The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1885-11-04
A LITTLE FAMILY AFFAIR.


When Eden was electrified by the ap.
pearance upon walls and fences of a
placard announcing that the "Cecilia
Club" would give a concert at Haver-
ford (six miles away, and Saul Kit
tredge was the "basso profondo."
West Eden was far, very far, from the
madding crowd, and the entertainments
that came within its range were wont to
be of the burnt cork variety. They
savored Of the ungodlY, and of very
humble social sphere. And Saul was
Deacon Kittredges only son, and had
been expected to follow in his fathers
footsteps-to be r deacon of the church.
president of the Eden bank, postmaster
of West Eden (the postmastership had
descended 10 the deacon from his father
and grandfather undistuIbed by political
changes, and the deacon regarded it as
respectable heirloom) and for wife he
was to take to himself Mary Willett, the
minister's daughter.
All these plans were waiting for the
baby Saul when he opened his aston
ished blinking black eyes upon the
troublesome world Alas! Almost
from the day of their opening the black
eyes took quite different views of life.
Before their owner was five he had set
little Mary Willett down hard in q mud
pie, and run of to play with the disre-
putable children on 'the Flats"
''ile's alwers been walkin' the down.
ward path, !" said Deacon Peters (of the
other church) as he stopped for q friendly
chat at the undertaker's door on the day
when the placards appeared. "To
think of his thrashin' the schoolmaster
who was disciplin' Tidy Slocomb, one
of them Flats children, and then runnin'
away with circus when he want
but sixteenl And then he left college
against his fathers will aud the first thing
they knew he was playactin' in theatre
Aud he's courtin' Tidy Slocomb, and
means to marry her. They say he prom
ised his mother he'd give up the play
actin, but don't know but this is Jest
as bad. His father has cast him off and
forbid him the house, but he's terribly
broke down by it. Well, he's been
prosperous man, Deacon Kittredge has.
and you can't expect to fly in the face of
Proverdunce every way"
"Saul want never what you could
call godly given" said Job Fisher, the
undertaken. a fat and jovial man, who
was at work upon willow baby car
riage. cradles and baby carriages being
cheerfully mingled with the legitimate
products of his craft all over his shop.
''But he always seemed TO me like
skittish colt; there want nothin' really
wicked about him."
"rm afraid Saul never had any real
izin' sense of solum things" said the
deacon. ''But there is Deacon Kit
tredge readin' one of the bills; it is GER
tainly q time to offer Christian sym
pathy."
sit amt playactin'," said the under
taker to himself as the deacon departed,
'if basso profundo does sound like
swearing, and somehow puts you in
mind OF the be lace; and if nobody
else don't, Mari I'll go over to hear
Saul sing"
When Deacon Kittredge saw the dea-
con of the other church coming toward
him he hurried away ''I can't talk
about it--no, / can't never talk about it
to anybody but the Lord and Layiny,"
he murmured TO himself.
The postoifice was an excresence upon
the side of the large low farmhouse
which Deacon Kittredges grandfather
had built; an ornamental excrescence,
for West Eden was not, after all, so far
from the madding crowd but that hints
of the new styles of architecture reached
it, and the postoffice was an aspiring
work box bedaubed with fiendsh reds
and yellows, of which the solid. respect
able old house looked thoroughly
ashamed. The family stting-room had
been the postoffice, and the new post
Office opened out of it; otherwise she
should have died of homesickness after
it was built, Mrs. Kittredge declared.
Mrs. Kittredge had become lame by
reason Of chronic rheumatism, and was
unable to get about much, aud if it had
not been for the posto fice she couldn't,
as she often declared, have "kept up so
with what was goin' on. 4"
She knew whom everybody's letters
were from; she sometimes walked the
deacon in the dead of night with shrewd
guesses as to their contents; and, never
theless, she had hailed with delight the
advent of postal cards.
OF late the deacon had been ponder
ing deeply the reasons why such judg-
ment should have come upon him in the
person Of his only son, and the suspicion
had struck him like sudden blow that
Laviny was slight minded" "
She certainly had not seemed so in her
youth; she had been reckoned most
discreet and proper wife for an incipient
deacon. Her love Of gossip had been
latent until she had passed middle age,
but he could SEQ that it now increased
constantly.