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CHARLOTTE MESSENG t VOL. I. NO. 43. w THREE SONNETS ON LIFE. L. Fair Lif •, thon dear companion of my dayß Life with the rose-red lips and shining eyes— That led’st me through my Youth's glad Paradise And stand’st beside me still, in these dull ways My older feet must tread, the tangled maze Where cares beset me and fresh foes sur prise; On the keen wind and from the far-off skies Is l>ome a whisper, which my heart dismays* That thou and I must part. Beloved so long Wilt thou not stay with me, inconstant Love? Nay, then, the cry upon the wind grows strong— I must without thee frash adventure prove And yet it may be I but do thee wrong, And I shall find thee waiting where I rove —Louise Chandler Moulton. n. Prisoner I was within a noble hall, Ringed round with many gracious images. And through it floated strains which might appease The soul’s sore thirst for music. On each wall Fair pictures hung, to hold the eye in thrall— High mountains, clothed in cold, immacu late peace, A light of water between wavering trees. Wild seas, wherefrom drowned mariners seemed to call; A table stood there, heaped with fruit and wine. But lo! the fruit turned ashes at my gaze And to my taste the gold juice seemed like brine. Here must one die, then, with no chance for strife, Loathing the impotent beauty of the place; Then these words shivered past me: “This is Life.” —Philip Bourke Marston. m. We are bom with pain ; being bom, we wail and cry; Childhood thrives best upon a mother’s tears; Youth is a storm of futile hopes and fears; Manhood is marred by passion, utterly; Age, though he hath seen so many follie 9 fly. Hath not decreased his store when the grave nears; Folly and noise fill ail our little years, rill, as we are born with pain, with pain we die. And over us God’s dome of azure towers, Where suns and systems whirl and keep their place, ynd we call Life this piteous broil of ours, And stoop to observe, with foolish earth ward face. While that vast pageant of stupendous lowers Sweeps on, eternally, through silent space. —Herbert E. Clark. LEONIE’S LILAC. Aliout 12 o’clock one bright Febru ary day in Paris Madame Blanchet sat waiting for the arrival of her belated scholar. Miss Cora Bell, a young American whose habit it was to spend a couple of hours three times a week in so-called “elegant conversation” in the Flench language with that worthy ■lame. The little apartment where the teacher lived bad formerly been a garret over the dependance of a sub urban I oarding-house, taken under some stress of circumstance by its present occupant, and little by little, through taste and perseverance, it hail been made to “blossom like the ro.->e.” No wonder merry Miss Cora liked her tri-weekly French lessons. The walls of the large room, divided into two smaller ones by screens, were bung with fluted chintz, all flowers and leaves of brightest hue. A tiny por celain stove diffused, when called u|>on (but that was not too often, for mad ame, like all French women, believed in ecenomy in wood), a friendly warmth. In both windows, whose panes of glass were polished like the speekless boards of the flooring, were kept plants and birds. A great green ls>x of mignonette in flower sent out a luscious fragrance. Vines were made to start from behind every picture frame and out of every china jar upon the shelves; and somehow or other they grew like .lack's bean-stalk, strong and i reen and luxuriant. Best of all, a flood of genial sunshine came in on all sides, for the garret lmaste 1 of vari ous w indows. Where madame slept one could And out by peeping behind a screen at the white curtained bed with the crucifix alio veil, but where madame rooked no one ever guessed; yet she had a fashion of producing from un known corners a series of luncheons that were nectar and ambrosia to her youthful visitors. Days there had CHARLOTTE, MECKLENBURG CO., N. C., APRIL 28, 1883. been in madame’s past experience when the poor lady had known what it was to subsist upon the slenderest of rations, but now the fame of her exquisite embroideries in chenille and silk was noised abroad, while her oc casional scholars, like Cora Bell and a few liberal Americans of the same set, made up an income sufficient for the widow’s wants. Madame Blanchet, sitting at the open window overlooking an ivy covered wall that just here formed the boundary of the B lis de Boulogne, felt quite wistful with regret over the non appearance of htr favorite scholar. “ Mie will not come now,” the widow said to herself, as the inevitable man tel clock struck a cheerful, loud-voiced “one." “Truly, she has twined her self into my heart, that cherd petite Cora. How she laughs and dancesand sings her life away I Just like that other one—so many years ago.” A shiver ran over the little woman’s frame, and she closed her eye as if to banish some painful image. “My pretty Cora will never know so sad a fate as hers, thank le bon Dieu.” A light step upon the stairway, and Cora, blooming with health and ani mation, came Into the room. “Don’t scold, dear madame. There is time enough yet for a chapter of our book before they send for me.” The lesson began, but (‘ora’s atten tion wandered; her thoughts flew off at a tangent; her eyes grew dreamy; a deeper rose-color settled in her cheeks. At last a little white protest ing hand was laid across madame’3 page. “ Blanchet, dear, I want to confess to somebody. Won’t you be my priest? You know that papa is in America attending to business al ways, and that mamma is forever going out. Ive nobody but that stupid Parker of mine, and talk I must—l must. Oh, Blanchet, if such a thing can be, I am too happy ! All of this dear blessed morning lie lias been with me, and mamma lias given her consent, and we are to be married soon.” And then, the flood-gates loosed, came a stream of joyous confidence. Cofa never thought to look up at her listener until she felt a hot tear, then another, drop upon her hands clasped in the widow’s lap. “What is it, dear madame?