St. Paul daily globe., 1884-07-05
CONCENTRATIONS.
What a Reflective Mind Sees Where Others
See Nnfhjnu

WHut ~ 1beJteCttce M ma sees WHefe OIHeFS
See Nothing.
say love to linger among the cobwebs
and amid the silence of old furniture sale
rooms-as fruitful source of meditation to
me as lettering among tombs ever was to
Harvey. That venerable eight day clock
standing against the wall, behind those slim
walnut chairs and couch done up in the
bright green rep, its mahogany almost as
black as your Sunday hat with age, turns on
my thinking faculty just as the ''auld Scots
sangs" moves my guidwife Peggy to tears
think OF all the pairs of eyes that have gazed
up at the hands and figures on its olive tint
ed face, and wonder how many of them have
taken their last look of earth. NV imagina-
ton transports it to some well to do Scottish
cottage home, where 1 see, held up in fond
arms, The marvellng youngsters, in striped
cotton pinafores, with their wide open eyes
staring at the representatives of the four
quarters or the globe, painted in bright daz-
zling colors on each corner of the dial plate.
Perhaps some of those same youngsters, to
whose inquiring and wondering minds the
pictures were an every day exercise, are set
| tied down, old men and women now, in one
of these distant quarters of the globe, say
America, and are sitting at this very moment
in their log hut in the back woods, their
minds eye reverting to the familiar face of
that old clock tick, ticking away in their
childhood's home
| Over against where it stood in the same
old home, between the room door and the
end OF the white secured wooden dresser
with its well filed delf rack. I picture to my
! self the wasted face of sick woman pillowed
| up in bed. What weary nights she has list
ened to its tick tack, and counted the slow
hours as they struck, waiting for the dawn !
| know her head aches no longer, and that
she sleeps sound enough now, with the sum-
mer breeze stirring the green grass on her
grave
Turning away from the venerable time
keeper, my eye falls on an old fashioned low
set chest of drawers, with dipgy folding brass
handles and little bits of the veneer Clipped
off here and there, and the ivory awanting
in some of the keyholes Where are now,
| ask myself, the ashes of those bright house
hold fires, which have winked in the shining
| depths of their mahogany in the darkening
cleaning, before the blinds were drawn and
the candles lit? What secrets and treasures
| tories of? | see pensive female form, in
striped short gown and drugget petticoat,
stop while she is sweeping the kitchen floor,
and, with palptatiug heart pull out the cen
| ter small top drawer to take another look at
the golden curl wrapped in precious letter.
| in the corner beside two or three well worn
toys. That bruised heart will throb no more
with joy or pain; neither will her tears fall
| any more like scalding lead on the blurred
| parchment as she lifts the bright curl to her
| lips before wrapping it away out of sight
again till, mayhap, the next day, when the
old yearning returns, and she must needs go
and unfold her treasure, the sight of which
brings the little chubby face over which the
| curl used to hang once more before her brim-
ming eyes.
Tne little bookcase with the diamond
shaped panes on the top OF the chest of draw
ers is an object to me of even nobler regard
than the drawers themselves. My venerable
uncle, who was an author too, had just such
little bookcase on the top of his drawers,
about three-fourths filled with somber looking
volumes. | remember / never looked up at
it as a boy, and beheld the dim dusty books,
like gray ghost, sitting erect, or leaning
against one another in the twilight shelves,
but associated it in my fancy with the in
sue vi Ills own gray nead. Already see
the titles on the backs of some of these chill
dren of dead brains looming out of the emp
ty gloom through the diamond shaped panes;
and can recognize many of my own favor
ties among them. The binding is more
| faded and worn on the backs of some than
others. as if they had been more often in the
hand and more dear to the heart of the read.
er. am almost tempted to stretch forth
my hand and renew their acquaintance. One
in particular, in faded green and gold bind
inc, looking out from almost motley com
pany of fiction, ''The House with the Seven
Cables" have a covetous eye upon.-Cham
| 6erS' Journal.