Newspapers / Eastern Courier (Hertford, N.C.) / July 18, 1895, edition 1 / Page 6
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THE DIFFERENCE. . Beauty lies -within ourselves, After all, they say; And, be sure, the happy heart Makes the happy day. In a cool and shady garden Phylls sat. The roses' scent Fanned a face whereon were -written Restlessness and discontent; Lilies nodded, bluebells tinkled, Birds sang sweetly in the trees; Merry talk and joyous laughter Sounded on the summer breeze. '.'Oh," sighed rhylis, ''I am stifling;" And she raised her pretty head. "I am sure 'tis going to shower ' What a horrid day!" sie said. In a warm and dusty city Janey, pinched and wan and white, Leaned against a heated building, Longing for the cool of night. Suddenly she sj.ied a floweret. Pale and slender, at her feet. "Oh!" she cried, and stooped to pluck it; Looking up in rapture sweet Through the crowded house-tops, Janey Caught a glimpse of blue o'erhead; And she kissed the little posy 'What a lovely day!" she said. Eeauty lies within ourselves. After all, they say; , And the glad and happy heart Makes the happy day. Gertrude M. Cannon, in St. Nicholas. COWSLIP GREENS. iy sorniE swTr. HEX I en jo yed my victuals there wa'n't notliin' that 1 thought go rn.u c h of as a mess of cowslip .qreens,"said Mrs. Tibbetts plain tively, surveying a huge pan tilled with tropical looking leaves i i mi: n ii . t uuu uimiitui jenuw uiossoms. Ami the blows carry me right back to East Macedonia and the pretty smells there Used to be there in the spring of the year. Seems as if spring hadn't a fair chance here in Potiphar City. .Tour father used to like a mess of pork and greens " "Oh, ma, I wish you wouldn't want such dreadfully vulgar things!" Addie Luella, who was sixteen, had tears of vexation in her pretty blue eves. "And 1 wish you could get over East Tr.i,-.; -r 1. iuttucuuuiu. j. .uc j. U.L iiii uisis came from there, too, but who would think it? They're the very first people in Potiphar City ana and Augusta wouldn't invite me to the Charity Club tableaux. The reason for the little fine puckers that had been all day between Addie Luella's brows had come out now. Mrs. Tibbetts looked vaguely per plexed and troubled ; she dimly com prehended that to have a mother ob livious of grammar and of social aspirations made life full of pin pricks for Addie Luella. In Potiphar City one was nothing if not stylish. Fifteen years before, the city had been a strip of unreclaimed prairie; now it was a great lumber town with most of the appliances of civilization andall the fashions. Hiram Tibbetts, coming from East Mace donia in Maine, did his share in re claiming the prairie and made a for tune in lumber. "Pa" was quite a magnate oi Potiphar Cny; but of what use was that, demanded Addie Luella, with tears, if ma would be so common and old-fashioned? "I guess you'll have to do your so cial climbin without your ma," said good Hiram Tibbetts, gazing with pride upon his pretty daughter. "Pa" did understand a little. "It don't seem a mite like Adeline Parkhurst to get so stucfc up," said Mrs. Tibbetts, reflectively. "When we was girls in East Macedony, there wa'n't nobody so intimate as Adeline and me ; and I named you for her and she named Augusty for me. Enoch Parker and your father are second cousins, too, and it's a dretful clan nish family ; they etick to one 'nother through tV"?1: and thin. But your father and Enoch had difficulty about some railroad stocks and hain't never spoke to each other sence ; and than their goin to another ineetin and Adeline gettin' so kind of high fly in' ; not but what she's a real good woman and gives away a sight " "She isn't likelv to have much to give away if what I've heard is true." This was Hiram Tibbetts, junior, a boy of seventeen, who had just come in with the importance of a possessor of news. "It's a secret; I overhead pa and another man talking about it. Parkhurst is in an awfully tight place ; they think he'll fail ; tlien his mills will be closed; they say he's made an awful struggle to keep 'em open all winter and don't you breathe it to anybody, but they're afraid there'll be a run on the bank that he's President of; he hasn't done anything wrong, but he lost his head when he began to get into trouble, and there are doubts about the way some of tb.9 bank's money is invested." "Do you suppose there won't beany tableaux, Hi?" asked Addie Luella, breathlessly. "Oh, 'Gusta don't know anything about it yet, of course, nor her mother, either. I saw them driving around this morning with that pair of spank ing bays and a new carriage. I sup pose he thinks he must keep up ap pearances." "Im glad we don't have to," said Mrs. Tibbetts, di awing a long breath. "I declare, if we have gone .such dif runt ways I feel a nearness to Adeline when she's in trouble. Kind of queer that I was thinkin' of her this mornin'. I expect it 'twas because seein' them cowslips in a peddler's wagon fetched old times right back to me. I run right out and bought all