ch N" and Importantly
in the very midst of the natty little white
cottages.
/ Years before, when one Hiram Strong
put up his three factories for the manu-
facture of the rough shoe which the
'working-man of America wears, he
hardly thought he was also gaining for
himself the honor of founding Leyden.
He chose the site for his buildings mainly
because they would be easily accessible
to the railway which stretched to the
city, sixty miles distant. At first the
workmen came on the cars from the
neighboring towns, but after while
they became tired of that, and one after
another built for himself a cottage and
established his family and his household
belongings near the scene of his daily
labors. So gradually Leyden grew. A
built his cottage like G, and b built his
like d. They painted them white and
hung the green blinds, and laid out their
flower beds in front and their vegetable
beds at the back. By-and-by came a
church and store and post-office to
pass, and Leyden was afull-fedged town.
That was long time ago. The shoe
factories had long passed out of the hands
OF Hiram Strong's heirs; he himself was
only a memory on the earth. The business
was not quite as wde-awake and vigor-
GUS as when in his first youth; it droned
"a little now; there was not quite so much
hustle and hurry as formerly. The fac
tories were never lighted up of an even
ing on account of overwork, and the
tworkmen found plenty of time for pleas.
ant and salutary gossip over their cutting
and pegging. But this did not detract
in the least from the general cheerful
ness and prosperity of Leyden. The in
habitants still had all the work they
needed to supply the means necessary
for their small comforts, and they were
contented. They too had begun to drone
little like the factories. ''As slow as
Leyden," was the saying amongst the
faster-going towns adjoining theirs.
Every morning at seven the old men,
young men and boys in their calico shirt
sleeves, their faces a little pale-perhaps
from their indoor life-filed unquestion.
ingly out of the back doors of the white
cottages, treading still deeper the well
worn foot-paths stretching around the
sides of the houses, and entered the fac
tories. They were great ugly wooden
buildings, with wings which they hac
grown in their youth jutting clumsily
from their numbering shoulders. Theil
outer walls were black and grimy
streaked and splashed and patched will
red paint in every variety of shade, &C
cordingly as the original hue was tenn
pered with smoke or the beatings of thu
storms of many years.
The men worked peacefully and evenly
i'm the shoe shops all day; and the womel
staid at home and kept the little whit,
cottages tidy, cooked the meals anC
washed the clothes, and did the sewing
For recreation the men sat on the piazZ,
in front of Bankers store of an evening
and gossiped or discussed politics; ant
the women talked over their neighbors
fences, or took their sewing into the
neighbors' of an afternoon.
People died in Leyden as elsewhere
and here and there was little whit
cottage whose narrow foot-path leading