Milford chronicle., 1885-03-13

was taken OH ms app6tlte, NO plaCt
like home for me r.
No reply. He had hardly heard bis
wife's voice since breakfast. Eyine
her somewhat closely, he noted how
haggard she was. She used to be ''real
Jolly" about her work, singing, chatting
laughing-the life of the house. He
reditary custom not Withholding the
utterance of disagreeable truths, he
spoke as he thought:
81 say, old lady, do yOu know you're
Rgin' fast The day o your good looks
is bout gone by. Seems to me never
see you look more peekin' nor what you
do tonight"
Still no answer. But the sunken eyes
flashed out a red spark, and the thin
jaws were more closely clenched, he
might have thought she had not heard
him. Perhaps she was tired, and in
need of his sympathy. ''Mari' was a
master-hand to work, and had ought to
have an encouragin' word now n then. "
He rendered it:
"Clean tuckered ont, b'ain't you
That's the way with you women-al-
ways on the strain. 'Tain't worth
while fur to kill yourself !"
"Opinions differ I"
She snapped at him angrily; her eyes
glowed with liquid fire, her complexion
was of a livid sallowness. Luke
widened his round blue eyes, but asked
no explanations. Something had upset
mother. She would come around sooner
for being let alone. Having eaten
heartily, he inclined to physical, not
mental, rumination. The evening
closing in still and sultry, he smoked his
pipe under the cherry tree ten steps or
so from the house. The katydids were
exchanging testy contradictions in the
boughs; bullfrogs beloved in the creek
beyond the lowlands; overhead winked
the stars, languid with the breathless
heat of the night. On a clump Of
lilacs, within easy eye-range of the
placid smoker, lay the irregular refec-
tion of the lighted kitchen window. His
habit was to 60 in when that went out,
this being the token that household
"chores" were done for that day. As
the kitchen clock struck eight, the
bushes were black; he knocked the
ashes from his pipe, and stretched his
arms in a comfortable yaWn:
''I guess I'll turn in !"
The farmstead was all gloom but for
splinters of light falling between the
stats of the parlor blinds.
'S'pose Mari is still potterin' round
with her cleanin' /" grinned the hus-
band GLOW she dooz love work p
Had he opened the restroom door,
instead of going directly upstairs, even
bis bovine Imagination would have been
excited. An ironing-table stood in the
middle of the floor, spread with a dark
cover. On this Mrs. Burney was ar
ranging a long white gown, smooth and
straight. She drew the skirt to its ut
most length, folded the sleeves across
the bosom in awful likeness to the
sheeted dead. Last of all, she laid on
the bosom of the shroud the great
family Bible, open. These passages
were bracketed heavily in ink:
"When I lie down, say, when
shall 1 arise, and the night be gomez
and 1 am full of tossings to and fro
unto the dawning of the day.
"Oh, remember that my life is wind I;
mine eye shall no more see good.
$50 that my soul chooseth strangling,
and death rather than my life.
81 loathe it would not live alWay.
Let me alone, for my days are vanityl"
The livid face looked steadfastly for
one moment on burial-robe and Book.
"Lord r. The thin cry cut the air like
a rapier. "You know 1 can't bear it any
longer how tired out am how it is
better for them all I should be out of
the way!"
When she left the house, she locked
the kitchen door and hid the key under
the porch mat, where the young people
would look for it on their return. Then
she walked across the meadow, the lush
grass and bobbing clover-tops, drenched
with dew, soaking her stockings and
dragging the purple calico gown. The
instinct Of neatness took offence even at
this hour.
"'Twould have been drier along the
road, she muttered. "But was in q
hurry" ..
On the margin of the creek she knelt
down.
'Iiord forgive me if I am doing
wrong. But y0u know how it is.
Amen |"
She took off collar, cuffs and shoes,
put them on a stone. and laid herself for
the last sleep, face downward, in the
shallow water.
God rest such distraught souls and ex-
hausted bodies for their kind and the
age have little mercy upon them =
Christian Union.