Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small]

No,

Need I write the answer? though it is written on my heart, where her gentle, faltering words shall find their only record.

When good Mrs. Mawoke from her slumbers her apology was cut short by a young couple kneeling before her and asking her blessing. When one short year has elapsed, I am to take Alice to my home, which I trust, ere then, to make worthy of her.

-words that gained him no friends. | had not yet passed when, like a gift Most of all he railed constantly at from heaven itself, hope again revived women, though the memory of a mother in his breast. As if it were a dream, he dearly loved should have silenced he found himself again in the presence his scornful tongue. One day the knowl- of her he loved, and she, he dared to edge of his own own littleness became think, looked upon him with the old known to him in a moment. A young, kindness in her face. Alice, dear Alice, unpretending girl, sublime in her sym- does not that tender smile, do not these pathy and tenderness for the unfortu- modest blushes, tell the young man that nate, disclosed to him that treasure of a it is not all a dream? Speak, Alice. woman's heart which he had so often It is you must end my story." affected to despise. He had passed his glib judgment upon the world, he had found it false and hollow, and yet there before him, in the picture of that fair girl bending over the lowliest and most degraded of her sex, was told the story of a capability for a generous, heroic sacrifice of self, of which he, in his own life, had never given a sign. From that time forward there was a higher purpose in all his strivings, and unworthy as he was he sought that gentle girl's love, and she, beautiful in her womanhood, gave him the inspiration of her soul and opened before him a future bright and joyful as a poet's "Good night, and God bless you, dream. But the clouds gathered around James, and may He grant you a him again. He had not yet fully learned Happy New Year." the lesson of patience and endurance. I turn over these pages of my diary The mere annoyances of a moment and read them again and again. They aroused all his stubborn pride, and, do not tell a story the world would unheeding the gentle counsel of his care to hear, but they contain all the good genius, he allowed his angry pas- romance of my life for me. And, sions the mastery, and rudely cast when in the far-off future, children away the treasure of love he had never shall gather around me and read of really deserved. For more than one heroes and their loves, my thoughts long year he brooded in loneliness and will turn fondly back to this little gloom, and when the New Year came, room of mine, where in the silence of once more it found him nearly hope- the night I now sit writing, with a less, the old hardness closing in around grateful heart, for God has blessed my his heart. But that New-Year's Day life on New Year's Day.

It is but a few hours since all this passed, and as I write, the face of my sweet Alice comes before me, and again I hear her earnest parting words,

JUDGE BETWEEN THEM!

A CHRISTMAS SKETCH.

PART I.

BY JAMES B. FISHER.

THE SENTIMENTALIST.

the panes and utter dismal threatenings and complaints to all the eaves and gargoyles. A few flakes of snow fell In the heart of a great city, and early in the day, but the blast has long facing on a sequestered street within ago swept them off to the lee side of hearing of a thoroughfare's hum and stoops and other nooks of vantage. rumble, stands a comfortable house. It Some of them are still clinging to the has a genteel front and a look of solvent window-sill of the comfortable house, respectability on every square foot of and peeping in at a cosy room where it, from the polished door-plate to the Mr. Claude Chandley sits prosing before attic's discreet blinds. There is a sort a snug fire. Mr. Claude Chandley is a of frigid dignity in every house on this man of superb stature, with a rubicund street, and all the flat roofs seem face and an eccentric imperial. One staring with infinite disparagement at man in a thousand, nay, in ten thousand, the gables, and giving one another the is Mr. Claude Chandley. He is emicold shoulder out of sheer self-impor- nent, very eminent, in the literary world tance. It is a very unneighborly neigh--a successful journalist, a popular borhood. To see the Smith family of novelist, a writer on various economies. No. 10 flounce past the Joneses of And he has lectured to large houses, next door on Sundays, one would be delighted the popular mind with the persuaded that an hereditary feud had wideness and beauty of his views, and figured in the last will and testament tickled the popular fancy with his keen of every lineal ancestor since the time satire and ready humor. of the medieval Smiths and Joneses. And the emphatic way in which Betty of No. 10 gives her broom a valedictory pound on the curbstone when the female retainer of No. 12 appears is full of hostile significance.

A philanthropist, too, is Mr. Claude Chandley, ever willing to set before the world the grievances of the downtrodden masses and depict in glowing colors the miseries of the lowly and destitute.

More chill and unsociable-looking "Oh, what a dear, warm-hearted than ever is the street on this Christ- creature that Claude Chandley must mas-eve afternoon. Gusts of wind be," cried Miss Clementine Languid, in come sweeping round the corners and, a rapture after perusing "The Beggar's edging up to the closed shutters, rattle Burial.” "How divinely he does

S

describe that death-bed scene. I cried the singular facility Mr. Claude Chandover every word of it." ley had for dreaming.

"A man of large views, of very large views," soliloquized Papa Languid on reading Chandley's brochure on "Our Paupers." “He is a humanitarian, every inch of him."

