Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1896-11-26
Hiss Tempy's Thanks
giving.

Il don't know as 1 be-" said Miss
Tempy The minister paused, the
now of his eloquence a little checked
and chilled, but ne gathered himself
and went on:
But you have a due proportion of
temporal blessing. do you not? You
have food and RI. ment sufficient for
the body, and the society of friends
and leighbors. Do you not feel true
thankfulness for all the comforts by
which you are surrOunded?"
Il don't know as l do said Miss
Tempy.
The minister glanced at her wonder
ingly; but just then Dea Fosdick,
coming up behind, claimed his atten-
ton, and when he turned again Miss
Tempy had crossed the street and was
just disappearing under the little
birdcage porch of her own front
door.
Rev. John Nelson wondered what
could have come over this quiet, self
contained woman. If Miss Temper
ance Baxter were not fully at rest in
her conscience and mind, where could
mission?
In the three years Of his pastorate
he had known her as tall, angular
woman, dressed always in black, and
regular in her attendance at church
and prayer-meeting, no matter what
the weather. He called on her in the
regular order of his pastoral visits, and
she received him sitting bolt upright,
with her hands in her lap, and made
decorous inquiries about Mrs. Nelson
and the children, evincing a polite and
proper interest in Mary's measles and
Freddies fall from the top of the grape
arbor.
He remembered now that Dea Fos-
dick had once told him that Miss
Tempy had passed through many
troubles, but the minister had sup
posed him to refer to the fact that she
had gradually come to be the last of
her family. Very pathetic, to be sure,
but he had known many such cases in
his different New England pastor
ates; indeed, where is there a parish
without the silent, spare figures in
black, to whom nothing now, either of
joy or sorrow, seem to make any diff
ference? However, he would call as
soon as might be, and ask if she were
for any reason disquieted in her mind.
Meanwhile Miss Tempy paused in
the birdcage porch and felt in her
pocket for her key of the house door,
looking down as she did so ait the lit |
tie green bench at her right hand. 1t
was too narrow to make comfortable |
seat, but a little green bench like that
seemed to belong naturally in bird |
cage, and she remembered standing
by, little girl in long-sleeved ging- !
ham apron and cropped hair, to watch
her father as he made and painted it, |
and put it in its appointed place.
1t was a point of etiquet with Miss |
Tempy to use the front door when she !
went to church or prayer meeting, al |
though it was seldom opened at other |
times. The long, narrow hall into |
which she entered struck a chill of an |
empty house to ones bones The floor
was covered with oil-cloth in wood |
color and blue, a striped carpet of the |
same hues going UP the stairs to the |
left, held in place by bright brass rods. |
Under the stairs stood a cherry table |
with both leaves let down and covered |
with a scarlet wooden cloth figured |
with black arabesqueS. Between the
front door and that of the parlor |
stood a grim-looking hat-tree in dark |
wood with a little oval mirror into
which no one ever gazed and pegs
upon which no hats were ever hung. |
But it was part of the proper and us
ual furnishing of front hall at the |
period when Miss Tempy's parents, |
having at last paid for the house pur-
chased early in their married life, felt |
able to replenish their furniture, and !
it had been the source of much pride
to Mrs Baxter.
There was a window at the foot of
the stairs, it's green outside blinds |
closed and it's drab shade with gilt
border and scarlet cord and tassels |
lowered. There were long, marrow
windows on each side of the front
door, curtained with stiffly starched |
white muslin drawn on cord at top
and bottom. On the long eXpanse of
wall beyond the parlOr door was a
large picture of Jerusalem in fiat
cherry frame. In front of the doors
and at the foot of the stairs were mats
made of finely cut rags drawn into
sacking in floral designs of roses and
tulips, with leaves disposed with
painstaking regularity at exact dis
tances apart, on stems that curved in
and out in waves precisely alike. AL
together the Baxter front half was
eminently respectable and chilling.
In accordance with her daily habit,
Miss Tempy opened the parior door at
her right hand, and pausing on the
threshold took a survey of the prim
order which there was no one to dis
turb.
The hair-cloth 'parlor set" of Sofa
four chairs, easy-chair, big and little
rocker and two ottomans stood in stiff
array about the walls. There were
the tides she and Prudence had
crocheted when the parIor set was
new, and their wax bouquets, precisely
alike, even to the curl OF a tendril, one
on each end of the high mantel. There
was the dahlia lamp-mat for the big
lamp, with ground glass globe, which
had superseded the old astral with its
pendant prisms. Prudence had made
those worsted dahlias-Prudence
whose slim, pale dextrous fingers could
10 10 touched on inst