The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1897-01-25

II
hour. 1t was known far I'd wide that
they two pulled strong ID smooth to-
gether, and, old as young, sat snugly
side by side. At weddings in the whole
region round about, it was customary
TO wish the young pair wedlock as long
md peaceful as old Jokel's and his
Christers. That Is what they were un-
til he built the new house.
Well. he built it. 1t cost more than
he had reckoned. 1t swallowed all his
savings, and even that was not enough.
Ill-luck pursued him from the day he
laid the foundations. Somehow all his
money transactions went wrong
lie had TO mortgage his cottage and his
farm. Then came the great drought
and distress on every side; no crops, no
fodder and his cattle sold for song.
Finally his health gave way, and Christel
sickcned and died. He buried her on
the ninth of November, seventeen
months gone. She had dropped from
the time he began building, she took it
80 to heart. That is what the new house
cost him.
There II stood empty and useless. No
one would buy IT. He hated IL. The
cottage Of his fathers, where he and
Christel had lived half a century In
good and evil days, and where their
children were born, he was obliged to
sell. The newcomers left him his old
sleepingroom, which he occupied. A
lonely old man, he came and went 81
lendy. troubling nobody. The new
faces and voices fretted him sorely.
Day and night he missed his Christel
and brooded over his misfortune.
The new house was his curse. Had he
not built II, he would not have lost his
health, his money, his home, his farm.
his peace of mind and his good old wife.
Over tho very thought of it they two
fell out for the first time in their lives.
She kept her word; never looked at it
building; never saw it done; 1t was
hardly finished when she died. Had he
listened to her. oil would still be we'll.
Thus he brooded continually, and a
dull, impotent rage possessed him moro
and more, a sense of personal enmity
toward the house which neither he nor
else wanted, and which had
robbed him Of his Christel, the blessing
of all his days.
One evening, the previous November,
he was returning from a neighboring
market town with some of the villagers.
He had done little enough business,
merely a few small matters which he
had undertaken for the young couple in
his cottage, and once he was one Of the
most important and respected men on
the market. Such reflections CALLED
him. 1t was hard, in ones old age, to
lose the fruits of all the patient labor
pf ones life. rs we'll IA the conscious
ness that ono Is of weight in the COM
So he was taciturn, and came along |
With the others, mostly young men,
merely from habit. and because they |
we're all from Sonnenheim: and sat with
them in the Drei Mohren and the
'chwalbe and the Traube, and the
'ther inns where they stopped for beer
'r cider or new wine, yet drank nothing
himself, except one glass of the now
'oung Thomas Bolz. who was BIT
merry, insisting upon it--and hardly
'enrd their boasts and laughter. so lost
vas he in his own drcarineSs.
Finally, however. on the road home
vard, their loud wit turned upon him.
'olz. chafIlng him noisily about what
'eople now called "Bleibtrcu's Folly"
sked him if he was going to hang
ace curtains in the windows and have
doorbell like city folks. perhaps--who
new? piano. or even n smart young
rife; such things had happened before
ow 20 sly old men; and jolsed on. not
nkindly; but after the jovial fashion of
Dung men who have pnrtaken at brief
lieryals OF beer. cider and new wine.
et. as they parted az the stile-for
leibtreu's way lay over the fields, the
Tiers down the high road 10 the viii
'rc--young Bolz was not too merry 10
office how wenrily the old man walked.
nd to turn and accompany him bit