What Papa Languid and Miss Clementina said was only the reflex of every other body's opinions. So it may be inferred that Mr. Claude Chandley was a man of some importance in the community, and it is only fair to state that no one realized that fact more fully than Mr. Claude himself.

As he lolled back before the cheerful

The wind that clutched at the window-shutters went chilling through the rags of a little beggar on the street; the daylight died slowly on gable, roof, and spire, and when the lights blazed in the emporiums gaunt shadows gathered in low and dim retreats; but in the cosy room the fire still shone cheerily, and Mr. Claude Chandley was still dreaming on paper of the Christmas times, the season of good-will and peace, the season for the hand to give and the heart to warm to others.

Of great beauty and symmetry was
Quaint fancies

fire and shifted his slippered feet on the writer's dream. the fender, he looked the very embodi-strung together-grains of sentiment ment of self-complacency under favor- that bore a hidden life caught from the able conditions, and his easy equanimity warmth of their Christmas tone-shades was not a whit disturbed by the letter and colors of things that might be. a servant laid beside him. This was There were pictures in it of an unreal what it contained. life that shrunk behind a mask of commonplace actuality. It had woven in its texture the wailing of the outcast and

Mr. Claude Chandley.

Dec. 24.

Your two-column

Christmas sketch has not yet been received. forlorn, but there always was a golden

As the
goes to press this evening you
will please forward MS.

Publishers.

cry

thread to twine about it-the of want was in it piteous and prolonged, but it had always listening ears to Mr. Claude Chandley, contrary to reach and crime's foulness ever was stereotyped usage, did nothing violent absorbed in the odor of good deeds. on perusing this communication. Nor Had it a moral? Yes. Mr. Claude did his language at all savor of inele- Chandley always dreamt morals. The gance. He only yawned, stared into great precept, "Do to others as you the fire, and muttered: would be done by," was its text; "A Christmas sketch-charity, holy" Feed the hungry, clothe the naked," season, and all that-hackneyed, worn lighten the burden of another's toil, threadbare. But what of that? I'll bring balsam to them torn of scourges! dream again, yes, I'll dream again." Human life is festering in loathsome And in pursuance of these intentions dens. Human hopes are wrecking day he wheeled his chair over to a writ- by day. Human hearts, sodden by care ing desk and fell to writing with such and sin, are rotting in their owners' earnestness that an observer would bosoms. Help them all! Men, couched have been very deeply impressed with in down, whose lives are blank and

barren, attend to these! Men, grasping Mr. Claude Chandley stopped, but with a greedy hand the fruits of others' his eyes were turned away from the toil, forbear! Men, wasting mighty eager, white face. If he had heard the energies in worthless aims, a teeming prayer for aid he did not heed it. It field awaits you! All this and more was toward the open door of a magniwas in Mr. Claude Chandley's dream. ficent mansion he was looking. A The night fell; the yule-tide log gentleman was coming down the stoop was lighted; the altar stood grand and to him. solemn in its commemorative decking; the banquet board was spread; the blaze of the bazaar illumed the air; music swelled out sweet and thrilling; light feet twinkled on the dancing floor; and Mr. Claude Chandley hurried off to his club. His Christmas sketch was written, his dream was over, and he felt that his duty to society was discharged and that philanthropy the philanthropist; and then, to the indeed had few knights like him.

"The compliments of the season to you, Chandley," cried Mr. Luchre, the wealthy parvenu, for it was he. “You are coming to the club?"

Before the other could answer, the ragged boy stretches out a thin, trembling hand between them.

"Please, gentlemen, give us a cent." "Be off, you young scamp," cried

merchant prince: "Here is a ready instance, my dear Luchre, of the necessity we have of a more compre

Along the dim streets of a fashionable quarter he passed. There were sounds of feasting ever and anon dropping hensive system of public charity." out from brilliant parlors, and merry

Mr. Luchre, a big, good-humored

voices rang upon the wind that bit so man, had put his hand in his pocket, sharply. But far unlike all these was the small voice that reached him as he paused to button his coat more tightly. "Give us a cent, sir, please!" was all it said.

A sharp, quavering voice it was. The whine of hereditary beggary was in it, but it had also the plaint of hereditary want. The lips that uttered it were thin and blue, and there was a pinched and greedy expression on the young face that looked up half beseeching, half fearful.

The philanthropist, the theorist, the dreamer, was before the object of his devices and his visions. The one gaslight streamed on both. Mr. Claude Chandley stopped. A look of glad expectancy came into the pallid face, and as quickly faded from it.

but on Mr. Claude Chandley's summary dismissal of the beggar he took it out again-empty, for the parvenu esteemed the opinion of so eminent a man, and was desperately willing to shape his actions on a model of such perfection.

"You see," went on the philanthropist, "in that boy, an individual member of a class we term dangerous, a class which I grieve to say, in spite of reformatory enterprises, is daily increasing. And why, my dear sir? simply because its growth is encouraged by influences which serve to make destitution self-supporting and enable the beggar to subsist independent of State aid. This is an evil which must be counteracted, you admit, and the readiest way of meeting it is

« PreviousContinue »