The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1891-06-20
TIMELY TOPICS
Thoughtfully Discussed For Careful
Readers.

onootu HIS tilioN, Wucu us liit-
blood gushed from his lips. She sent
her only messenger for physician,
but before he came she was sitting
by dead body, her hands holding
hands that were cold. She was as if
turned to stone, but when the awful
realization came she thought she
could not bear it, that her brain
would not endure the strain. But
she had a friend who was dying, and
she went from her husbands grave
to that friends bedside. She was
leaving five little children that were
yet scarcely out of baby hood, and
she had no father, mother, brother
or sister to watch over them. This
sorrowing woman said that while
listening to the broken words and
gasping breath of her dying friend,
and seeing the anxiety that pursued
her even to her last minute of life,
she realized that there was trouble
greater than hers, and it might be a
comfort still to live if she could
Tighten it. *x*
1t is equally true that the small
worries of life seem less trying when
brought into comparison with some
one else's greater or more numerous
difficulties.
/ remember of thinking one night
as | sat in my cheerful room with
bright Highland easy chair, with con
venient table having books, papers,
magazines and writing material up
on it, with my dog lying upon the
rug and nesting his head close to
mel was thinking of what lone
ly place this world is, and what a
lonely person am in it. l had read
and written until hands and brain
were tired, had been listening to
the wind shaking the doors and rust
ling the leaves, to the earnest voices
of men as they passed beneath my
windows, to the echoes of some light
laugh that the night air bore me,
and the world seemed full of compan-
ionship for all save me-
had dream that night that made
me ashamed to remember my ingrat.
itude for the cheer and comfort that
surrounded me. The dream left with
me such vivid picture that it seems
a part Of my waking experience.
| thought it was in early winter
time, before the SHOWS had come,
while yet the winds were gathering
the brown, dead leaves and piling
them in heaps. / saw half-ruined
house standing on wild mountain
side. The trees had been cut away
from about it years before, but there
was an underground of scrubby oaks,
and a tangle of briars and high,
coarse grass. The fence had fallen
from about the yard, and above and
below and around stretched the lone
ly woods Of the mountains. The
house itself had fallen into decay.
The roof was partially gone, and the
moss grew thick on the shingles
that remained. The windows were
barred, with heavy shutters, but the
doors had fallen, and the wind had
swept the dead leaves into the empty
halls.
On the crumbling steps a grey.
haired woman stood, and with her
hand shading eyes that were clouded
with pain, seemed to look far out
through the mountain shadows.
In my dream could see the scenes
on which her unseeirg eyes were
dwelling. She was living again her
early girl-hood, when the hot sum
mer months had brought her with
her father and mother, with friends
and servants to that wild summer
home, and she was one again in the
gay excursions to giant rocks or
mysterious caves, and she remember
ed where the ferns grew tallest and
the flowers wore their brightest col
ors.
She lived again through the years
since the house had been shut and
abandoned, through the days of hap
piness and the days ofsorrow, through
times of success and those of failure,
through all the strange mixture of
pleasure and pain, of gladness and
grief that form the warp and wool of
life, until she came, woman whose
youth was gone, whose friends were
dead, to the only home that death
and financial disaster had left her.
She had not even faithful dog to
lay his head in her hand, and all
about her, and within her soul DESC
lation reigned.
This dream has given me a picture
of loneliness of which | had never
thought, and know not why itcame
to me if not TO shame me for my dis
content. ***
Perhaps the Little people" whom
Robert Louis Stevenson says evolve
our dreams as expressions of their
activity while the day time brain is
sleeping, saw the necessity of giving
me wholesome lesson, and painted
the picture for that purpose.
Strange freaks these "Little people
play, and an article in a recent Serb
ner is devoted to the poetry-the
dream -verses-that favored mortals
have been able to rescue in fragments,
for the memory retains this poetry
so briefly, that the completed poem
of ones dream has never yet been
written. One of the longest is Cole
ridges "Kubla Khan" and of it he
says that although remembering two
or three hundred lines when awaken
ing, after writing some fifty-four
lines, business interruption that
lasted for an hour, lost forever to him
and US the remainder 1t had utter
ly vanished from out his memory.
The 'Little people" are not all
poets, nor indeed are they all of a
literary turn of mind. They seem
to delight often in contradicting ones
waking conclusions. For instance,
! knew highly scientific gentleman
whom they brought to the bottom
of a stairway in an unscientific heap
and with broken collar-bon be-
cause they persuaded him to try to
go up when he should have and did go
down.
heard little girl give once an
eloquent speech, of statesman-like
quality, and describe as the orator
the great Thomas Jefferson, and give
vivid pictures of men in his audience
who are a part of our country's