FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125  
126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>   >|  
from that dread Beyond, she knew, that he had fancied last night the dead beckoned to him. She touched him again. "It is a quiet morning yonder," she said, calmly. "Yes, Lotty." "God sent your dream. I hardly hoped, Jerome," her eyes filling with tears, "that we should keep Christmas together,--you, the baby, and I." He smiled and pressed her hand, touched the little cheek, and then looked wistfully out again. He held the baby God had given to comfort his old age proudly and tenderly; but his heart would turn to the other child's face that was watching for him yonder behind the dawn, and listen for the weak little voice which he knew on that Christmas morning was somewhere calling,--"Father! father!" LUCY'S LETTERS. On a cold January night I returned home after a holiday visit to town. Snow was just beginning to fall, and a desolate sort of feeling came over me as the omnibus drove up to my residence. A bright, cheerful light shone out of the library-windows, and Ernestina, a maid who had lived with me half a score of years before her marriage, was at the gate to receive me. "It is owing to her kind, capable hands that the house looks so comfortable," I said to myself, with a little sigh; "but what am I to do when, she returns to her own home?" Then, with a true spinster selfishness, I wished her good husband and beautiful boy "better off" in Abraham's bosom, and wondered what could make women so foolish as to get married. The cause of all this discomfort was the consciousness of having a new serving-maid. My last experience in that necessary domestic article had not been an agreeable one. The woman, though not "as old as Sibyl," was "as curst and shrewd As Socrates' Xantippe, or a worse." She was a dusky Melpomene, who openly insulted the furniture, assaulted violently the china, and waged universal war against all inanimate objects. Being a trifle deaf, she used this defect as an excuse for not hearing any request or command; when spoken to, she glared grimly, turned her back, and strode off with a tragic _loup_, reminding one of a Forest in petticoats. I never knew I was an amiable woman, until her advent into my peaceable establishment. "Now I return to a new experience, may-be no better than the former," I thought. Upon entering the house, I saw through the open kitchen-door--out of which streamed a savory smell of broiled chicken, buns, and tea--an encoura
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125  
126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Christmas
 

experience

 

morning

 

yonder

 

touched

 
beautiful
 
shrewd
 

married

 
Socrates
 

openly


insulted

 

Melpomene

 
Xantippe
 

husband

 
foolish
 

consciousness

 
domestic
 
wondered
 

serving

 

article


discomfort

 

furniture

 

Abraham

 

agreeable

 

thought

 

return

 

amiable

 

advent

 

establishment

 

peaceable


entering

 
broiled
 

chicken

 

encoura

 

savory

 
streamed
 

kitchen

 
petticoats
 

objects

 
trifle

defect
 

inanimate

 
violently
 
universal
 

excuse

 

hearing

 
strode
 

tragic

 
Forest
 

reminding