The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1886-07-29

The dear old room with its windows
open to the west.
There we children would stand tip.
toe, and watch the cloud-ships sailing
over phantom seas to O far-off fairy
land, whittier we, too, would some day
voyage.
And the sheen of that wonderful sea
OF purple and gold cast a rosy CLEAN
upon the white walls, played at hide
and seek amid the lights and shadows
thrown by the artist, around Shaks-
peare and his friends, laughed at the
solemn clock on the mantel-piece, and
rested like an aureol upon mothers
brown hair.
1t was a homely room, for odds and
ends of former times had wonderful
knack of collecting there.
Lads and lassies were never banished
TO the nursery In those days, so the
carpet was always faded, oftentimes
patched, that the children might romp
over it as they pleased.
The floor was strewn with armless
rag-dolls, worn-out balls, blow-guns,
bits of Irvine, blue-back spelling-books,
and the other worldly possessions of
old-fashioned children.
The chairsl Well, no such chairs
can be found now in upholsterers' shops.
There was the capacious armchair.
with its worn green linen, which we
dubbed SLEEPY Hollow, and for which
there was always scrabble In fathers
absence. Mothers favorite seat was a
low rocking chair by the south window,
overlooking the beds of violets and
heartsease. Split-bottomed chairs,
with and without rockers, invited the
weary to seek rest. A home made
chintz-covered lounge sat in the corner,
while quaint little stools, gay with
patchwork covers, tried to hide them
selves in every nook. That room was
the scene of all the sad and bitter in
cidents of our home-life.
There baby Garry closed her blue
eyes to open them no more on a
mothers face. They arrayed her in
white, folded her fragile fingers upon
the last spring blossoms, and in the
night time we caught the rustling OF
the angels wings who had come TO
bear her away to the bosom of the dear
Christ.
1t was there that Mary brought her
lover, one summers day, when she
found that his heart was her home.
The tears gathered in mothers eyes
and dropped upon her clasped hands,
but she gave them her blessing and the
daughter went of to distant land.
Little children play around her knee
now, but she often writes with home
sick yearning for mothers room.
The autumn sunlight streamed In
with a golden glow, the evening we
heard that Charley, our soldier boy was
killed. Comrades wrote that he died
like brave man, and h praise was on
every tongue. But, alas what COM
fort can fame bring in the first sharp
hours of bereavement?
Bring my boy in here" said mother,
faint and fearless, and the pall-bearers
passed by the grand parlor and set
their burden down, where she had
wept on his neck at parting.
The home once gay with childish
voices is now peopled with ghosts.
Their garments rustic in dimly lighted
halls, their footsteps echo on untrod-
den stairways, their voices murmur in
deserted chambers, and when the even
ing freight flickers on the walls they
come trooping into mothers room, all,
who are gone, the dead and the living.
The dear old folks see these ghosts;
for often, when come in at the twilight
hour, mother will call me Charley, or
father will say he thought it was
Mary's step upon the threshold.
They, too, will soon be gone.
In the fair mansion TO which they
hasten will there be one room home
like and dear, where the erring chill
dren will gather and find comfort as
they did of yore in mothers room p
NeiC Orleans Times-Democrdt.