St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1900-07-14
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! P A R A D | S E :
4 BY Eloise Jane Huff. =
= Observation-Disclosures .

tFrom the New Orleans Times Democrat,
by Permission.l
T1HE young mother had been into the
dim shadows where Death and
Life struggle, and win or lose, just at
the happiest, sweetest, fullest hour
which had been hers, when love took
a4on new and tender unseltishness,
when its lifting, dancing measures
broke into the deep melody of an an
them, and, as she drifted back into the
light again, thus it was that she half
wished and half prayed in her still
childish way that Death would never
take this woman-child of hers as long
as Life held Happiness-that love of
s Life should be talisman to stay the
hand of Death.
Thrice in the woman's threescore
years Death had come to WOO her from
{. his brother Life out into the far be
yond, that unknown land, that here
after which he called Paradise, and of
3 which he spoke with a wondrous elo-
quence and a great witchery.
When first he came it was just at the
dawn of day, just as the east was flush
ing in the faint rays of the rising sun
and the birds twittered in the trees;
shod with silence he glided through the
quiet halls and still hushed household,
among the watchers with wet faces and
terror-touched eyes. All unseen,
though they looked for his coming, he
went in the gray of the spring morn
ing into the sweet sanctity of the girls
chamber. Pausing on the threshold,
as if 10th to enter an unbidden guest,
he noted all its whiteness and its dainty
simplicity; notdf, too, on the muslin
draped dressind table a tiny silver
+ frame, with lie pictured face of a
youth, an earnest, grave face; and
Death smiled at the story it told. But
he went to the bed where she lay as one
asleep, until she seemed to be already
Deaths own. He stood beside her and
looked with sad eyes and cold, fmpas-
& sive brow at the child who was his for
the taking, and it was in tenderness
a and with love and pity surprising the
human that he gazed on the fair young
4 face, like an untouched lily leaf, the
unwritten brow, the sweet childish
mouth, upon which the kisses of love
had left neither song nor sigh, the slen-
der little hands, so weak and fragile,
and he stopped and touched her with.
his pu1seless fingers as he said: My
child, you are ready, you are willing to
come with me? for am your friend,
and will give you eternal calm and
peace, a gift which human love and care
cannot bestow. / will take you to
land where you win never lose your
youth; will save you from Life. Look
into the faces Of the aged, my little
maid, and read there of all that Life
writes upon faces once as fresh and fair
as yours; all that love entails; all that,
heightened years give to those who
wait too long for me; the fever that is
ambition; the delirium that is love; the
chill that is regret; the ceaseless an
guish of sorrow and disappointment
that dims the eyes fixed upon the things
of this world
His voice had almost the wooing and
the pleading of lover, as he saw in her
awakened eyes the cloudless. un-
troubled soul Of child.
''From all this will save you. Come
with me now before Life has taught
you to yearn for me, for / come not at
your call, however ssorrowing and
loud" E
The girl gazed upon him with great
wonder in her gentle, dove-like eyes;
she quietly unclasped his hold and laid
her fingers caressingly upon some faded
roses on the bed beside her, and she.
said, as one repeats words of a foreign
tongue, all unlearned in their meaning:
Regret, sorrow, appointment
what are these?"
Death went on: R"Come, my child;
come with me to Paradise, to the land
where all is serenity, all IS JOY and con-
tent; where the days are all one as an
other in their changeless, tranquil hap
piness.'' And then, as Death became
the more imperative, as he again
touched her with his icy fingers, she
looked across the room until she met
the pictured face, and something like
firmness gathered and settled upon her
childish features. ''That is not Para
disc OF Wnlcn you ten NE. linen sue
hesitated, but, looking straight and
direct into the close, stern face of
Death, little faint flush creeping into
her cheeks and sweet, unafraid wom-
anliness growing upon her as she
spoke: stThat is not Paradise. Para
disc is here, because John is here"
And Death went his way with empty
arms, and when she walked the watch
ers said that she wandered, still she
was feyerish and distranght, although
her eyes were placid and clear and her