The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-12-13

that massive head crowned with snow
white hair, that rugged face bearing
still the marks of sea and storm, that
imperious right hand stained-as the
whisper ran-with the mutinous blood
of sailor, that heavy foot so agile
once and fearless in icy riggings, that
deep, gruf voice with never in ali its
cadence kindly tone for me, over
Swallowed all my sickly boyhood and
hedged it in with a helpless sense of
shame and misery. Yet through it all
| venerated my grandfather for what he
was, while he despised me for what |
could not be. could forgive my ears
for tingling under the reproaches of the
giant, but all the more did he lose pa
thence with his eyes for looking upon a
dwarf. His taunts gained a double Bit
terness in proportion as | honored the
| lips from which they fell.
My case was indeed hard one. The
Rainford spirit burned in my fragile
frame, but only to consume, not to illu-
inmate. l longed for nothing so ardent
ly as the approval of my grandfather,
but what heroic deed had the straight
limbed left on earth for cripples to per-
form? Meanwhile, my weakness and
puny stature rendering me of little use
to any one, was allowed to attend the
village school as much as health per-
mitted and inclination suggested. But
| although | was an incessant reader of
snch odd volumes as our library af-
forded and would be curled up with my
book for hours at time in the sunniest
corner of the south porch, where my
grandfather needing me no more than
the dog at his feet, sat upright in his
high-backed chair, his two powerful
hands clasped over the head of his stick
and his wistful eyes turned seward,
yet my attendance at the little school
house on the hill was decidedly desulto-
ry. This arose partly from my aversion
to the society of other lads of my own
age, so much larger and more vigorous
than myself, and partly from the unsat-
isfactory character of the instruction,
dispensed by faxen-headed young fell
lows from q neighboring academy, who
logged only as much arithmetic and
geography into the small boys on the
front benches as was compatible with
their keener sense of duty toward the
large girls on the back settee.
Buo this winter a lady had taken her
place behind the ink-stained desk
a girl of some twenty summers, dark
haired and graceful, and my devotion
to school had received an unprecedented
impetus. As put the matter to myself,
with the delighted sense of the final, the
predetermined, the inevitable, ! had
found my destiny, had met my coun-
terpart, | had fallen in love. | was a
worm beside her. Be it granted. If
the sun shines on a worm. is he not
warmed? The blood of q dauntless
race was flowing through my veins.
With that pale face as a guiding star,
the path to fortune might open even yet
In point of fact, in me the Rainford
energy, my legs being disabled, had gone
to the brain, and many a romance had
spun in consequence through the long
and idle hours of my childhood. NY
deformity and my fecblencss were so
repulsye to the sturdy instinct within
me that | lived in an ideal world apart
from these. In my daily lot lay weak
ness, scorn and bitterness. These were
too airy materials for freakish fancy to
build with, and thus, although left to find
her own straw, she had wrought so
gaily and so well that | had grown quite
wOnted to the image of myself as
gallant young mariner, the crown of all
the Rainfords. who by one swift turn of
the fateful wheel had won inches and
graces, wealth and fame, lovely bride
and a grandfather's blessing and who
should bear himself, in his old age,
with the most exemplary consideration
toward all less fortunate scions of his
blood
So there sat fancy, like roguish
spider, spinning cObwebs in the crippled
boy young brain, Just as she has some
times spun them since even within the
gray pate of a respectable old doctor of
my acquaintance, and weaving with
every one the vision of sweet. grave
face. And so, when in the course of that
existence known as boarding
round, highly cherished by the educa-
tiOnal fathers as device at once social
knocked at my grandfather's door,
acted scarcely more eXtravagant part
than many taller youths of eighteen
summertides, in slipping my first poem,
a fervid if occasionally numerical dec
laratiOn of my sentiments, under the
bead-embroidered pin-cushion that my
careful mother had drawn from the
camphor-chest and placed upon Our Wis
itor's bureau. 1t was the remembrance
of this decisive act which made my thin
hand shake upon the rafting latch as |
opened the kitchen door next morning,
but once within the influence of that
CHEEKY spot, the one room in the house
where my mother reigned supreme,
dropped upon a cricket and gave myself
up to the expectation of breakfasting
with the teacher.
1t must be confessed, to begin with,
that the Widow Rainford, to make use
of village phrase, was preparing break
fast much more elaborate than usual.
The little, widespread table, carven in
strange fashion from understanding
woods that never grew on honest Yam
kee soil, stood snugly on its twisted
legs before the dumpy cooking-stove,
much at loss to understand why it
should be thus called upon to support
platter of bony herrings and dish of
chubby doughnuts, in addition to its
customary morning burden of buck
wheat cakes and coffee. The pictured
jug, also, too ugly for ugliuess and so