Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1884-02-28


'bild dinners whose strength lay IN the
: vegetables rather than in the smal
square of fat pork cooked with them. OI
which Amasa invariably took the lions
share. These accumulating and never
ceasing labors all wore day by day on
the vitality of Mrs. Tucker, and when
to these were added an annual LADY
life became terror and burden 10 the
poor woman.
But what did Amssa caTe? He, too
| worked from sun to sun
He farmed IN the hard old fashion
with rude implements aud no knowledge
but
My father done it afore me, 50 i am
a goin' to do it now, no use talkiu'." One
by one the wailing, puny children were
laid away in the little yard on the TOP
OF Sandhill, where the old fuckers and
their half-dozen infants lay already; d
rough inelosure, full of mulleins, bur-
docks and thistle, Cverrun with low
blackberry vines and surrounded by a
rall fence. 1t had been much handler
for the fuckers to have a graveyard
close by than to travel five miles to the
mills with every funeral and they were
not driven by public opinion in regard
to monuments; they all lay there like
the beasts that perish, with but one
slant gray stone to tell where the first
occupant left his tired bones. Two chill
dren of Wealthy's survived, Amasa and
Lurana, the oldest and youngest OF
seven.
Amasa, considerate, intelligent boy
who thought much, said little, and Lura.
na, or 'Lury, AS her name was generally
given, a mlschievoUs, self-willed little
imp, the delight and torment of her lit
tie WORKOUT mother Young Amasa
was boy quite beyond his fathers un-
derstandiBg; as soon as he was old
enough he Uegan to nelp his mother ill
every way that he could devise. Ana
when his term at the village school was
over, to his fathers great disgust, he
trapped squirrels and gatherd nuts
enough to earn his money and subscribe
for an agricultural paper, (which he stud
led every week Till It's contents were
| thoroughly stored in his head. Then
| began that mobile discomfort" which the
| philosophers praise.
The elder man had no peace in his old
world ways; the sloppy waste of this
barnvard was an eye sore to this book
learned feller,' as his father deriSively
called him. And the ashes of the wood
lire were saved and sheltered like pre-
cieus dust, instead of being thrown into
big heap to edify the wandering hens.
That desOlate garden was plOwed, fer
tilized, and set in order at last, and the
great ragged orchard manured, the apple
trees thlnned and trimmed, and ashes
suwn thick over the old messy sod.
| Now these things were not done IN d
day or year, but as The boy grew older
aud more able to cope with his fathers
self-couceit, more was done annually.
not without much opposition and many
hard werds, but still done.
Then came heavy blow. Lurana, a
girl of fifteen, fresh aud pretty as wild
rose, and tired of the pinching economy.
the monOtOnous work. and grinding life
of the farm, ran away with a tin ped
dler and broke her mothers heart; not
| in the physical sense that hearts are
sometimes broken, but the weary wO-
mans soul was set on this bright, win
some child, and her life lost all its scant
SAVIOR when the blooming face and clear
Young voice left her forever.
Il don't blame ner none, AmaSey, she
sobbed out to her boy, now stout fel-
low of twenty-five, raging at his sisters
folly. IL can't feel to blame her. l
know It's more'n girl can bear to live
this way. I've he'd to, but its been
dreadful harJ--dreadful hard. I've
wished m0re'n once | could ha' laid
down with the little babes out there on
the hill, so's to rest spell; put there
was you and Lury wanted me, and so
my time hadn't cUme.
"Amasey, you re Il man grown now,
and if you should get married, and |
s'pose you will, men folks seem to think
it's needful whether or no, do kinder
make it easy for her, poor cretur. Don't
grind her down to skin and bone, like
me, dear; faint just right, I'm sure ont.
never to make no more of woman than
eff she was a horned critter; don't do it.
Mother, | never willl' answered the
son, as energetically and sOlemnly as II
taking an oath.
But Wealthy was nearer to her rest
than she knew. The enemy that turks
in dirt. neglect, po)r food. constant
drudgery and the want OF every whole
some and pleasurable excitement to
mind or body, and when least expected
swoops down and does its fatal errand
in the isolated farmhouse no less than
in the crowded city slums-the scourge
of New England, typhoid fever-broke
out in the Tucker homestead.
Wealthy turned away from her week
ly baking one Saturday morning, Just
as the last pie was Set ON the broad
pantry shelf, and tainted on the kitchen
floor, where Amasa the younger found
her, an hour after, muttering, dellrIouS,
and cold.
What he could do then or the vii
lage doctor, or an old woman who called
herself nurse, was all useless; but the
best skill of any kind would have been
equally futile She was never conscious
again for week; then her eyes seemed
10 see what was about her once more.
She looked up at he boy, laid her wan
cheek on her hand, smlled-and died.
Hardly had her wasted shape been
put away under the mulleins and hard
hack, when her husband came IN from
the haylield, smitten with ths same
plague. He was harder to conquer.
Three weeks of alternate burning, sink
ing, raving and chills, ended at last IN
the grave and grim repoSe of death for
him, and another Amasa Tucker reigned
alone in the old house ON the hill.
1t is not to be supposed that in all
those years Amasa the younger had
been blind to this charms of 1.-THE other
sex; he had not been with every girl
who went to school with him, or whom
he met at singing school or spelling
matches. or who smiled at him from heI
Sunday bonnet. as he manfully held up
his end in the village choir.
He had been faithful always to the
shy, delicate. dark-eyed little girl who
was his school sweetheart. and now 1t
was to Mary Peet he hastened, to ask
her to share his life and home. He had
intended to take farm on shares the
next summer, and work his way slowly
upward TO a place of his own; now he
had this hundred acre farm, and to his
sx..,,. anrDr;Sa ha found - 00O laid nm