News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1883-08-30

| you IL leave bnem there. ln6y Will as
simulate with the others you have
chosen"
And there we sat and chatted in the
soft afternoon of that beautiful summer
day. The yellow bees hummed in the
Haunting nasturtium flowers that were
trained up like a vine round the pillars
of the porch. The swallows SKINNED
and darted and futtered with buzzing
wings down the wide chimney of the old
house among the poplars. A picnic
party drove by with gleeful voices, and
the horses tossed their names as though
proud of the pretty maidens who essayed
to learn how TO drive. While I sat listen
ing to the soothing sounds, lulled by the
sweet breezes of the summer, [ heard a
gentle tapping of fingers on the door of
the pantry-iust noise enough to attract
my attention. There stood good Mrs.
Mercy, my neighbor, with a basket
covered with a cloth as white as the foam
of milk
I Itip-toed in, lest I should rouse the
doing mother and babe in the ham
mock. I knew the tricks of my kind
neighbor. She was always sat her
tricks" and how good they did come,
sometimes, when / was tired or had
company or had been doing big days
work.
"You see, miss, " she said, 81 thought
as you had company you would be glad
of something that would save work,
and her sun-browned face blushed with
embarrassment, for, as she said often,
she had "no flow of language" She
knew better than she could express; she
was discerning, kind, thoughtful, and
unselish. And here in the pantry, she
uncovered the basket and took out a
| deep dish more than half full of the
daintiest yellow cottage-cheese, with the
thick, golden cream lying half an inch
| thick over its surface. 1 was so glad.
The visitor from the city-Kate-ha
never tasted or seen such a luxury, |
knew, and it was doubIy welcome, COM
| ing from the "ghoulish woman" who
had prescribed for the baby's ailment.
In the other end of the wide market
basket, covered up in her best "chany
dish" pearl-white, with pale, wild roses
intertwisted into the vine with ferns
running around it-lay a block of fresh,
new honey that would weigh no less
than three pounds. Again [ was so
glad. Kate would be pleased, too. In
=, T 4aI 10 how h
taken down little.
ooh don't thank me- It's all right
you'd "a done the same thing why, it's
| a pleasure for me; law me don't say so p
said my neighbor, when I said I was
gladder than I could express.
''Now," said she, ''make some of your
nice puffy, bakin' powder biscuit, and
shave some of that good beef that 1 seed
You storing away awhile ago, and a pot
of your good tea, and set your table out'n
the porch in the shadder O. the grape
vines, and you'll have a pictlr' that your
- ~ viii e,o--vs-s>-,~-- 20 the city
that she ID often think over"
And ] ooked up into her gray eyes
and thought of the new neighbors that
Kate had, in Imagination, settled about
her, and of my suggestion that she re-
tanned the Flints down at the Flint
Mill.
l acted on Mercy's suggestion about
table out on the long porch at the viney
end, where the plant-stand and two
hanging baskets were, and never saw
a woman made happier than my visitor
was.
She praised the cheese and had never
eaten any like it, with the taste of COM
bined cream and butter and cheese. The
honey was poem; she said 1t was rhyme
and reason and beauty and inspiration,
and brought her visions of fields of nod
ding clover blooms and meadows with
sweet honeysuckle bells a-swing in the
breeze and of brooks and hedge-rows,
all out under the blue of quiet, summer
skies in the beautiful country.
Then told her whose hands had made
and brought the cool, rich treat for our
cozy tea, and the thick, clear, pearly
honey in her best "chany dish''-the
wedding gift of old Salathiel Stone, who
had 'united in the holy bonds of matri-
money!" not only our neighbors, Sabas-
tan and Mercy, but her father and
mother also, 'Diar Johnson and his con-
sort Martha Ann Merrivale-and then,
as I filed her cup the second time, L
couldn't help saying to the dear vision
arv. who had never known much OF the
rough-and-tumble, practical side OF real
life:
"Katie, II you lived here, now you
would let the Flint Mill neighbors stay
on, wouldn't you?"
She laughed, as she broke open an
other of my dainty biscuits and laid
translucent slice of the rich honey in
side of it.
81 guess I'd let them stay. [ had
thought Litta, the wonderful, should oc-
cupy the mill; but, dear me, she'd never
think of making cottage-cheese or shar'
ing honey-or-or-taB taking my lam Oh
her lap and prescribing for his ludicrous
liver Not Litta, indeed. And Grace
Greenwood would be writing for the pa
pers and Mrs. Scott SO busy making
, pictures that neither of them woulC
stop to get up warm meals for them
, selves, even. Yes, You have a dear
good neighbOr, no doubt better thai
any of my favorite authors, artists, o
! singers wonld make" and she took an
other spoonful of the creamy cheese.
We thought so, too. We would no
exchange Mercy Flint as a neighbor TO
a woman who could claim wealth, fame
> wisdom, intellect, or any of the gift
j that raise woman to the heights of exal
tatiOn.
: Mercy could not write a line of poetry
:, vet she lives ont whole poems In tn
4 high places of native sympathy her sou
C shares the keen delights that poets love
!, The world bestows nc vain applause o
. such humble ones, but they lose not
jot by it. She knows nothing of tn
q vulger strife for high places. Her fan
10 lily and her neighbors and her friend
# entertain an angel unaware. She
, content and proud of her simple life o.,
I simple pleasures and of tne name an
% meaning of wife and mother. She d,
# lights i'll little services, i'll making Othel
/ happy, and the result is, she leads a Ii
IN in little world of enchantment. whic
- surrounds her like charmed circle.