--what have I said to pain you?” the girl asked, wondering, to be answered by a tit of bitter sobbing. With kind and gentle words Cora soothed her friend’s emotion, and at last Madame Blanchet was able to sneak once more. “Forgive me, dearest young lady,” she exclaimed. “In truth I never can forgive myself. I owe it to you to explain my weakness. See here; this picture which you have often caught a glimpse of in my desk. Look at it judge for yourself of her youth, her innocence, her beauty. She was my only child, and I have lost her forever. Years ago she knelt as you do now, and poured out to me the wealth of her love and happiness under circum stances like yours. The rest is too painful for you to hear.” “ Tell me more,” the girl said, ten derly. “I would be selfish indeed if I refused my sympathy at a time when ail seems so bright before me.” Little by little the story was re vealed. Ten years before Leoni Blanchet had betn sought in marriage by a wealthy Englishman, to whom her mother had given her with some misgiving, watching her go from that modest home into a life of luxury witii many anxious fears. The husband Leonie had chosen was handsome, young and winning; he had made good his claim to a rank and station far above Leonie’s expectations, Leonie adored him. What, then, was there to apprehend? The widow could not tell, but still I Leonie’s first letters came to her so full of boyant pride, of confident happiness, that for a time the mother could not but reflect it. The young couple were absent upon their wedding journey in the South, and had reached Itomp, when a thun der-bolt fell upon the pretty, trustful bride. The man whom Leonie be lieved to be her husband had left his true wife in England—a gay, fashion able beauty, sufficiently “emanci pated,” according to the notions of her class, to mock openly and lightly at her husband’s latest fancy. “ But this is not for you to hear, my child,” the little French teacher said. Cora, who from motives of delicacy had avoided looking at her friend, glanced hastily up, struck by the sup pressed passion in her voice. What a transformation waa there! In place of the quiet, repressed, demure per sonage she had been accustomed to see, Madame Blanchet’s eyes were a-flre; her cheeks glowed with a dull crimson; j her teeth were clinched. “Do you know what I would have done to him?” she went on. “l am a Corsican, and the blood runs hot in our veins when it is stirred by wrong—va!” The brief passion was spent. It was succeeded by a calm even more full of meaning. Cora waited until her friend could trust her.-elf to speak. “ They parted then and there,” Madame Blanchet went on, in a low tone. “He did not defend himself. He simply laughed at her—my poor, heart-broken, humiliated child. He said she was too innocent for the times she lived in. And so she was. bon Dieu, too innocent. She put all of this into one last letter to me, and she fled—fled into the night.” “ And now ?” ttie young girl said, after a long silence. “Now she is at peace,” the mother answered, quietly. “ The Holy Church received her in its bosom. Leonie is one of the sisters of the con vent of the Sepolte Vive. Fo’r some time past I have been laying up money in order to take the journey to Home, but until recently it was all I could do to live here, and to go away from my employment meant starva tion. Oh, if I could but have seen her, I would have starved—yes, gladly —but that is impossible. All 1 can do is to visit the outside of the convent upon her ‘day.’ Once a year each sis ter has a ‘day,’ when she is allowed to throw over the convent wall a flower, in token to her watching friends that she is still alive, but that is all. I know what flower my Leonie would choose—a bunch of fresh white lilac!” “ ‘Sepolte Vive’ —buried alive!” the young kirl repeated, sally. A shadow seemed to fall over her life, and her budding happiness. A few months later saw the Roman spring unfold in all its glory. A party of tourists were visiting that relic of mediieval days, the convent of the Se polte Vive. Most of them turned back disappointed at the threshold, but a group of three people lingered until the rest of the sightseers, after a collo quy held through a revolving barrel in the wail of the convent, had reluctant ly dispersed. Over this barrel was traced an inscription: “Who would live content within these walls, let her leave at the threshold every earthly care ” Upon these lines a woman dressed in black, standing apart from her two companions, kept her eyes fixed, while her lips moved in prayer. The order ■ f nuns who have thus condemned themselves to