ses, one
who has always known them cannot help thinking of the sorrows of these
farms and their almost undiverted toil. Near the little gardener's
plot, we turned from the main road and drove through lately cleared
woodland up to an old farmhouse, high on a ledgy hill, whence there is
a fine view of the country seaward and mountain-ward. There were few
of the once large household left there: only the old farmer, who was
crippled by war wounds, active, cheerful man that he was once, and two
young orphan children. There has been much hard work spent on the
place. Every generation has toiled from youth to age without being
able to make much beyond a living. The dollars that can be saved are
but few, and sickness and death have often brought their bitter cost.
The mistress of the farm was helpless for many years; through all the
summers and winters she sat in her pillowed rocking-chair in the plain
room. She could watch the seldom-visited lane, and beyond it, a little
way across the fields, were the woods; besides these, only the clouds
in the sky. She could not lift her food to her mouth; she could not be
her husband's working partner. She never went into another woman's
house to see her works and ways, but sat there, aching and tired,
vexed by flies and by heat, and isolated in long storms. Yet the whole
countryside neighbored her with true affection. Her spirit grew
stronger as her body grew weaker, and the doctors, who grieved because
they could do so little with their skill, were never confronted by
that malady of the spirit, a desire for ease and laziness, which makes
the soundest of bodies useless and complaining. The thought of her
blooms in one's mind like the whitest of flowers; it makes one braver
and more thankful to remember the simple faith and patience with which
she bore her pain and trouble. How often she must have said, "I wish I
could do something for you in return," when she was doing a thousand
times more than if, like her neighbors, she followed the simple round
of daily life! She was doing constant kindness by her example; but
nobody can tell the woe of her long days and nights, the solitude of
her spirit, as she was being lifted by such hard ways to the knowledge
of higher truth and experience. Think of her pain when, one after
another, her children fell ill and died, and she could not tend them!
And now, in the same worn chair where she lived and slept sat her
husband, helpless too, thinking of her,