The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-06-18

should compel her to marry reason was
q cold n sordid guide, and perish the
thought of money! It takes years of
pain mi the pangs of poverty to teach a
woman OF this sort that money is at least
a good thing to have in the house, and no
more to be despised han any other
means OF comfort and health. Tina never
paused to consider how hopeless and
helpless she would be without her fathers
liberal hand and goodly purse, and being
to a certain extent vitality right and hon
est IN her theory, she carried it to stern
helghts, and made it dominant in her
dreams, intending with all her simple
soul TO marry only the man she should
love suddenly and Enthusiastically, and
hoping almost to prayer that the coming
god might be some i~mpecunious poet, or
a great politician, poor because Of his in
corruptlble honestly Poor Tina! as if
poets and politicians both were not the
most undesirable of their sex as husbands!
or as If she were fitted to fill the heart
and light the hearth of any poor IAN
she, who knew no more how to broil a
steak, boil a potato, or make a loaf of
bread than to calculate the orbit of a
comet or square the circle!
But, as time went on, Tina found to her
own disgust that she did not fall in love
with anybody. Not one youth from the
studious crowd nor one from behind any
counter really stirred her sleeping heart,
she wanted d~readfully to fall in love, but
there seemed always to be some obstacle
on the edge of that pleasant p~recipice.
One youth smoked; she could not abide
that. Another wore a plaid velvet vest
ugh! Still another had red hair aud weak
eyes; Of course he was insufferable. But
time would fail me to recount the failings
of these young men. Few of them ar
rived so far as to offer themselves, for as
soon as the "object" perceived they
were really, to use their own word,
"spooney about her, she was filed with
uncomfortable disgust for the poor crea-
lures, and, with the charming frankness
of a dreaming girl, took no pains what
ever to conceal it. Men are not always
blind, even in love, and the perceptive
share of Tina's lovers slid back quietly
into their own places. A few of the
obtuser sort went ION to glory or the
grave" and were received with open
establishment, and rejected with equally
open Indifference. Sometimes she shed a
few tears when a young man became
very wretched, and tore his hair a little,
or limited darkly at suicide; sometimes
she reproached herself in her secret heart
natures; but, on the whole, she was
tolerably comfortable about it, as she
ought to have been, for even the most
detected adorer never drowned himself or
plunged into reckless dissipation on her
account, and some were actually known
in after years to speak of her as that
"pretty little goose I used to know in
Canterbury" Men ere so per idiousl
It was Clementine's custom every year
to make a visit to her grandfather Hyde
in Coventry. She generally chose the
season of college vacation in sunni er to
do this duty, as Canterbury was really
dull then, and Coventry as pleasant as
could be. Grandfather Hyde's great old
fashioned house was spotless ard speck-
less all the year, but it might be cold in
winter; in July and August it was cool
and sweet and airy. Aunt Nabby, Squire
Hyde's sister. was a mighty housekeeper;
and when you had eaten her bread and
butter and cottage cheese and sponge
cake, you might laugh at Soyer and Ude
and Blot, and smile with scorn at the
rapier-skewered shadow of Vatel, who
died for want of a turbot. He would
have died of envy had he tasted Aunt
Nabby's chicken pot-pie. To make the
dainty bits of fowl so savorv, the gravy
so rich and ticklesome to the palate, the
crust so light, so golden brown. so faky
and u%nsodden, all in the homely circum-
ference of an iron pot, this required
| rroni,,c N0h1Iu in NoIop4r- could
make such pot-pie. Cl@ment,ne did not
want to; well as she liked it NJ emula-
tive fury was klndled in her breast. She
enjoyed her food unusually at g~r4ndpa's,
but she laid it to the air of the hills; and
this Disguised Aunt Nabby, for she was
prouder of her cooking than a poet of his
rhymes, and knew full we'll that Coventry
was scarce two hundred feet higher above
the sea level than Canterbury itself,
though the latter lay in a rich a~lluvial
valley, and Coventry on a sandy plain.
But, withal, Aunt Nabby loved the
pretty, pale girl in her own curt and
abrupt fashion. She fed her with all sorts
Of dainty cakes, and let her lie in bed
mornings as long as she liked, though
with much grumbling and growing be
low stairs about the ~degeneracy of mod
ern women.
Coventry was a very old town. It's
single wide street had on either side large
old: fashioned houses that had descended
from generation to generation; and be-
ing built when labor and timber were
cheap and builders honest, the goodly
beams endured well, and the hereditary
owners took a certain pride in keeping
them in repair.
There were old people in most of them
now. The youthful focks were scattered
to other pastures-the girls married
abroad, the young men pursuing their
own ends in the distant West or the
great cities. Yet every year the children
-some of them-returned to the nest.
The windows of dark spare rooms we've
opened wide to sun and air, the parlor
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