Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1883-03-30
TWO OLD LOVERS.
MARY +. wilkins in Harper's Bazaar ]

Leyden was emphatcally a village of cot
tages. and each Of them built after one of
two patterns either the front door was on
the right side in the corner of little piazza
extending third of the length of the house,
with the main roof juttng over it, or the pi-
azza stretched across the 'front.' and the door
was in the centre.
The cottages were uniformly painted white
and had blinds of bright spring green col
or. 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 general air of cheerful though
humble prosperity about the place, which it
owed and indeed its very existence also, to
the three old weather beaten boot and shoe
factories which arose stanchly and import
antly in the very midst of the natty little
white cottages.
Years before, when one Hiram Strong put
up his three factories for the manufacture of
the rough shoes which the working man of
America wears, he hardly thought he was al
so gaining for himself the honor of found,
ing Leyden. He chose the site for his build
ings mainly because they would be easily ae-
cessible to the railway which stretched to the
city sixty miles distant. At first the work
men came on the cars from the neghboring
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 @, 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 a full
hedged town.
That was long time ago The shoe facto-
ries had long passed out of the hands of Hi
ram Strong's heirs be himself was only a
memory on earth. The business was not
quite AS wide-awake and vigorous as when in
/ its first youth; it droned a little now; there
was not quite so much hustle and hurry as
formerly, The factories were never lighted
up of an evening on account of overwork,
and the workmen found plenty of time for
! pleasant and sautary gossip over their cut
| ting aud pegging. But this did not detract
in the least from the general cheerfulness and
| prosperity of Leyden. The inhabitants still
had all the work they needed to supply the
means necessary for their small comforts,
and they were contented. They too had be-
| gun to drone little like the factories. "As
slow as Leyden, was the saying amongst the
faster going towns adjoining theirs. Every
|
and boys in their calico shirt sleeves, their
faces little pale-perhaps from their indoor
lfe-fled unquestioningly out of the back
doors of the white cottages treading still
deeper the wel-worn foot-paths stretching
around the sides of the houses, and entered
the factories They were great ugly wooden
buildings, with wings which they had grown
in their youth jutting olumsily from their
numbering shoulders. Their outer walls were
black and grimy, streaked and splashed and
patched with red paint in every variety OF
shade, accordingly as the original hue wal
tempered with smoke or the beatings of the
storms of many years.
The men worked peacefully and evenly il
the shoe shops all day and the women stale
at home and kept the little white cottages ii
dy, cooked the meals, and washed the clothes
and did the sewing. For recreation the mel
sat on the piazza in front of Barker's stor,
of an evening, and gossiped or discussed
politics. and the women talked over thei