The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-26

Deane complains of the exorbitant price of S10 week which she paid for board at fashionable watering place. In those days a man with $100000 was rich" In character drawing of however impossible perfection and insipid goodness Miss Holmes may make her heroes and hero Ines. her other creations are strongly de- pcted. real and human. We feel as if they were people we knew and have only to look around among our friends and ac- quaintances to pick out those who might have sat for the portraits drawn by the gifted Mary Jane.
 IN a small. low, scantily furnished
 room, high up in New York tene- A ment house. poor little Dora Deane trying hard to kee? back the tears and trying vainly to keep alive the scanty fire which was expiring from lack of fuel Dora's father had died in early manhood, leaving his wife and daughter to battle with the hard world. and the battle had been an unequal one-Fanny Deane was dying in the direst poverty. The dying woman called her daughter to her side and said:
 You are like me. and I am glad. for maybe Sarah will love you better when sine sees that you look like one whom she once called sister-and should he ever re- turn-your Uncle Nathaniel" she paused and her mind went back to the years long ago-to the old yellow farmhouse on the New England hills-to the gray-haired man who had adopted her when she had Teen written fa1herless-to the dark-eyed girl, sometimes kind and sometimes over bearing, whom she had called sister though there were not ties of blood be- tween them. Then sla thought of the red house just across the way from her adopted fathers. and of the three brothers who lived there-Nathaniel, Richard and John. Very softly she repeated the name of the latter. seeming to see him again as he was on that day when, with the wreath of white apple blossoms upon her brow. she sat on the messy bank and lis- tened to his low-spoken words of love-
 Again she was out in the pale starlight and heard the. wind go moaning through the trees as Neahaniel, the strange, eccen- tric. woman netting Nathaniel, just re- turned from sea, told her how madly he loved her and how the knowledge that she was to be anothers would drive him from his fatherland forever-that in that burn ing cline of India he would make gold his idol, forgetting all else.
 Then she recalled the angry scorn with which her sister had heard of her en- gagement to John, forcing upon the girl the knowledge that Sarah herself had loved him and recalled how Sarah had. in a fit of pique. given her hand to the rather incompetent Richard. But she will love my Dora for Johns sake, thought Mrs. Deane-and then she told Dora that she had already written to her aunt, that the aunt would come and take her home and also that she had written to Nathaniel, her uncle in h. dia. asking him to be kind to the or phan.
 The night fell. the scanty fire went out and the freezing blasts of winter shook the crazy tenement. But to the angels who were lpvelng near waiting to bear their sisters spirit home, charge was given concerning the little girl so that she did not freeze, though she sat there the livelong night with her arms around her mother. When, in the morn ing. people came to the squalid room they found her in the sweet sleep of child hood, while the mother by her side slept the lon, eternal sleep of death.
 It was a richly dressed lady and her brother who came into the room and found there the living and the dead. The charity of the lady had been solicited for the widow Deane the day before by a woman living in the same tenement house with Dora and her mother, and at breakfast that morning-it was New Years morning-the lady had insisted that her brother make his first New ! ears call with her, and had brought him to this scene of misery. That aft ernoon the young man told the story of his first New Years call to his affi- anced bride, Ella Grey. Ella had heard of such scenes before, and cried over them--in story books-but 1t never oc- cured to her that she was called upon in any way to relieve such suffering When her lover had finished his story she turned on him her beautiful, baby blue eyes. and said: "Romantic-wasn't it?" She saw the shadow which came over his face, and hastened to added: Perhaps I had better take the girl hero as a waiting maid; I sadly need one" 'No,' replied the young man, "she is going to live with relatives in the coun- try" 'rhe country." exclaimed Ella with a shudder. "I would rather freeze in New York than live in the dismal coun- try" Again the shadow-but she knew just what to say to him. and added: But I could be happy anywhere with you. What was the young girls name?" Strange, but I forgot to ask." replied the young man, and they fell to talking as lovers will. and Dora Deane and her sad case were soon forgotten.
 Three hundred miles away, in the west ern part of New York state, Mrs. Sarah Deane, the adopted sister of Dora's mother, and now for many years a wid- ow. sat with her daughters, Eugenia and Alice, in the drawing room of her place, Locust Grove. near the village of Dun wood. Hard had been the struggle of the Deanes to hold on to their home F2,tf fl would not have been SD hard had