, 1884-03-08

Il INV ''' .3 W =
rail fence. It 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 grey stone to tell where the
first occupant left his tired bones. Two
children OF Wealthy's survived, Amasa and
Lurana, the oldest and youngest Of seven.
Amasa, a considerate, intelligent boy, who
thought much and said little, and Lurana, or
-Lury, as her name was usually given, n
m~isehiexouss self wiled little imp, the delight
and torment OF her httls woru-oat msthsr.
Young Amasa was a boy quite beyond his
fathers understanding; az soon as be was old
enough, he began to help his mother in every
way he could devise. And when his term at
the village school was over, to his fathers
| great disgust, be trapped squirrels and
gathered nuts enough to earn him money and
subscribe for an agricultural paper, which
he studied every week till its contents were
thoroughly stored in his head. Then began
that "noble discomfort" which the philoso-
pliers praise.
The elder man had no peace IN his old
world ways; the sloppy waste OF the barn
yard was an eyesore to the Hbook-learned
Teller" as his father derisively called him.
And the ashes Of the wood fire were saved
and sheltered like precious dust, instead OF
thrown into a big heap to edify the wander
ing hens THAI desolate garden was plowed,
fertilized and sot in order at last, and the
great ragged orchard manured, the apple
trees thinned and trimmed, and ashes sown
thick over the old massy sod. Now, these
things were not done in n day or a year, but
as the boy grew older and more able to cope
with his fathers self conceit more was done
annually, not without much opposition and
many hard words, but still done.
Then came a heavy blow. Lurana, a girl
OF 10, fresh and pretty as a wild rose, and
tired of the pinching economy, the monoton-
GUS work and grinding life of the farm, ran
away with a tin peddler and broke her
mothers heart; not in the physical sense
that hearts are sometimes broken, but the
weary woman's soul was set on her bright,
winsome child, and her life lost all its scant
SAVIOR when the blooming face and clear
young voice left her forever.
a don't blame her nome. Amasey," she
sobbed out to her boy, now a stout fellow OF
%, raging at his sisters folly.
Al can't feel to blame her, l know It's
more'n a girl can bear to live this way. I've
he'd to, but it's been dreadful a rd-dreadful
hard. I've wished more'n once l could ha'
laid down along with the little babies out
there on the hill, SOS to rest a spell; but there
L was JOo hhd AAdhJ ehsS Acr 1ha ~ ny
time hadn't come.
@Amasey you're a man grown now, and II
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 creturl Don't grind her down to
akin and bone, like me, dear; ta'nt just right,
I'm sure ont, never to make no more of a
woman than Of she was a horned ~critter;
don't do it"
"Motheri I never will, !" answered the son,
as theoretically and solemnly as il he were
taking his oath.
But Wealthy was nearer t9 her rest than
she knew; the enemy that ldrks in dirt, neg
lect, poor food, constant drudgery, and the
want OF every wholesome and plsasurable
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 weekly
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, delirious and cold.
What he could do then, or the village doc
tor, 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 u week;
then her eyes seemed to see what was about
her once more. She looked up at her boy,
laid her wan cheek on her hand, ~smiled-and
died.
Hardly had her wasted shape been put
away under the mulleins and hard hack when
her husband came in from the hay field smit-
I - la IL $500 ..
conquer. Three weeks of alternate burning,
sinking, raving and chills ended at last in the
gray and grim repose OF death for him, aud
another Amasa Tucker reigned alone in the
old house on the hill.
1t is not to be supposed that In all these
years Amasa the younger had been blind to
the charms of the other sex; he had not
"been with" every girl who went to school
with him, or whom he met at singing
schools, or spelling matches, or who smiled
at him from her Sunday bonnets as he man
fully "held up his snd' in the village choir.
He had been faithful always to the shy,
delicate, dark-eyed little girl who was his
sweetheart, and now it was to Mary Peet he
hasted to ask her to share his life and home.
He had intended to take Q 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 great
surprise he found 5000 laid up in the
bank at Peets Mills, the slow savings OF
his fathers fifty years. He began at once to
set his house in order; he longed to build a
new one, but Mary's advice restrained him,
so he did his best with this; the cellar was
cleared and w~hitewashed with his own hands,
cleaned its one begrimed window and set
two more, so that it was sweet and light; the
house was scrubbed from one end to the
other; a bonfire was made of the old, dirty
comfortables and quilts, the kitchen re-
painted a soft yellow and new windows with
clear large glass set in place Of the dingy old
sashes; the woodhouse was filed with dry wood
and a good store of pine cones and chopped
bru1h and kindling. A new milk-room was
built a little way from the back door, over a
tiny brook that ran down the hill north OF
the house, and under the Slated floor kept
up a good draught Of fresh air; a covered
passage connected it with the kitchen, and a
door into the old milk-room made Of that a
convenient pantry, while the removal Of the
old one from the kitchen corner gave to tbs
apartment more room, air and light. A new
stove, with a set boiler, filed up the hearth
of the old fireplace, but further Improvement
Amasa left for Mary.
A different homecoming from his mothers
she had indeed. on Just such a spring day a
Wealthy came there. Tho kitchen shone
clean and bright, a bowl OF pink arbutus bios
SONS made its atmosphere freshly sweet. and
the fire was laid ready for her to light, the
shining tea-kettle. filled, and the pantry hello
such stores as Amasa's masculine knowledg,
OF household wants could suggest; flour
butter. eggs, sugar, all were in abund.
ance, and no feast OF royalty eve,
gave more pleasure to It's most honored guess
than the hot biscuit Mary made and baket
for their supper, the stewed dried apples, tn,
rich old cheese and the fragrant tea CAV,