Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1894-09-15
A WAY OUT.
Aunt James View of the World
and It's Opportunities.

Aunt James View of the World
and It's Opportunities.
Peace and happiness. truth and
justice, religion and piety"-the word.
from the church service came to mind
unbidden when n looked at her.
She was a plain little woman on the
SHADY side of sixty, sitting in a streak
Of wintry sunshine seeding r~aisins,
and seeding them so earnestly she
failed to notice the opening OF the
door.
1t opened, swinging back TO the
wall, and Maria Clendennin entered
with a quick step. her face flushed,
and unrest written plainly in her dark
eyes.
Life is an awful muddle.," she said,
and she seized the poker and stabbed
fercely at the soft-coal fire. Ills
enough to drive a woman crazy just to
be alive nowadays. And there YOU
sit, Aunt Jane, with a face like-well,
you always make me think of the
'iallelujah Chorus in the Messiah,
and | believe Handel would say so
himself il he could see you"
Aunt Jane was a little deaf. Whats
the child talking about?" she said,
glancing over her spectacles, The eyes
were dark and bright as though n
spark glinted through them. The
hallelujah was in the face, but it was
written there not by the touch of an
angel; it was the victory Of battle,
and the peace was the rest after war.
fare.
Maria had come to the border of her
battlefield now, to the confines OF the
broad plain mistily bounded by the
other world, where each earnest wom-
an, looking ont On the c~very-days, the
playground Of youth outgrown, be-
gins to realize that ones living soul,
an everlasting life, is an awful thing
to have in ones keeping.
IL believe" she said, slowly, Eyes,
verify believe I'll take to paper roses
and lamp shades, and bonbons and
matinees. I'll put on my r~ose-colored
glasses and walk only on Fifth avenue,
and then I'll forget there is any Five
Points, and III be happy"
"Oh, no, my dear, thee won't. The
Clendennins aren't made for tissue
paper and cream drops. Thy grand
father was burned out of house and
home for daring to say a black man
had rights; but he continued to say it
louder and louder"
But, Aunt Jane, the world is SC
fierce now. People used to live their
little lives; butnow society is bubbling
and boiling and seething over ques.
tons nobody a answer, though ever
body is trying to-"
THE bubbling and boiling began in
a little town in Palestine nineteen
hundred years ago, and it's spreading
that's all, my dear" was the reply.
well, | wish Id lived before the
spreading began, when Julius Caesar
did, for instance. How delightful to
sit OF the best seat IN a circus, and
just for the within OF the moment, make
or mar a life by a turn of ones thumb
ne conscience then to bother any.
body. I've tried Swimming over life
till felt | was dancing on graves, and
Nv tried diving into it till my hair is
gray at twenty-five, oven other peo.
pies woes. This very afternoon I've
been perched for two hours on n hard
wooden s%ettee, to hear Mrs. lydia
Mary Potts tell us all the horrors OF
underpaid buttonholes and overpaid
landlords, of damp, shivery cellars,
and sitting, stutfy garrets, till | feel
like n voracious criminal in having a
third-story room and a bed to myself
A look OF sympathy crept into the
face under the plain Quaker cap.
Maria quietly set the raisins aside,
pushed u stool towards her aunt. and
sat down.
at is too dark to see the seeds,
%auntie, and, besides / need the whole
of you now" This winter" she add.
ed, shyly, ave been trying to brighten
my little corner of the whole, and Mrs.
Lydia Mary tells me from the platform
that I'm pauperizing the masses.
Awhile ago another oma told MS
that education was the key to unlock
the problem. Teach, teach, teach
she said, and it sounded practical. So
by wearing last years bonnet and
gloves I've put shoes on their
cold little feet and oatmeal into their
empty little stomachs, and kept Patsy
and Billy at school all winter. Now /
lind I'm making paupers' of the boys,
and thought | was making citizens"
and there was a tremble in the voice.
Did the Oracle propose a better
way Of making ~citizcns?' said the
luiet voice. The voice was quiet, but
Inc eyes were afire.
81 can't remember that She proposed
anything to do. The world seems Just
! dreary, helpless, hopeless blunder,
md I've been battered against a great
'tone wall, not II CLEAN of light
through it, nor even a Granny where
me could get a foothold to climb up to
he light"
l"Ahem!" said Aunt Jane; talk is
"Then there's Mrs. Mulligan, you
Inow, auntie. I've done her 'irrepara-
lie injury because | made up some I'M
,leached cotton for the twins and
lidn't charge for the stuff, and she a
Door wildly, the mother of six It is
.pauperizing the masses again, I'm
old. She works ten hours a day, six
lays to the week. The end of her am
'ition is to keep off the town. and
he does it; and il Lydia Mary or Maria
had one-tenth of her grit,
We might thank our stars. What's my
coarse, scratchy cotton cloth balanced
the; CHEEKY uplift she gives me
very time ] see her?"
What's this friends hobby? She
doubtless holds the cure-all in her
said Aunt Martha.
Yes" answered the girl with a sigh,
IT is a patent process Of taxation this
which Is to even things up-or
lown. In the new order of things
very laborer will own his home; chub-
y cherubs will replace puny babies;
elfishness and vice, rum and gambling,
ven laainess will fee away, and, pres