Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-12-14

about, and when and lillian the carpeu
ter and his man, having stripped the grea
bed of its drapery, proceeded to take tC
pieces the panels of the carved oak canopy
Mrs. Barrett, the old housekeeper, stood
wiping her honest eyes and bewailing my
impiety.
"Don't zee do it, Squire, don't zee do it
You may come to know the want of a good
feather bed to die in yet Such bed as
it's been for lyings in and layings out, and
I'd hoped to ha' seen you laid in 1t, like
your poor father before youl"
What Mrs. Barrett's expectation of life
may have been 1 know not, but she was
sixty-fve and l twenty-four years of age
MY good Barrett, | have determined
that this bed shall utterly perish. We
will not contribute one more corpse to its
greedy NAV. But if it be its feathers that
you bewail, you are welcome to its pillows
to line your nest with, but the bed Itself
must perish"
"What, Squire. the bed that your great
uncle Godfrey was found dead III, when
he'd gone up stairs over night as well and
as hearty as man ever was, and making
his ungodly jokes, the Lord forgive him
The very bed as your grandfather lay in
two whole years before he died, and all
the house heard his groans, and where
your Aunt Hester was laid with the water
drip, drip, from every limb, just as they
brought her in drowned from the brook p
eyes, my good Barrett, because of these
very things the bed must perish"
Then Gillian began, as he took off his
paper cap and wiped his brow:
''If it's as the bed don't seem material
like to sleep in after so many o your kin
has laid stiff and stark in it, won't you sell
it, Squire, to them as knows nothing of its
ways? That there panel with the berried
ivy on it is deal too pretty a bit Of cary
ing to make frewood on"
''No, Gillian, 1 shall not sell it, The
man who would take money for the bed
his ancestors died in would sell their bones
to make knife handles of. Besides, the
bed has existed long enough; it has served
my family to die in for ten generations.
It's my own property, Gillian; mayn't do
what | will with nay own?"
"Aye, surely, Squire; there's no law to
hinder a man making any fool of hisself as
he pleases VII what's his own. But sides
with the chap as made the bedstead, and [
shouldn't like to think as in matter O
two or three hundred years bit O my
work 'ud be chopped up for firing"
"Be under no uneasiness Gillian; you
and l do not live in an age that produces
lasting work. Our glue-and-tintack car
pentry is not done with a view to poster
ity"
well, Squire" continued Gillian, re-
turning to his first idea, ''if you won't sell
the bedstead, whole or piecemeal, you
might give me them panels with the
carved ivy on 'em. l could find you some
bits O wood as 'ud burn brighter and bet
ter"
81 don't mind giving you the old ivy
carving, Gillian, but only on condition
that l shall never see anything more of it,
in any shape or form"
'That's easy promised, Sir, and thank
you kindly. Fll make it up into some
thing as'll surprise itself"
Having weakly consented to his request,
I saw him lay aside two or three beautiful
panels, richly carved with branches of ber-
ried ivy, as salvage from the general
wreck. If the gloomy horrors of the old
bed had not eaten into my very heart, l
could never have lent a hand at such a
work of destruction. | should at least
have saved the footboard with its carving
in high relief of Adam and Eve under the
tree, man-headed serpent twining round
the trunk, and the branches bending be-
meath their load of fruit. But l could not
look at it without thinking of the dying
ewes that had fixed their faded gaze on it,
so my ak and saw made havoc of work
of art. When the floor was Uttered over
with billets of wood, and the men were
wiping their hot faces, l felt a strange
lightness of heart, a comfortable sense of
work postponed at length happily accom-
plished.
"Gillam," I said, "there was timber
enough in that huge thing to build a man
of-war, drapery to make her sails, and
rope enough for all her rigging"
''Aye, there was Almost" and, hastily
throwing his tools into his basket, he
added, sarcastically l thought, "There'll
be nothing else l can help you to pull
down or to smash up, Squire ?"
| soon found that my destructive toll
had benefited me in more ways than one.
Not only had it freed me from an intoler-
able oppression of spirit, but it established
for me in the neighborhood a reputation
for eccentricity, which / maintained after
ward at the smallest cost and found of
great service The carrying cut of my
long cherished purpose was regarded as
evidence of a wild and lawless disposition,
bordering on mental arrangement Night
after night at the ale-house Gillian re-
counted to breathless audience the story
of the scene of destruction at which he had
assisted professionally, and it grew in the
telling till, without the slightest intention
of lying, he added that the Squire's IA ge
against the old place was such that he had
been obliged to menace him with the
screw-driver to keep him from tearing
down the mautelshelf and wainscot.
I was evidently man whom it was not
wise to thwart or contradict. Ny servants
few at my least word with an alacrity
had not before observed. My bidding was
promptly done. my orders were not dis
puted, and whatever l said was agreed to
with servilitv. While enjoying the sweets
of mental health, as my neighbors voted
me on such insufficient grounds on the
borderland of insanity, l availed myself Of
the liberty it gave me to speak and act as
I chose. Their hasty judgment had made
me free of the wide domain of conduct
There was nothing I could do, however ex.
travagant, but was clearly Swallowed forth
in the destruction of the ancestral OAK
bed.
1 began to grow lonely in Walford
Grange. Ny good Barrett died suddenly
and in my solitude l wanted someone tC
sit and talk with me in the long evenings
for even the bright wood FIRE Pickering on
the hearth could not satisfy all nay desire;
for cheerful companionship. I should MOI
have wished to marry if I had had {
brother to live with me, to share my
thoughts and occupations, and who woult
himself marry and preserve the name. Bu
was the last of the family, and l did mo-
mean to let an ancient race die out.
I began seriously to think of marrying
though whom l had not an idea, for so far
had not seen the woman l shoald c2re to
marry, nor could L suppose that anyone
looked with an eye of favor upon me. Blu