Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1890-11-28

the world to themselves, that | have one
foot in the grave and shall soon have the
rest of me there, with nothing but clods
for company. OH of course Thankful,
indeed"
Poor Miss Hannah, it will been seen, had
many reasons for discomfort; and this year
everything had gone against the grain in
an especial fashion. The drought had
burned her grass, and killed her flowers,
and dried her well, and obliged her to have
water fetched from the lake; the corn
fodder had not been properly cured, and
the cows milk was too bitter to drink; the
county commissioners had taken piece of
her front yard to widen the road, and when
she claimed damages had threatened her
with charges for betterment; the assessors,
too, had raised her taxes; her hens, now
when eggs were forty cents dozen, re-
fused to lay an egg. Absorbed as she was
in politics, her side had but lately suffered
an inglorious defeat, and she, herself, had
advanced on the polls like grenadier,
fully impressed with the sacramental
nature of voting, only to find that she had
not been polled and registered, and that if
she had been she had taken the wror
ticket of school committee men, She had
unfolded the clothes, which she made
thirty years ago, when it was impossible
to realize that she should ever need them,
and had found them mass of fuzzy ruin
from the moths; she had discovered, also,
by happening, on an old family Bible, that
she was year older than she had thought
she was, and so had year less of life be-
fore her. The old minister who, as long as
he was alive, she felt equal to her salvation
ut any time, had suddenly died and been
succeeded by little whipper snapper,
giving advice to his elders, and not cap
able of saving an unborn baby; and, to cap
the whole, some arbitrary idiot had gone
to fooling with the time and so confused
the universe, with dropping out quarter
of an hour and over, that the fowls of the
air themselves did not know when to get
up. This last seemed to her the crowning
outrage, the last tyranny of man. Once
bOiOAO1 shC hhCMF tnio " iduuY SldtCu-
ed eleven or twelve days out of the year in
the change from Old Style to New, and the
world had tamely submitted and the solar
spstem had gone on without knocking its
taken minutes; but the principle remained
the same, and for all she knew made the
comet possible. And Miss Hannah had
refused to accept it. She was not going
to have one inmate, let alone sixteen,
dropped out of her life at any ones order.
1t wasn't legal: it wasn't constitutional; it
wasn't decent; it wasn't right; it shouldn't
be done. Her father died at six o'clock.
She wasn't going TO say he died at sixteen
minutes and forty four seconds past six,
and nobody should make her. As free
American citizen she had right to her
own time, and she should take her right.
How in the world was anybody to read the
almanac for the next year, with all the
moons and tides and eclipses and things
put down at the wrong minutel And what
became of those sixteen lost minutes, any
way9 Miss Hannah knew nothing about
the fourth dimension of space; but she felt
now that there was a new quality in time,
and that these lost minutes, swallowed by
same mysterious gulf brought one in
black and grewsome way close by yawning
eternities, while yet tingling with life. The
issues OF time, as of life and death, she de-
clared, were not in our hands. She had
an idea that time was ordained in the first
chapter of Genesis. 1t made her blood run
cold, that fatefnl Sunday, to see the
minister in the pulpit set back the hands
and snap his watch together lightly at the
awful instant. No, she believed she had
always had her time by the sun, and she
always meant to have it so; she wasn't GO
ing to tell a falsehood every time she had
occasion to say what o'cock it was; and,
consequently, the clock in the kitchen re-
mained as it was, and consequently moth
ing had gone right for ten days, from
coming home at one time by the town
clock to find the potatoes boiled by her
own clock, and naturally spoiled to sitting
at another time an interminable period, a
true mdurais quartf here, with her
things on, waiting for the church bell to
ring, and, at yet another time, to returning
from Hilltown, VIII ere she had gone to draw
her dividend and find that the bank had
this year passed it, and, meeting no chaise
with Asenath Ann at the station, plodding
home through the rain and catching cold,
III -
yet The last funeral she went to was that
of a person who died of a cold. So, on the
whole, it is evident that Miss Hannah was
neither in a thankful or comfortable frame
her. and if able to reason away the small
grievances, yet utterly unable to reason
away or forgive the great grievance that
had robbie her of husbands love and
Silas Wb eeler. Of course her mood boded
no good to the adventurous hand which at
that moment rang the door-bell.
Miss Hannah took the ring, of course, for
that of the customary Thanksgiving beg
gar. "You may just go away from here"
she cried, finging wide the door before
j senath Ann could run to 1t. I've moth
ing for you, unless it's good rap with my
stickiv
''Why, Hannah Patient" exclaimed
great chcery voice. ''This is pretty greet
ing Don't you know met Have you for
gotten-do tell have you forgotten
Maria Som erbyW And Maria Somerby
stepped into. the hall and into the room
beyond, wht re the flashing of thelfrelight
revealed bt lxom, rosey woman of some
sixty Summe IS; not the sort of woman to
number her ears by Winters.
Mari Som erby! You don't mean to
say9"
"Well, no; n, II exactly, you know. For
/ married Joe | saltan- But this is what's
left of me-"