The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1894-01-13 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NEW YEARS SERVICE.  It woe in the days of crinoline, of pork-pie hats. It was in the daye when John Leech flourished, as I fancy no artists have ever flourished since, in the pages of Punch, though voile folk are inclined to say that John Leech was never an artist at aIL She was a plcatant•looking young person, albeit she did wear crinoline and affected the Einprims of the French in the matter of green silk and yellow gloves, which were certainly never much my poor taste, such taste having never been developed by an over.socurate acquaintance with the fashions of the Court of pi apoleon the Little. It was on a New Year's Eve.  Heyday! I wonder how often this has been deieribed in how many choice three-volume novels? .  Of course they walked across the fields over the crisp snow, and of course she had helped to decorate the church, and of cour,o there bed been skating on the pond, and of course he loved her. " 1 love you. Flora," he had said. as they sat on the window seat playing with the deed lo,Neu in the potpourri bowl. The picl Well sho might smile. The man—the boy, the almost hobbledehoy—to think that be should have had the insolenm ! .  A girl of twenty-two is is old se a man of titirty, sometimes I think almost a Methilwlahess as compared to a man who almoit has the thought of middle age upon him. As I said bef.re, she looked up at him and smiled.  _ ... " How absurd you are ! Why, you are a year younger than myself, so I must eltn,:st al) ear a mother to you. It is really t Klimpertinent. You must go to India without thinking anything more about me. In fact, it is quite taking a liberty with me to be thinking about me at all. "Then you are not in earnest in the lettA? " If you suppose that I was, you can suppose anything." Ile stood and looked out on the snow-clad wn. The sun-dial was cowered over. Quite a litEis heap was on the wall. Thy twilight was falling, and he could scarce see the shadows on the snow. He always remembered that scene, and the sound of his echoing footsteps as he walked down the stairs. Su at midnight he had not the courage to enter the church. The clock struck. Did it make the tower vibrate? Some snow fell from the ivy leaves on to the clean-swept path.  Dv a and moment% quickly flying, Wend the living with !Li dead ;  oo— he heard them singing. Then he muttered to 11;mse1f, "There is nothing left for me to de but my duty, no matter how it takes toe.' His duty took Inna to the casnp..ign 011 the Bosom Pratt.  It isnot the day of crinoline. It is the day of Queen Adelaide revival, lerof-mutton sleeves. It in the day of F.dison,llttlØ girki look down on Tennyson and devour their Shelley, and nuke fine feasts of the choicest tit bits of Ibsen. . _  --The snow is once more on tbe ground. There are lights in the church window, and, of °mime. tie pond is frozen, though the whirr of the skates left off some hours aeo  They had been skating and singing. A man in a Norfolk jacket. win..h showed off a figure that told of hard exercise and soldiering, was standing _beside a young,girl. "It is strange," he said, "that I should never have met your mother; but then, I know so few. wopla. T wentv -two years in India and the Cape," ' You are very dark: Abe said, "hat you never look old to me." .  "Row odd it ia,' he aaewercd; "there is 50m thing in your face that always calls to mad something that I cannot remember; just as al i t tle bit, say a fragment, of a dream. Just fancy, my only knowing you for a fm-height and my loving you, and rou actually liking —say loving." 'ee,eraldeLimgima these would not be much credit in that; but I—l love you for yourself, and I have inch a common name. For the first time to-night we shall meet mother in the church. Is it not strange that I should be stopping at one house and she should be at another, and that when I sin in towu she should be elsewhere?" . . .  ......- „ "It ta something to do with the Falai," Reid he. It had more to do with the Pattie thee he thought.  How warm the church was after the cold outside. He thought of that Lim* twin:ay-two years ago, and the memories of hi youth cams back to him. . .  "How strange it in" he mused, 'that here I once fancied I het all my happiness, and now I know I have found it again, and more than is my due, at a time of life when few could expect it." As he thought this, he looked across the church. There at his betrothed, and beside her a middleaged woman. They both know each other at 01300. . _  --Now this is not so very curious, after all. The world poi round and round, and in time makes , one quite giddy in looking at it. That girl's ' mother was his old love—that girl'smother had not the love of her daughter, nor had even deservedit. The man blushed when in almost ironical tomes she gave her oon.sent to their betrothal. When she sat in her dressing gown that night, or rather morning, she was complaining to herself how us- , just the world was, as if it were not she who bad been unjust to . the world. She hated her own daughter, she hated the man she had ill-treated; she wanted her own hatred and other folk's love. ' We can't get everything. The Fates arrange matters for us sometimes— the Fates arranged that when hor maid came to her one morning there was no awakening, and some folks used the hard word "Suicide.' —The Gentlewanan.  Try ",,Bock Coughs—and Calds, it  I Ara sup.