The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-12-13
THE RED TASSEL.
SIT is the Spirit, After All, That
Makes the Man"

AS sat before my open CRATE to-
night, taking a tired mans ease in
dressing-gown and slippers, my thoughts
wandered idly back over the events OF
the day and settled, singularly enough,
upon on elegant red tassel that | had
observed, with physicians distracted
glance, depending from a window-cur-
tain in Madame Maystone's chamber.
Madame Maystone being the wealthiest
and healthiest patient on my list, it is
not strange that, during the detailed
and monOtonouS recitals of her physical
phenomena, the choice furnishings of
her sick-room should sometimes thrust
themselves upon my notice, for | was
reared, not in luxury, but in homely
comfort, upon u remote and Jagged
strip of the New England coast. Yet
as | sat and unused this evening, drowsy
with the genial heat of my dancing
wood-iire, the vision of that swinging
red tassel passed constantly before my
eyes, not as a type of riches and an
easeful life, but as a reminder of that
talisnian which unlocked for me the
door of my profession and of that one
and only guerdon bestowed by my gen
tie lady upon her ungraced knight. 1t
Is too late for work, too early for sleep,
and so, while the golden flame fiickers
cruelty and beautifully, like dream OF
love, about the dumb heart of the loo.
|, the scribe of memory, will take my
pen and write.
About forty years ago, as the unfiat-
tering calendar has it, | awoke one
morning with a sudden, vivid conscious
ness of impending destiny under the
weather-stained roof, which is still
pointed out in SkippervilIe as the "old
Rainford place." and clambered with
double my usual speed out of the bill
lowy recesses of the feather bed, al
though in truth, what with the pain and
nervous rights at night, it was never
my wont to be sleepy-head. For you
may have seen already, if you have the
bad manners to peep in at an old doc
tors office window, that | am of small
Inquire and misshapen-an unpicturesque
circumstance that has long ceased to
trouble the patients who need my skill
and pay my charges, but has never en-
drely ceased to trouble me. Yet am
twice the man, let me tell you, in cor
poreal inches as well as mental, that |
was ever expected to be. You would
have thought me pitiful youngster in
deed, if you could have seen me on that
gray March morning sacred to recol-
lection, limping down the old-fashioned
staircase, thin and white and twisted to
one side by unseemly deformty, my
wretched bit of a body topped by
great, square head with brown eyes
peering mournfully out from under a
thicket of tangled hair You would
have stopped to speak to me tenderly,
as to child, maybe, and would have
answered with incredulous gaze my
shrill retort that was eighteen years
old last Christmas day and wanted no
mans pity.
But if you had once heard my mother,
with tears and sobbings and hidings
of the face in her matronly white apron,
tell the story of her only son-how she
had dropped him, hearty baby of
twenty months, from her fainting arms
upon the stones of the wharf, when she
had fastened there with her neighbors
to see my fathers ship come in and the
bronzed, rough-bearded sailors, turning
from the embraces of their wives and
sweethearts, had told her with STAN
mering speech that she alone should see
her husband never more until the sea
gave up its dead, you would not have
forgotten speedily in what wise it came
to pass that the last of the Rainfords
was a weakling and cripple. If my
self had been able to refrain from brood
ing over that bitter truth. there was one
member of our little household who
would not have suffered me to forget it
for day. My grandfather, known
to all Skipperville as Old Cap'n
Reuben, was the scourge of my child
hood, being stern of tongue and mighty
of bulk and gifted with contempt as
huge as his body for every son of the
Ranfords who was found on his twenty
first birthday to stand below the haugh-
ty Rainford measure of six feet one. |
may rs well acknowledge here that in
our village home we were a family of
no trifling consequence and, that mar
Vicious stories of the deeds of my broad
shouldered and sea-faTing ancestors
were told on winter evenings by aged
fireside gossips, who did not fail to COM
plete their narration with a melancholy
shake of the head and words too much
like these:
GAY, ay; it was fine old stock. We
shall not see its like in Skipperville agin.
But it is nigh run out already, for Old
Cap'n Reuben is hard upon his eighties,
an there's nary Rainford left beside
him save for tLs Widdpr's crooked how
who'll not be like to tread the deck o a
three-master, as long as there's church
yard grass to cover him"
But stung and pricked though often
was by such chance shafts as these, it
was the sword-edge of my grandfather's
contempt that cut me to the heart.
That majestic figure which had not