Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1886-05-13

OF q nduuC lOr Ille TeNelS VI oplllto VI vain
ness or murder spots that "would not OUT.
we saw only a large square room, furnished
with an air of gentility and taste that the
dust of twenty years could not hide, and in
strange contrast with the rest of the house.
The mystery had vanished, and with it
all that coarse hilarity. Even the rollick-
ing auctioneer stood mute, his coarse fea-
lures covered with a shade of thoughtful
sadness.
More than one lip quivered, and more
than one hard hand brushed away an OBJ
trusive tear, as this dusty old room called
up from its oblivious slumber some touch
ing memory of the past.
There was one old woman who, in the
midst of the hustle, had seemed busy with
her own thoughts, and more than once her
heart had seemed full as some little article
was sold. I had noticed her, and inquired
who she was; and they told me that her
husband had once been a drunkard worse
ever than Old Paul, but that he had sud-
denly reformed and became a respectable
man; that they had been miserably poor,
with a large family, but after his reforma-
ton became quite comfortable livers, and
all agreed that she was as good a woman
as lived this side OF heaven.
AS she entered the room her feelings quite
overcame her. The tears coursed each other
down the deep burrows on her cheeks.
eyes" at length she said, 'this is Nelly's
room, just as she left it. What a sweet
creature that was! She was an angel to me
in my poverty and suffering. Hardly a
day passed without her bringing over some
nice little things for poor little Willie, who
was sick so long. But he is well now, thank
God, and they are both in heaven together.
And then she had such a kind way to give
anything that it would make a brown crust
taste good. 1t was different times in this
house when she was in it. I always hoped
she would be able to say poor Paul, for she
could do anything with him but she saved
my poor husband, for he never drank adrop
after she talked to him--so like an angel as
she was just before she died. He could
never speak of her to the day of his death
without crying. She wasn't quite eighteen
when she went away. I always told him
she didn't belong in this world, but was
only here on a visit. What a time that
was the day she was buried! Everybody
seemed to feel just as if they had lost one of
their own family. I didn't see but our
children felt just as bad as when our Katy
died.
"Poor Willie cried till it seemed as if his
heart would break, though she told him but
the day before she left us-for poor child,
suffering as she was she seemed TO be
thinking of everybody but herself-to be
patient and ~good-natured, and not much to
mind if he did not suffer a good deal, and
he would see her again before long.
"It is enough to make one want to die
just to see the poor child again. But never
mind children I shall be with you soon."
AS she said this she looked steadily upward
and spoke in a confidential tone, as if she
saw those dear ones on the very border of
the spiritual world, waiting impatiently for
her to join them.
During this simple talk of the loving old
woman, if there was a dry eye in that
a-minute- before careless, jovial crowd,
mine were so blended that 1 could not see
it, and 1 felt convinced, more than 1 should
have been by volumes of p%anegyrics, that
from that dusty room more than twenty
years ago an angel had taken her home
ward flight, and she had since been per-
mitted, occasionally to fit across Old Paul's
degraded soul, if, perchance, she might yet
win him from the error Of his ways.
But how, thought I, could such a one
grow up under such circumstances and
with such surroundings? How? Why,
in the same way the most beautiful flower
can grow and shed its fragrance under the
cold droppings of the glacier.
The divine goodness is so prodigal-no,
not prodigal, but profuse-in the bestowal
of its gifts that, as there is no place in ma
ture without its beauty, so there is none
so morally waste and desolate that it does
not produce some flower of Paradise; there
is no thick mantling pool of depravity so
stagnating that its waters are not some
times stirred by the rustling of an angels
wings.-Henry T. Niles, IN Toledo Blade.