a living death subsist on charity. It is only when their supplies are totally ex hausted that they are allowed, after twenty-four hours’ starvation, to ring a certain bell, which the 'outside world interprets, “ We are famishing.” Two Lents are observed by them dur ing the year—the one common to all Catholic Christians, and another held between November and Christmas. In the intervals the sisters receive and partake of whatever food may be be stowed on them by visitors. Two of the three loiterers were young and handsome, radiant with ill disguised happiness. That they were new-made husband and wife none could doubt, and it was a pleasant sight to see the wife order to be brought from a carriage awaiting them a hamper of abundant dainties, and with tlie aid of her husband proceed to un pack their store. To gain answer from the convent the young man knocked briskly upon the barrel-head, which, slowly turning, revealed a shelf with in. ‘ “ What wilt tliou, stranger ?” came a voice, faint and far as the note of an ,-Eolian harp. So strong was the sense of remoteness and of desolation produced by this sound that involun tarily the young wife clasped her hus band’s arm in shuddering. “Oh lit is too sad,” she whispered in his ear. “I think I will go back to the carriage and leave Madame Blanchet witii you—may I not?" “ Nonsense, darling. Who is it who has contrived and carried out this little expedition, I should like to know? Come, cheer up, and bestow your bounties upon the good si iters within. Depend upon it, they will relish them.” Their presents were given, and in exchange our visitors received a series of cartolini.or tiny slips of printed paper folded like homoeopathic powder pajeTS, and intended to be swallowed whole by the believer, who might thereafter hope for a cure of any mortal ailment possessing him. As their colloquy with the unseen sister came to a close, the young man signed to Madame Blanchet to draw near. The mother had kept a veil over her face while standing by in silence, but now she sprang forward. A Petrified Indian. The recent death of Dr. Barnes, at one time surgeon-general of the United States army, recalls an incident which took place a goixi many years ago, and attracted much attention at the time. Shortly after he was appointed assist ant surgeon in the army be was sent out with several other members of the medical corps to Kansas, at that time a howling wilderness. One day a young lieutenant in the camp received a letter from a friend in the East say ing that a brace of Englishmen h;nl started for the far West on a hunting expedition, and might be expected at the fort by a certain time. The lieu tenant read the letter at the mess table, and immediately a discussion began as to what diversions should be gotten up for the visitor,’ entertain ur'iit. Some one suggested that as Kansas was an unknown country, a hoax of some kind would be eminently proper, and everything was kept pretty quiet until the day before the visitors v.ere expected, when the camp rang with the news of a curious phenome non. Two of the officers, it was said, becoming attracted by the representa tions of a friendly Ind.an, had fol lowed him to an out of the way place, about ten miles from the fort, to shoot buffalo. Here was located, to all ap pearances, an ordinary spring. The Indian was some d stance in advance, and, going to the spring, dipped a cup full of water. He had only taken one draught when he uttered a shriek. The officers rushed to his assistance, but when they arrived at his side he was in a state of complete petrifica tion. When the Englishmen arrived at the fort next day they were told this story. They expressed some in credulity at first, till the officers of fered to guide them to the spot. The following day the expedition was ac cordingly made. A petrified figure, clad in a picturesque savage’s costume, was found by the side of the spring, and everything t nded to corroborate the story. One of the Englishmen appeared to have some doubts as to whether such a phenomenon was with in the bounds of possibility; but the two surgeons who were present bom barded him with such a volley of scientific hypotheses, duly baelfed by jawbreaking physiological terms, that he surrendered at discretion. The up shot of the matter was that the visi tors considered the figure as a great discovery. They begged it, and had it boxed carefully and transported at enormous expense to New York, to gether with several demijohns of the fatal wat.T, intending to ship the whole to England. In the meantime the English and American papers were full of the matter, and the greatest interest was manifested to have the petrification examined by experts. On arriving in New York the object was investigated, and the slightest exam ination proved that the material was sand-stone, and the water ordinary spring water. Barnes always denied that he was concerned in any way in the hoax, but ids friends sa.v now that he was too modest to claim the credit for it.