Evening journal., 1898-01-12
A REAL ROMANCE.
The Maid who Remained True to Her
Lost Lover.

Truth is stranger than fiction" Who |
can dispute it, old as is the saying?
Fiction may clothe its creations in all
the glamour of burning words, and
skillfully play upon the interest with
startling and dramatic situations and
climaxes, but the daily records of hu-
man events tell in simple language
stories as singular, strange and tender
as any ever told by the most vivid por-
trayers OF romance.
Real life seems to most of us hum
drum and commonplace. We turn from
it to seek in novels the spice of interest,
unheeding the fact that the newspapers
lying each morning on our breakfast
tables TEEN with all that is wonderful
and even weird, glad and sorrowful,
noble and ignoble, in human history.
Scarcely is there a column that does not
tell a tale of some one Of life's varied
phases, exceeding in all that truth ex-
cells fiction the interest that appertains
to tales evolved from mere imagination.
The other day the wires flashed from
a MASSACHUSETTS town the news Of the
death of a woman who had passed the
ninetieth milestone in the Journey Of
life. She had lived unknown to the
great world around her, almost un-
known to the generations that had
come and gone beside her. She was
only very old woman, and she died.
That was her history, and yet the chron-
icle of its closing revealed a romance
as sweet as sad, as pure and as tender
as any that Balzac or Dickens ever told.
When her years were only 20, time
so long ago that it fills the Scriptural
span of life, love was hers. And she
loved a sailor, one of those sturdy sons
of New England who in the earlier days
went "down to the sea in ships" and
made Salem, Gloucester New Bedford
and Marblehead famous. The time OF
parting came, with tears on one side,
comfortings on the other, promises on
both. He would come baclo to her, for
when did sailor ever tempt the oceans
perils uncheered by the hope that its
treacherous waves would at least keep
faith with him? She would place in
her window, every evening until his
return, lighted candle, to greet and
guide him should his homeward jour
ney end at night. They parted, and that
night the candle cleaned as a beaconin
her window.
Days and months passed, how slowly,
how anxiously only those know who
have watched and waited forthem they
love. Loneliness was comforted by
hope that frightened into joyous ex-
pectation, only TO be darlened into de-
spair. For he never returned. From
over the murmuring billows no word
Of him was waited. Ship and sailors
vanished into that shoreless sea whence
no echo ever comes. And hisna was
inscribed at home on the records Of
those dead and gone.
There was one who never gave himnp.
That was the girl who had his love and
promise, as he had hers. In all the
medicines Of mortal comfort there was
but one for her, and that was the hope
that defes knowledge. The candle in
the window, like that hope in her heart,
was never extinguished- Night after
night it was lighted, and burned as o
beacon until the light Of her own life
4lAckCIeu huu WtnD Oub lOIGNtIs Mudb
pen, unless dipped in tears, can tell the
story OF those 20 years of waiting?
Family and friends passed away, youth
and comeiiness disappeared, chilling
age bowed her frame, buther heart was
as young as when in life's morning
she had given it at loves promptings.
Children were born, grew to manhood
and maidenhOod, were married and died
around this lonely watcher, and she
saw loves drama and life's tragedy
played on every side, and amid it all,
a stranger to everything but the past,
she was faithful to the lover who had
sailed away.
Surely, that which'we call life would
be Of all things the most miserable II
there were not beyond its earthly con-
fines a land where those who have loved
and suffered separation here shall meet
again. "And there shall be no night
there; and they need no candle."-
Pittsburgh Times.