Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1884-06-20
FROM OVER THE SEA.
NSandminh Islnndaln

"Sandwich Islandsn
The words, uttered in a chorus of high,
childish treble, rang out clearly through
the open transom above the stout, oak
grained door.
"Am I to hear nothing but the Sand
wich Islands this morning I" she exclaimed
half aloud, her impatience breaking
through the guarded reserve she usually
maintained even with herself. "That is
the third time the hateful place has been
thrust upon me since Iawoke, 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 its out
ward seeming was as perfect as could
we'll be expected in q world we are ac-
customed to find so full of imperfection,
and this she was forced to confess to her
self as she sank into fortuitous chair be-
fore the great hall window. The sun shone
with brilliant but tempered ray, and the
cool, fresh wind that blew in her face
made full confession of sweet dalliance
among the lilacs. Immediately be-
meath the window lay the well-ordered
garden, its white, curving walks out
lined with ranks of gorgeous tulips
beyond, the straight village street, wide,
unpaved 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 we'll calcu-
lated to call up those vague, nameless
emotions made up of heartache and hope,
ofregretful memories and longing antici-
patton, to which the sensitive spirit is so
subject in the spring.
For Miss Martha the heartache and the
regretful memories were in the ascend
ant; for it was her thirty-ninth anniver-
sary, and at at thirty nine hope and an
icipation are no longer very vivid.
These regretful memories of course, in
cluded, and indeed centered upon, a
masculine figure; 1.-THE, slender figure
a pale student-like face, with earnest,
dark eyes that always seem to demand
something of her.
AS she glanced down the elm-lined
street this May morning, the apparition
of slim, dark coated figure, surmounted
by straw hat, almost brought back the
girlish futter at her heart which some
thing such an apparition had aroused
there twenty years ago. But, no; how
many years was it now that she had been
accustomed to dwell upon that air-drawn
picture made up of sparkling sea and
cleaning sand, a 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, sur
rounded by group of half-clad, yellow,
skinned natives, the 1.-THE, slim figure,
the earnest eyes, lit by fire like that
which shone in the faces of the first
apostles?
How many years2 She could hardly
tell; for at that time something in Miss
Martha's heart had seemed to run down,
as the striking portion of clocks appa-
ratus sometimes does, while the rest of
the machinery ticks uninterruptedly on.
Thirty nine, thirty nine," her mu-
sings ran. "My life more than half
spent, and yet I have not lived"
Then she hid her face in her hands,
and gust of fearless sobs shook her,
like one of those sudden little dashes OF
wind that sometimes swoop down upon
the late September roses. Poor Miss
Martha!
And yet 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.
The little episode between her and the
young professor of mathematics who had
inducted her into the mysteries of algebra
and geometry in the same school, had
been so skillfully managed by her parents
that few outside of her immediate family
had known anything of it; and her sud
den 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 rebellion against their treachery,
was regarded as mere eccentric whim,
which her aristocratic family permitted
her to indulge. Later, when the wal
had swept away the family fortune and
the two sons who might have rein
stated it, the eccentricity assumed the
guise of providential leading. For the
school in the sheltered Ohio Valley went
on undisturbed, and it was to Miss Mar
tina that the frightened and helpless
mother and sisters had fled when the an.
cestral home on the James was laid In
ashes.
Mother and father were dead now, and
the two sisters married, but Miss Martha
still went on in the old school, rising
grade by grade, until now she reigned
augustly as principal.
1t was perhaps a sudden sense of the
narrowness of the bounds that hedged
her in, as contrasted with the wide ocear
and the long years that intervened be-
tween herself and this central figure and
event of her life, which had called forth
the exclamation recorded above. She
resolved to remember had chosen to re
main where everything should remind
her of him; he, as if equally resolved tt
forget, had fled away across the ocean
that wide, wide ocean, whose multitud
inous waves seemed adequate for thu
washing out of any resemblance, however
deeply stamped.
No matter how carefully or wisely W,
order our lives, it is probable there will
still be moments when the things W,
might have had will seem of far mort
value than those we have; but it wal
something new for the busy principal o
the Seminary to sit idly befor,
a window of a morning, indulging il
melancholy reveric. On ones birthday