— Chicago Hews. Breakfast at Home. “ Well, Madame,” says the bead of tlie house, who has apparently got out of bed on the wrong side, “what have you got for breakfast this morning? Boiled eggs, eh? Seems to me you never have anything but boiled eggs. Boiled Erebus! And what else, madame, may I ask?” “Mutton chops, my dear,” says the wife, timidly. “Mutton chops!” echoes the hus band, bursting into a peal of sardonic laughter. “Mutton chops! I could have guessed it. By the living jingo, madame, if I ever eat another meal inside of this house—” and jamming on his hat and slamming the door, the aggrieved man bounds down the stairs ..ad betakes himself to the res taurant. “What’ll you have, sir?” says the waiter, politely, handing him the bill of fare. “ Ah!” says the guest, having glanced over it, “let me see! Bring me two boiled eggs and a mutton chop!” Nature has presented us with i large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone, and o'ften calls us to it, to teach us ttiat we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to our a dves. _________ According to the last census the railway employes of the United States comprised one-thirtieth of the male population twenty-one Tears of age and upward. ER. f. C. SMITH. Prtlfelw. and putting her lips to tie- opening uttered with feverish anx ety a few sentences of wild pleading uimeard by her companions. Fainter and farther were the pitying accents that smote her ear in return. “ ‘ Sepolte vi ve,’ daughter. The grave gives back no answer.” “ Let us wait beneath the garden wall, dear friend,” Cora said, as be tween them her husband and she sup ported the steps of the trembling mother from the spot. “It should be at about this time that the flower is thrown, and oh ! how it will comfort you to have it from her hand !” Underneath the ancient wall of the convent garden the little group waited in silence. It was a moment of feel iDg too profound for words. As the hour drew near the mother left her friends and went to kneel alone upon a grassy mound where her cheek might graze the wall, as if caressing it. For a time all was silent. Then a bell sounded the hour with slow and solemn strokes. A bird burst into joyous caroling in the tree above where Cora stood. “It is a good omen,” she said, glancing up into her hus band's face. As the last stroke of the bell died upon the air something w hite and fragrant fell at the feet of the kneeling figure. “It is Leonie’s white lilac!” Cora cried, starting joyously forward. . But the mother did not stir. The token had come too late to awaken joy or sorrow.— Harper’s Weekly. A Story About Webster. “Yes, I knew Mr. Webster well,” responded a gentleman of mellow years and spirits, when inquired of concern ing the great New Englander, “ and what has been said of him reminds me of an incident which, with others of a similar kind I have heard, gives a pretty good idea of one of his traits relating to finances. Mr. Choate was in Washington at the time. He and Mr. Webster were almost as brothers. One day Choate needed SSUO, and he applied to Mr. Webster. • Five hun dred dollars !’ says Mr. Webster. ‘No I haven’t it at this moment, but I will get it for you, Choate.’ The latter was glad to hear it. and would wait. ‘ Draw your note,’ said Webster, • I’ll sign it and bring you the money. While you are about it make the note for a thou sand ; a thousand is as easy to get as 500.’ Mr. Choate said that 500 was all he needed. ‘ I’ll take the other 500,’ said Webster. The note was drawn, and Mr. AVebster, taking bis cane, went into the avenua ‘ Good morning, Mr. X., good-morning,’ said he, as he entered tlie great banking house which was the fiscal agent of the government. ‘ Good-morning, Mr. Secretary,’ said the great banker in the blandest manner, • What is it I can do for yon tiiis morning, Mr. Secretary ?” Mr. Webster was secretary of state at the time. ‘ A little favor for my friend Choate. He wants a little money, and I told him I thought I could get it for him. A thousand, I believe he made his note for,’ passing the paper to the banker. There was no such thing as hesitating, much less declining, and so the banker was only happy to accom-. modate the head of Mr. Fillmore’s ad ministration. The gold was laid out in two equal piles, at Mr. Webster’s re quest. Butting one in each pocket, and with one of the bows which Mr. AVebster only could give, lie departed. 4 Here, Choate, here is the five hun dred,’ said the great expounder, enter ing where Choate was waiting. Hand ing him the gold, Mr. AVebster resumed his reading where he had been in terrupted by Choate’s entrance.” The narrator of this incident did not recollect much about the seiuel. “Both are dead, you know,” said he. “They were great men, and I value their au tographs highly."— Washington Let ter. Peter Cooper. He was of the people and for the people. He was born in their ranks and lie never left their ranks. Pros perity did not produce sluggishness in his blood. AVealth did not taint his goodness. The toiler was as his brother. Pride he never knew. Mere outward appearance he despised. Dissimulation lie abhorred. And he went through his long life as gentle as a sweet woman, as kind as a good mother, and as guileless a man as could live and remain human.— Hew York Truth. A new E ngliah book is called “People I Have Met* A new American book might be called “Men I Have Been Out to See," In Paris men wear bracelets. A fa mous bey wears one of diamonds valued at 1200,000.
Charlotte Messenger (Charlotte, N.C.)
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April 28, 1883, edition 1
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