he had and now I don't know as I know exactly what to do with 'em all. Your father used to like a mess of pork and greens." Addie Luella sighed heavily ; but she helped herself to all the blossoms, and made of her boudoir what her friend, Trixy Wainwright, called a symphony in yellow with -them, and filled a great bowl with 'them to deco rate the dinner table. "Ma" said she loved to smell posies when she was eating ; but she didn't like the candles with which Addie Luella persisted in lighting the table J she said candles were old-fashioned in East Macedony when she was a girl, and what was the sense of havin' 'em when they had electric lights? "Pa" looked askance at the cowslip greens; he said he. used to like 'em when he was a boy, but he guessed with his dyspepsy" he wouldn't resk it. Mrs. Tibbetts looked at the neglected dish of greens and had an inspiration (she kept it private, as she did many of her inspirations lest they should be frowned upon by Addie Luella). She put some of the greens, with a slice of pork on the top, into a dish of the old clover-leaf china that was her mother's they seemed to belong in Lsomething old-fashioned and sent them to Miss Lucretia Lund, who had come from Maine to keep house for her brother. She placed the dish in a dainty basket and slipped a card in side conveying her compliments ; that would impart a little air of style to the affair, which was desirable in view of the fact that Addie Luella might find it out. "Cowslip greens from Mrs. Hiram Tibbetts ; that's what the servant said. " Miss Lucretia Lund took the clover leaf china cover off the dish and sniffed damtly. Then she looked across the table at her brother for the basket had been brought in while they were at dinner aud made a wry face. "Of course it's very kind of her, but what queer messes these Western people do have!" she said. For Miss Lucretia was only about thirty, had lived in a Maine city, and never in her life had heard of" cowslip greens. "We can't eat them pork, just think of it! Bat it seems they're a delicacy ; and I think I'll send them around to Mrs. Parker, who sent me that delicious pineapple preserve; it is so much the fashion here to send dainties about." "Cowslip greens, with my compli ments, to Mrs. Parker, Mike," she said to he; servant, and dispatched the basket, all unwitting of the card which Mrs. Tibbetts had slipped into it. The Parkers were dining when the basket arrived ; but the meal was a hurried one, because one of the chil dren had been taken suddenly ill with tonsilitis. "Cowslip greens? dear me, I don't know? what they are," said Mrs. Par ker ;;;'but I am sure they must be very nice, for Miss Lund is a fine housekeeper. We don't care for greens at all ; I think I'll send them around to Mrs. Parkhurst ; her mother is a very old lady from Maine, is visiting her, and pork and greens are so old fashioned." Mrs. Parker didn't see Mrs. Tib bett's card in the basket, and her mes senger, .who was sent for the doctor at the same time, gave the basket to one of the Parkhurst maids without any explanation. The Parkhurst family had got to their after-dinner coffee by the time the basket reached them. As it had come mysteriously Mrs. Park hurst looked for some token of the donor, and found the card. She uttered an exclamation of sur prise, and her face flushed as she read the name aloud. '. - "Augusty Tibbetts ! Why Adeline why Adeline! and cowslip greens, in the clover-leaf chiny that was her mother's the chiny that Augusty Pritchard had when she married Na hum French ! It's just is if 'twas yes tiddy." The wrinkled hands that lifted the clover-leaf china cover trembled visibly, and a tear came near falling upon the pork and greens. Grandma was childish, the Parkhurst children thought. "I don'tsee how she came to do it,"'" murmured Mrs. Parkhurt. "It's holdin' out the olive branch, Adeline, and it ain't Christian not to take it so !" said the old woman, bro kenly. "Life is too short for lastin' bitterness ; we was young together, and like own folks ! "Why, Enoch and Hiram Tibbetts are own folks." " 'Sh !" Mrs. Parkhurst laid her hand on her mother's and glanced warning ly at her husband. "Tney're the kind that hold a grudge both of them," she said, in a low tone. Enoch Parkhurst arose and left the table silently. He was a taci turn man by nature, and of late the habit of silence had grown upon him. The old lady said she thought Enoch was burdened ; old eyes are dimmed to some things only to be opened wider to others; his wife and the children said he was always so ; he had so many business cares. As he closed the dining room door behind him Enoch Parkhurst put his hand to his head. "Hiram Tibbetts! he could save me," he murmured ; "he wauld have done it once now it is impossible." "Adeline, you'll take me to-morrow to see Augusty Tibbetts, won't you?" Grandma was saying as the door closed. "When Augusty has come niore'n halfway so, seem3as if 'twas the least you could do !" "We haven't spoken for so long, and she is is in such a