Connecticut western news., 1883-03-21
TWO OLD LOVERS.
BY MARY E. WILKINS.

Leyden was emphatlcaliy 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 8 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 centre.
 Years before, when one Hiram Strong put up his three factories for the manu- facture of the rough shoes which the workingman of America wears, he hardly thought he was also gaining for himself the honor of founding Leyden.
 The men worked peacefully and evenly in the shoe shops all day; and the women staid at home and kept the little white cottages tidy, cooked the meals, and washed the clothes, and did the sewing. For recreation the men sat on the piazza in front of Barker's store of an evening, and gossiped or discussed politics; and the women talked over their neighbors' fences, or took their sewing into their neighbors' of an afternoon.
 People died in Leyden as elsewhere; and here and there was little white cottage whose narrow foot-path leading round to its back door its master would never tread again.
 In one of these lived Widow Martha Brewster and her daughter Maria. Their cottage was one of those which had its piazza across the front. Every summer they trained morning -glories overit, and planted their little garden with the flower seeds popular in Leyden. There was not cottage in the whole pla Ice whose surroundings were -neaterand gayer than theirs, for all that they were only two women, and two old women at that; for Widow Martha Brewster was in the neighborhood of eighty, and her daughter, Maria Brewster. near sixty. The two had lived alone since Jacob Brewster died and stopped going to the factory, some fifteen years ago. He had left them this particular white cottage, and snug little sum in the savings bank besides, for the whole Brewster family had worked and economized all thei1 long lives. The women had corded boots at home, while the man worked il the shop, and never spent cent with out thinking of it overnight.
 Leyden folks all thought that Davit Emmons would marry Maria Brewste when her father died. "David can ren his house, and go to live with Maria an her mother, said they, with an affection ate readiness to arrange matters flo them. But he did not. Every Sunda night at eight o'clock punctually tn form of David Emmons, arrayed in hi best clothes, with his stiff white dickey and nosegay in his button-hole, wa seen to advance up the road towar Maria Brewster's, as he had been seen advance every Sunday night for the las twenty-five years, but that was all. H manifested not the slightest intention ( carrying out peoples judicious plans fc his welfare and Maria's.
 She did not seem to pine with hop deferred; people could not honestl think there was any occasion to pity he for her lovers tardiness. A cheerie woman never lived. She was iteran bubbling over with jollity. Rount faced and black-eyed, with funny lit bounce of her whole body when st walked, she was the merry feature of u whole place.
 Her mother was now too feeble, b1 Maria still corded boots for the factori as of old. David Emmons, who W quite sixty, worked in them, as he h. from his youth. He was slender, mil faced old man, with fringe of gray y low beard around his chin: his head W
 quite bald. Years ago he had be
 handsome, they said, but someht people had always laughed at him
 little, although they liked him. 'T
 slowest of all the slow Leydenites" o,
 siders called him, and even the Isl,
 Leydenites" poked fun at this exaggel
 ton of themselves. It was an old a
 well-worn remark that it took Da,