Connecticut western news., 1899-11-23
THE MAD GODS.
What would the mad gods do For hate with me, I wonderf Or what for love with you2

-Swinburne. Percy Charrington was carried home on a hurdle with his neck broken one | stormy afternoon in midNovember,
 having lost those who stopped to proffer assistance the best run of the season. People shook their heads and remark ed that young men from the grass coun- ties who will try to fly the Essex fences can only. expect broken necks as mat ter of course. A fence that begins with
 a small ditch and soft take off, con
 tinues with big built up bank crown ed by stout staked hazel hedge and is concluded by nine foot drop into chasm like ready made grave on the far side is not the place to fly, as any fool should have known and all Essex people do know.
 So Percy Charrington went home on a hurdle-all of him that the startled soul left behind when it set forth on it's separate journey from the bottom of that pitiless ditch. and Mrs. Charring ton, five days later, sat in her widows weeds in the lonely library and gazed
 across the sodden, gray garden with eyes that looked and saw not. She had been prisoner and now the shackles had fallen, and behold, she was freel
 Two hours before the heavy Essex clay fell dead and solemnly upon her husbands coffin; two hours ago she turned her face from the past and faced the future-the future that five days
 back had never existed for her. Where fore she sat in her library and was
 calmly, steadfastly glad.
 In having been wretched for three
 years she was spared the great misery
 she should rightly have felt at her lone- Illness. At moments such as these it is permitted one to be thankful that all women do not love their husbands. Mary Charrington was small wom-
 an, with slight figure, a pale face a
 little too long for it's width, big gray
 eyes and mass of old fashioned nut
 brown hair. She was four and twenty,
 and she had never been sincerely happy
 in the whole of her life.
 Who are we to cast a stone at her
 when we realize that she came nearer
 to happiness on the day of her hus-
 bands funeral than ever before3
 It is sinful to wish man dead, sin
 ful to be glad when he dies, but when
 that mans person has constituted
 barrier between oneself and all pleasure
 in life, if it be sinful to rejoice at that
 barriers removing, then sin such re-
 joicing must be, and there's an end of itl
 She had married him three years be- fore for diversity of reasons. not for
 the only one. She put all thought of that aside. She said "Yes" to MT. Charrington because he was young and good looking and loved her and pro- posed to her. and because she was lonely and poor and tired of all her surround ings and wanted strong arm between her and the world Women marry for that last reason much oftener than they
 have any idea of.
 Of course directly she was married she met the man she was to love. and
 forthwith loved him, and suffered as
 only these little, pale faced. gray eyed women can. because they have no strength to rise superior to their love, | nor pride of passion ever to contemplate ] cutting the Gordian marriage knot. ! The mans name was Jack Collingwood, l and he was a barrister, who, being a brave man, ran away and went off to | try his luck at the Calcutta bar. Fate was kind and let him succeed. Fate wanted to keep him away from | Mrs. Charrington, and then one day it forgot and let Percy come to irreme-
 diable grief out hunting after which, | having committed blunder, 1t washed | it's hands of the whole affair and said,
 What must be shall bep' Fate is fatalist.
 She wrote to her lover she told him
 she was free. It was not long letter,
 but the whole of her life and her love
 and her hopes of heaven went out to
 Calcutta between two pages of foreign
 paper.
 The answer came back-the answer 1 she expected and longed and prayed
 for, and Mary CharIington made her
 preparations, set her affairs in order
 and bought her trousseau, walking in l golden world decked with purple and
 rose and silver-a world all fair to see,
 that had never before been aught but