Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-12-26
TT TELLS A TALE OF WOE.
A FIVE LINE ITEM IN WHICH is
CONCEALED A SERMON.

| Heavy Burdens of the Honest Poor That
Men Might Tighten If They wouId-One
More Instance Where the Load Was Too
Much for the Weak and TotterIng Form.
Mrs. Cynthia Jones. aged go, of Jack
son, Mich, committed suicide yesterday
by taking morphine. She had tried to
get employment, but in vain. After
spending her last cent and pawning most
of her clothes she took her own life"
The above is an item which went the
rounds of the press. A brief, succinct
mention of pitiful tragedy. The pa
pers-some of them-have been agitating
the esubject of better pay for women work
ers. Strange, not one of them has seemed
to notice the sublime text furnished them
by the death of this poor, struggling
woman.
THE SOUND OF BELLS
After she had spent her last cent
One can easily imagine the gradual
diminution of her little whole. How
carefully the precious nickles would be
expended, while she grew weaker and
weaker because she dared spend but a
few cents. and they got SO little food.
Sometimes the mists of famine would
come before her poor old eyes, and the
earth seem to tremble beneath her tired
feet. A heavy pain born of hunger and
despair always in her head, and in her
aged ears the sounds of continuous bells
Sometimes she thought, perhaps, they
were wedding bells, her own marriage
peal-for in the long ago she had Joined
her fate to another's. He, too. like all
the friends of her youth, had passed into
the beyond Those bells then-ah. were
they not funeral bells after all?
And think the little gold band on
her shriveled finger was the last thing
she tremblingly laid on the pawnbrok-
ers counter Tried in vain to get EN-.
| ployment." Yes, she was an old woman,
no longer fair of face or swift of foot.
Often her eyes would be din and her
hands shake. Perhaps her work would
be done awry, and at best slowly and
imperfectly. Who wants an old womans S
aimless labors? None, it appears.
So the poor, broken. honest life
dragged on, each day but to usher in
new disappointments.
Each time the sun peeped in through
| her window he saw her strength dimin-
| ished, her scanty clothes still scantier,
and the burden of 4 wretched existence
grown vet heavier. No doubt she had
| iostled against plethoric purses in her
feeble walks in search of employment,
but the men whose pockets bulged with
coin never saw the piteous, despairing
look in those hungry eyes. She, poor
soul, SO the brief record reads, tried only
to get work; she did not beg, or steal, or
ask charity from any institution.
Perhaps some remnant of her youthful
pride forbade mendicancy. At last, when
the sun, that shines unmoved and un-
sympathetic upon joy and sorrow alike,
looked upon her penniless and alone
then she opened the gates for herself,
and, with plea for pardon, passed into
the great unknowable.
STUDY IN soMBER TINTS.
The ways of the world and of mar
had been too hard for her.
Out of this stagnant pool of despair
what strangely pathetic strain rises
and mingles with the worlds music.
That the hard hearted and worldly wise
would but hear it and listen to its sound!
1t is like that of which Longfellow says
so beautifully:
| Mark how amid the chorus of a hundred
voices and hundred instruments flutes, and
| drums, and trumpets-thiS unreal shout and
whirlwind of the vexed air. you can so clearly
distinguish the melancholy vibration of single
string touched by the hnger-a mournful, sob
bing sound. All this Is indeed human life, where
| in the rushing, noisy crowd and the sounds of
gladness, and thousand commingling emotions,
distinctly audible to the of thought, are the
pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart
touched by an invisible hand.
This is only little study in somber
tints, mayhap. Some will think it too
small, too Insignificant to take any no
tice of. Pictures often teach the world
its greatest lessons, they admit, but this
is too tiny an etching to be hung in the
galleries of memory. 1t may be so, but
the fault lies with the artist, not the
study, for, rightly duplicated, it is
picture to bring shame even to those in
cased in the stoutest armor Of selfish
ness, impervious alike to gaunt poverty
and hollow eyed sorrow.
Poor Cynthia Jones has found rest in
the potter's field. What filter dirge for
the broken life could be found than
Joaquin Miller's words:
Is it worth while that We jostle brother,
Bearing his load on this rough road of life?
Is it worth while that we jeer at each other,
In blackness Of heart that we war to the knife:
God pity us all in our pitiful strife
Were it not well, in his brief little journey,
On over the isthmus, down into the tide,
We give him fish instead of serpent,
Ere folding the hands to be and abide
Forever and aye in dust at his side2
Chicago Times.