The Carbon advocate. [volume] (Lehighton, Pa.) 1872-1924, 1883-05-19
COMING BACK.

Up in city garret, on a hot June day,
a weary woman leaned 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-break till now, four o'clock in
the afternoon.
From the street far below her, voice
had only that moment scared upward,
calling Strawberries! strawberries!
Ripe, red strawberr.ees!'
And, as if by magic, her thoughts
turning backward had carried her to
Deepdene, the home of her youth, and a
certain lovely June day in her sixteenth
year, when she had stood in the straw
berry pasture ON the Blessing farm, with
the red berries periuming all the air, and
said the words which severed her fate
from that of Maurice Blessing and made
her life what it was on this day. almost
hopeless, and ceaseless 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
10 touch tie deep blue sky, sloping
downward to the gray stone wall, with
the cold spring leaping out through a
wooden tr, ugh, amoug its lower stones.
And below the wall, 'the thirty.acre
moving, spread out like an immense
emerald velvet carpet, with the two-story
creamcolored house lifting its pizzaed
front at the extreme end, just where the
shaded lane began, that led from the
Blessing farm out into the village road,
She the poor orphan girl, had been
offered this comfortable home; and she
had refused it-for what2 For q dream
of fame which had left her toiling in this
bot garret, while 10 the black trunk yon.
der the book which was to have made
her fortune, refused by one publisher
after another, was lying, till she could
fad courage to thrust it into the FIRE.
Scarcely five years, she sighed, rock
ng herself to and fro. "And Maurice
has sold the old farm and gone to Color
ado; and l am here. lonely, disappointed
old before my time. On, il l could onl.
1.-Two that day over again, and be as wis
as am now! For now knew that l low
him-now. when it is forever too late!"
Sickening, with a sort of calentur
among those hot city street, for on
glimpse of her early home, Hester Ma,
rose and went to the desk where he
worldly wealth was stored,
By the closest economy, she had man
aged to lay aside a few dollars, Wit
the gloomy purpose of paying the eXpen
sss of her own sickness aud death, whe
tue time should come for her to di
AZ eng strangers.
From this sacred hoard she counte
out sufficient sum to take her to DeeI
dene.
Il will stay only one day, she though
And will work all the harder after
return to make up this sum again, BU
see Deepdene, now that it is fairly in N
nina, mustl And will take one mol
look at the dear old farm before it is
the hands of strangers, and so altere
that shall not know it"
The next day saw her on her way.
The five years of her absence ha
been years change 10 the little countl
village.
A railway whisked her across the hill
road from Torrington. Once she wou
have made the journey in yellow stag
drawn by four horses, with John Colne
or est and most disagreeable of earth
stage drivers, on the box.
The village, too, was smartoned al
freshened up--new houses, new faces,
new lion fence around the small Oy
park that graeed the center of the tow
new names above the gilded fronts Of 4
shops; new set of gigling misses. I
their way to the new brown-stone acad
my. which stood where she had on
thought it an honor to attend the dislri
school, in plain, one-story structure
faded brick.
No doubt all these alterations were I