The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1886-05-15

| the closet shelf in her room. The next
March grandmother went up to Min-
nesota to spend the summer with her
youngest daughter.
you boys pack that jar carefully
now," she said, as she came slowly
down stairs with the clumsy thing in
her hands and set it down carefully on
the feather-bed. II wouldn't have that
jar broken for good deal. They don't
make such jars nowadays, and this
ones full Of" But at that some
one called grandmother and the sem
tence was never ended. JEFF and l tried
hard to get peep into the jar that time,
but there was a stone lid under the white
cloth and we dared not remove the cloth.
My brothers and sisters came out, and
we all stood around the jar. We
''hefted" its weight, we smelled of it,
rolled it over, we shook it, we thumped
its sides.
JEFF had creative mind, and was al
ways suggesting things the rest of us
never would have thought of. This
time he appalled, us all by saying:
"You don't suppose grandmother has
gone and had grandfather cremated
on the sly, and has him in this jarp"
Jeff Barker!' cried sister Kate, as
she took her nose away from the top of
the jar.
don't you ever say such awful
things again. cried sister Mary; cit
makes me sick to think of it!''
'.Such things have been done,'' said
JEFF, stoutly, "and 1 wouldn't be bit
survr;caJ 20 y, t.
But Mary and Kate had fled from the
room, and jeff threw himself down on
the feather-bed and laughed.
One of our cousins in Minnesota
wrote to me and asked:
do you know what grandm other has in
that black jar? Ma says she has no idea
wrote and asked us If grandma had brought
the jar here"
jeff and 1 and our two older sisters
were along in our teens now, but our
interest in that jar did not abate in the
least.
..It's just one of grandma's whims,"
said mother one evening. "You know
grandma is old and childish, as most
people of her age are apt to be. / am
sure l don't care how many old jars
she has," For five years we discussed
the probable contents of that jar, which
came and went with grandmother in
all her journeyings to and fro. She
had eight children, all married, and
living in different States, and she Wis
tied all of her children in those five
years, and the jar went with her.
Her box was delayed for two months
once on Western railroad line, and
she wrote to my mother:
my box is not here yet. and am having
to sleep on one of them nasty hairmat-
without that jar. do hope nothing will
happen to II"
After that we felt more confident than
ever that the jar contained hidden
teasures, and most of our thirty-hve
cousins were also of this opinion. They
had all seen the jar-the outside of it
only. Some of us, great boys and girls
in our teens, had lain awake nights
wondering what could be in that jar,
but / am glad to remember, now that
we are all men and women, that we
had too much veneration for grand
mother, and too much respect for our
selves, to pry into her secret, if secret
it was, by opening the jar. Even the
Murray cousin who ''nearly broke his
head" falling from grandma's closet
shelf, Indignantly denied that he had
any idea of opening the jar. He said
he simply intended to "shake 1T and
smell of it." and he felt that his tum-
BILE was just punishment for even this
lack of respect to grandmother. At
the end of the five years, grandmother
was visiting in Kansas. My brothers.
and sisters and l we're sitting around
the fire one evening in November,
talking about the jar and wishing it
and grandma were both in our home
again. We were now all firm in the
conviction that the jar contained val
uables that might be ours some day If
we were good enough to deserve them.
Our cousins all shared this belief. We
had heard of stranger things, and
grandfather and grandmother had both
been noted for their eccentricities.
While we were sitting around the fire,
father came home from town with q
a letter for me, 1t was from one of my
Kansas cousins. The letter was long
and ''newsy," and added to it was this
aggravating and exciting postscript:
"Grandmother's black jar fell down and
broke all to pieces to-day. We cousins are
all to share it's contents eqnally, just as we
goodbye"
We were so excited that we could not
sleep that night, and were fairly fu-
rious with Cousin Ben for ending his
letter so abruptly. Even father and
mother were interested now, and I sat
down and wrote to Ben to write Sim
mediately at once. and tell us what the
jar contained. JEFF and / feared that
there was conspiracy on foot to rob
us of our rightful share of the jars con-
tents, and there were other cousins who
lay awake that night thinking the same
thing, for Ben had sent postals or let
tiers with postscrips to all the other
cousins, telling them what he had told