Morning journal and courier., 1885-07-17
A Happy Family.

W1Io Cd1uS HI duO SdW A1m
 'fWhy, Lot Skinner" she exclaimed. ''It I ever heard of the like! Lying down on that new sofa with your boots on, and oh, my goodnessl your head on that lace tidy that I had done up last week. You are the most inconsiderate man ever saw in my life." Mir. Skinner got up and his wife smoothed out the tidy and rearranged it. s'The idea of anybody putting 8 head on that tidy" said Mrs. Skinner, who had nc intention of using slang. "I did suppose you had more sense. {"
 '1 used to have" said MT. Skinner, good naturedly. "Ya-a-a-h. could take naI if I could find place to drop down Ya-a-a-h."
 'sYou had better read your Bible," said Mrs. Skinner. She was good, uncomforta- ble woman, so clean and neat and orderly that she made her family wretched with her domestic drill
 Something called Mrs Skinner off then and when she came back MT. Skinner was gone. She took book and sat down, when a thought struck her and she bounded from her chair as if it had been cannon bail. Yes, it was just she had feared; her bus band had gone up stairs and she found him stretched out in bed on top of white coun- terpane, his grizzly gray head sunk deep into white, starched pillow-sham with these words embroidered in the center: Sleep sweet, beloved!'' He was not only asleep, out snoring, with look of sweet content on ais wide open mouth
 EsL-o s S-k-i-n-n-er!"
 He got up in a manner that would have done credit to a gymnast, and staring at the fearful hollow in the bed and the wrinkleo dent in the pillow sham.
 ''I declare I forgot" he said, looking very foolish. ''Alice, haven't I a place where I can lay my head?"
 4a11 hid fa sharply. 'sThe idea of sober man going to bed with his boots on."
 ''Would you rather I'd get" cpd rather you'd get some common sense," she said. "H you must sleep in the day time, why, there's an old lounge down in the kitchen; no one will disturb you there. Or, I suppose" -ungraciously- y- 1T can take off the quilt and the shams and let you have your nap here, though it's wicked, that's what it is, to sleep Sun day. It's a bad example to set the chil dren, Lot, and you know it." "But am so sleepy" answered her hus band; "my head is heavy as lead and cannob keep my eyes open"
 eLaziness! sheer laziness!" said his wife in a sharp tone.
 Mr. Skinner went down stairs and dis. appeared. The last words his wife heard him say were that there was no rest for the weary, but she was picking up the embroi Q6ry on the mlSuS0O SQAn W1Cn plu duC did not heed him. When she went dowr stairs he was not in sight and she busisd | herself with getting dinner, which on Sun day took the place of supper, and thought no more about him.
 She was 8 distinguished woman; distir- guished in the town where she lived as being the cleanest housekeeperin in it. No girl could be found neat enough to live with her; all the notices in her house were to the effect that cleanliness is akin to godliness. She
 dusted every article of furniture in the house several times every day; she scrubbed so of
 ten that the children had chronic diphtheria;
 she scrubbed so clean that at last she
 scrubbed through the kitchen floor into the cellar and was nearly lost to the community.
 It was a perpetual warfare between her and dirt. The front parlor was never opened to the family, and although MT. Skinner had furnished it he had never sat down in it a moment since. Its air was that of a tomb. After it had been opened to company for an afternoon the children went around with hannels about their throats and drank ginger tea. It was the handsomest parlor in the community, too, and had the family pictures and their marriage certificates framed and hung up there. When dinner was ready-and it was good dinner too, for Mrs Skinner was a notable cook-she asked the children where their father was. They did not know. This seemed strange; she questioned them close ly, but they had not seen which way he went when he passed through the room. "Didn't he say where he was going?o she l asked, wonderingly, for MT. Skinner never
 went out on Sundays without his family. ttHe said he was going where he'd have more peace," said little Harry Skinner. "Well, we won't wait dinner for him;'' said l his wife, and they sat down to eat. But spell seemed to have fallen upon them, and when the dinner was over and cleared away and they were in the sitting
 room with their books. there was 8 sense ot dreary loss, and Mrs. Skinner sat with the Bible open on her lap and wondered why he | had gone out and remembered that he looked queer.
 It was in consonance with her habits of | living that she got up in the middle of these speculations to catch wandering and bela | ted fly and induce him to be annihilated. "Strange!" she said, as it grew dark, "I'll I take the children and go down to his moth er's and see if he is there, and if he is, I'll I just give him piece of my mind" But he was not there, and his mother said l Lot had looked badly the last time she saw | him, and she thought he seemed worried hoped it wasn't business troubles. No, it wasn't business troubles; Mrs. Skin ner knew that, and she began to wonder ii she had cleaned her husband out of his l mind. It came over her with sudden force l that she had been in the habit of driving | him from pillar to post at railroad speed and at the end of a broom or dust brush. He actually found no rest for the sole of his foot | in his own house. It might have worked | upon his nervous system until he had become ! suddenly insane. Horrible thought! Ht might have committed suicide.
 l She hurried home with the children. Al | was gloom She went to his bureau to look ! for his razor. It was the only firearms ht | possessed-it was gonei Then Mrs. Skinner | broke down and cried, and the childreI 1 cried and it was, indeed, scene of desola | tion, when suddenly the door of that horri | ble parlor opened, and an apparition-no, il was MT. Skinner himself-stood before them | looking very sheepish.
 | q overslept myself D he said, in meek | apologetic tone, looking at the clock. 1 tI should say you did, answered his wife 1 s'and the dinner is all eaten up, but I'll hl | you up something nice," and she went out taking the children with her.
 How much of it Mir. Skinner ever knew il ! is impossible to say, but there was an imme diate and satisfactory change that at frs amazed and then delighted him. He could l lie down anywhere when he was tired, anc | his wife would throw a shawl over him and | leave him in peace. He has even been seer | to lie down on the sofa in the parlor where | he took his Rip Van Wrinkle sleep, and no | body disturbed him. Mrs. Skinner was al l heart a woman of sense, and when she real l ized that one hair of that grizzly gray heac was worth more than all the pillow shams il the world to her she put the last one away il l the company of demented assortment O superfuous tidies. And they are, really ana truly, and not in any geological sense,
 ''happy family" now.
 A tramp got aboard the engine of the u
 train leaving Norwalk at 1:25 a. m. Wednes | day morning. A brakeman put him of
 and drawing pistol he shot at the brake man. The shot missed, but the ball wen
 through window of the forward car. Tn
 tramp escaped.
 A Hartford investor in an out-of-tow
 savings bank, where interest is demanded il
 advance, to the disgust of those having bnsi
 ness with the institution, writes to the locs
 paper of Hartford institution as follows
 "Our Pratt street Savings bank, one of tn
 most secure in the State, has only demande
 five per cent. on good safe mortgage fo
 time, and not ever in advance I believe i
 this latter custom it stands alone in th
 State n-Hartford Courant.