different set," faltered her daughter. "I would really have liked to have Addie Tibbetts in the tableaux," said Augusta Parkhurst, a seventeen -year-old girl, whose very plainness wa3 stylish, Addie Luella said. "She would make a beautiful Bluabeard's wife with her head hung up, you know, her hair is so long and light; but she isn't in our set. " "I don't know how August would take it," pursued Mrs. Parkhurst, meditatively, "I should think she had shown you how she would take it, sendin you cowslip greens on her mother's clover leaf chiny," insisted Grandma. The next day the prancing bays and theneu carriage stopped at the Tib betts's door. There had been sjme anxious and angry looks cast after them, as they passed the mill, by workmen who had heard that the bread was soon' to be taken from their children's mouths ; but the two oc-cu-pants of the carriage were quite obliv ious of such troubles. Grandma, ra diant with delight, holding the basket containing the precious china on her knee, and Adeline Parkhurst, wonder ing whether all her acquired society manner would enable her to be quite at her ease with 'jpoor Augusta," who had never acquired any manner at all. "They are they are coming here ma!" cried Addie Luella, in a tumult of delight, and earnestly hoping that everybody was looking. "Oh, ma, ma, won't you wait till Jenkins opens the door!" she wailed. But Augusta Tibbetts's simple soul and kindly heart had, in an instant, dropped into oblivion the coldness and social slights of years ; she threw her large white apron (trimmed with home-made lace, Addie Luella's des pair) over Her shoulders and hurried down the steps ; nothing less than a sidewalk welcome I would do for Ade line and Gran'ma'am. She was a simple soul, but after all she showed herself quick of wit ; she felt only a moment's perplexity about the cowslip greens and of that she made no sign. j "I won't tell 'eni it's all a mistake about my sendin' 'em not till I have to," she said to herself. "And if I can make Lucretia j Lund keep still I don' know as I ever will !" And it may as well be here recorded that Mrs. Tibbetts) managed the affair with such truly Machiavellian diplo macy that the little comedy of errors was never discovered by the final re cipients of her cowslip greens. It was a delightful call. Adeline Parkhurst forgot that she had acquired a society manner,! and Augusta Tib betts forgot that Addie Luella was be ing mortified by her bad grammar. They talk of "faraway and long ago," and the broken friendship was ce mented by laughter and tears. Hiram Tibbetts listened in tilenc3 to his wife's 6tory of Adeline Park hurst's visit aud the renewal of the old friendship ; she had felt a little uncer tain how pa would iake it, he was one to hold a grudge ; but her delight had to have vent. " "Mebbe I shouldn't have felt quite so pleased if I hadn't been thinkin' considerable of East Macedony as I do, come spring o' the year," she mur mured, apologetically. "And Augusta, has sent me invita tion to take part injthe tableaux! I'm to be Bluebeard's last wife not just one of the heads hung up in o row!" cried Addie Luella, joyously. Her father's rugged features refisct ed Addie Luella's joy. "He's felt her little slights if ho is a man. She takes after him in think in' so much of them kind of things," thought Addie Luella's mother. "I've been thinkin', ma," said Hi ram Tibbetts, huskily, aud little a shamefacedly, to his wife, the next morning "I've been thinkin that mebbe I'd better help Enoch Park hurst a little. It's so's I can about a.s well as not " j "I was hopin' you would, pal" cried Mrs. Tibbetts, joyfully. "It ain't worth the while to hold grudges and mebbe you was some to blame." There were only j a few who ever knew how Euoch Parkhurst weathered his financial storm; but the mills did not close and there was no run upon the bank ; instead of those catastrophes he seemed to be entering upon a new era of prosperity, and Potiphar City felt renewed confidence in tne sound ness of its rich men.' And Addie Luella! really was Blue beard's last wife in the tableaux. Be ing a simple soul, to whom it is nat ural to share her experiences, Augus ta Tibbetts has sometimes wanted to tell, but she has so far contented her self by saying, aloud, when sh9 was quite alone : - ! " 'Twas all an overrulin' Providence and them cowslip greonsl" Inde pendent Only Twins in This Family. Mrs. Henry Meurer, of 2001 Gough street, is the mother of Ahree Beta at twins. She is twenty-four years ci age. Mrs. Meurer has been marrii little over six years. ! The two late it additions to her family were born n March 3. Of the six children two are girls and four are boys. All nave blue eyes. One girl and two boys have light hair. Mrs. Meurer said in speak ing of this : "Half our children are like my husband and the other half are like me." Baltimore Sun.
Eastern Courier (Hertford, N.C.)
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July 18, 1895, edition 1
6
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