Daily Kennebec journal., 1884-06-24

HRoN oyER fnE SEA
l.
Sandwich Islands :"
The words. uttered in chorus OF high
childish treble. rang ont clearly through
| the open trznsom above the stout, OAK
grained door,
Miss Martha threw out her hands inn
patiently. a. If TO brush away an annoy
ing insect
:.Am to hear nothing but the Sandwich
Islands this morning ?" she exclaimed hall
aloud. her impotence breaking through
the guarded reserve she usually MAINTAIN
ed even with herself That is the third
time the hateful place has been thrust up.
on me since woke and to-day, too, OF
all the days of the year"
Whatever fault was to be found with the
day, must have lain entirely in Miss
Martha's own mind. for certainly It's OUT
ward seeming was as perfect as could
well be expected in . world we are aecus-
toned to find 80 full of imperecfion. and
this she was forced to confess to herself as
she sank into fortuitous chair before the
great hhll window The sun shone with
brilliant but tempered raw. and the cool,
confession Of sweet dalliance among the
lilacs.
Immediately beneath the window lay
the well ordered garden, its white. .curving
walks outlined with ranks of gorgeous tu-
lips, beyond the straight village street, wide
unpayed. and lined with elms in their first
splendor of tender green, opened vista
of furrowed field and purple hills. inter-
sected by the lustrous gray band Of the
full-banked river, that was well calculated
to call up those vague, nameless emotions
made up of heart-ache and hope ,of regret
full memories. and longing anticipation. to
which the sensitive spirit is so subject in
the early spring.
For Miss Martha the heart-ache and the
regretful memories were IN the ascendant
for it was her 39th anniversary, and at SO
hope and anticipation are no longer very
vivid.
These regretful me nories. of course. in
cluded, and indeed centered upon a mas
culine figure; 1.-THE. slender figure, a
pale student like face. with earnest dark
eyes that always seemed to demand some
thing of her.
As she glanced down the elm-lined
street this May morning. the apparition of
slim. dark-coated figure. surmoCnted by
a straw hat, almost brought back the girl
ish flutter at her heart which something
such an apparition had aroused there
twenty years ago. But no,-how many
wears was it now that she had been accus-
toned to dwell upon that air-drawn pict-
ure made up of sparkling sea and gleam-
ing sand, group of feathery palms in the
foreground. in the distance three mountain
peaks calmly exhaling clouds Of gray
smoke upon the still air; to see standing
beneath the palms surrounded by group
of half-c yellow-skinned natives, the
1.-THE, slim figure, the earnest eyes lit up
by fire like that which shone in the faces
OF the first apostles?
How many years? She could hardly
tell: for at that time something in Miss
Martha's heart had seemed to run down,
as the striking portion of a clocks appar-
atus sometimes does, while the rest of the
machinery ticks uniHterruptedly on.
As she leaned now upon the window
ledge, the air-crawn tropical landscape
quite obliterated that before her bodily
vision.
"Thirty-nine, thirty-nine," her musings
ran. my life more than half spent, and
vet have not lived"
1
gust of fearless sobs shook her like one
sometimes swoop down upon the late
September roses.
| Poor Miss Martha!
And vet her friends would have thought
strange to hear her say she had not lived.
| Outwardly, few women appeared to live
more intensely or more actively.
| ka lstx1o os,saAdo hok~ hap and tho
Young professor of mathematics, who had
indicted her into the mysteries of algebra
and geometry in this same school, had
that few outside her immediate family had
known anything of 1t; and her sudden
resolution to leave home and accept the
position Of primary teacher in the school
in which she had been educated, in reality
an act of indignant though useless rebel
lion against their treachery, was regarded
as a mere eccentric whim, which her
aristocratic family permitted her to in
dulge. Later. when the war had swept
away the family fortune, and the two sons
who might have reinstated it. the eccen-
tricity assumed the guise of provincial
leading. For the school in the sheltered
Ohio valley went on undisturbed, and it
was " NlIsS NA6ttI0 bu0t tiic HlXntc0cu
and helpless mother and sisters had fed,
when the ancestral home on the James
was laid in ashes.
Mother and father were dead now, and
the two sisters, with convenient inconsis-
tencv, married Yankee officers, but Miss
Martha still went on In the old school, ris-
} ing grade by grade. until now she reigned
augustly as principal.
1t was perhaps q sunken sense of the
narrowness Of the bounds that hedged her
in. as contrasted with the wide ocean and
/, the long years that interviewed between
herself and this central figure and event
of her life, which had called forth the ex.
clamation recorded above. She, resolved
|, to remember. had chosen to remain where
everything should remind her of him he.
as if equally resolved to forget, had fled
! away across the ocean, whose multitudin-
Gus waves seemed adequate for the wash
. ing out of any remembrance. however
deeply stamped.
No matter how carefully and wisely we
! may order our lives. it is probable there
will still be moments when the things we
IL L. - a