The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-05-05
SAINT JONES.
Youths Companion.

V paralyzed, but otherwise strong and well. Most of the time during that seventeen years she had spent in an easy chair within the four walls of one room.
 But no one who knew her ever thought ot her as unhappy. To go into her presence was like going into the sunshine. Her face was saint like, lovely, yet with an expression born of suffering. Her manners were gentle and winning, her noble woman's heart, with its warm sympathy, was evident in all she said or did. Every body loved Saint Jones.
 Mothers went to her for counsel if their little ones were ailing, or if there was unhappiness in the family circle; for Miss Jones could tell them what to do. Housewives went to her when pickling and preserving time came, for she knew and remembered so many valuable recipes, and was so glad and ready 10 tell them and help over the puzzling places with her advice. Young girls came to her for sympathy in their love affairs and perplexities, and her loving womanly words have soothed many heart ache, and saved more than one young girl from going wrong.
 The boys of the village, too, were ar- dent friends of the crippled woman. She understood the rules of base ball, foot ball, and other boyish games as we'll as any one. She made an effort to do it, she read and studied books and papers for the purpose.
 Often the boys left some disputed point say ing, "We'll get Saint Jones to decide it." and they always found her ready to give them fair hearing, and then with nice tact and gentle words to point out the right course and ex- plain the doubtful points.
 Saint Jones never seemed to think of self, but always of others. If it was another's joy, she shared it; if it was grief, she soothed and comforted. No wonder she was loved, for she lov- ed everybody, rich and poor,good and bad.
 "Oh, it's easy for Saint Jones to be good, she was born saint" some one answered, when asked about her char acter.
 "Don't you feel as if you would like to fly away" one of her girl friends asked her one beautiful June morning.
 "What use, my dear," she smiled, "when my wings are clipped? These lovely roses you have just brought me are like the glorious morning. They give me a picture of the glory out side," and then inhaling their fra grance, she added, "but to go into the fields again and see the waving grass with the daisies and buttercups would be like paradise regained," and she sighed, and then laughed her low, sweet laugh, and began talking of the young girls school.
 Seventeen years before Saint Jones had been happy, light hearted girl. Fortune had smiled on her pathway 1; she was beautiful, full of health and merriment, an acknowledged belle, imperious and selfish, the pride of fond parents, for she was an only child. She was promised in marriage to a young lawyer, and the wedding day was set. Many of the village maidens looked half enviously on the good fortune of Amelia Jones. No one called her Saint Jones, then. The poor girl had not yet suffered her pur- ification.
 One midwinter evening there was a merry sleighing party. Amelia rode with the young lawyer. At a turn in the road his horse became fright ened and manageable. The sleigh was overturned, and both its occu- pants were thrown out.
 When her friends went to Amelia, anxiously inquiring if she were hurt, she smiled up at them rather faintly and replied, "No, guess Pm not hurt much of any. My back feels funny, and can't seem to rise up."
 That was the beginning. For the next two years she lay prostrate on her bed, suffering acutely much oi the time. In less than year the doc tors had said she would always be paralyzed, and could never walk again. When they told her, she could not bear to have it so. An! those were days of bitterness and rebellion against fate. A year from the date oi her expected marriage, and thirteen months after the accident, she offered the young lawyer his liberty, and h. accepted it not unwillingly.
 During these days of trial the pcol child cried, she gave way to fits o anger rebelling at cruel fate, ther came days of agonizing despair.
 70, mother, can't bear it, I can't